Regulations From the Executive in Need of Scrutiny Act of 2023

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. BIGGS. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

My amendment is needed to lower the economic threshold of the REINS Act to $50 million, requiring congressional approval to go into effect. That will lead to more votes in this body, and that is what we do.

We are Members of Congress. That is what we do as Representatives of Congress, and I would rather vote more often than have unelected, unaccountable, partisan agency heads writing rules that we treat as law.

The Biden administration has abused executive authority by growing the administrative state. These abuses add up, and estimates indicate that the Biden administration has proposed more than $1 trillion in rulemaking proposals in 2022 alone. That is a trillion dollars without a single vote of anybody in this body. My amendment will fix that.

Actions this large, like student loan forgiveness, food stamp increases that nearly double in cost to Americans every 4 years--which even outpaces inflation--for every one of these overreaches, there are more smaller proposals that we never notice. I don't know if you realize that ketchup is regulated--breads, buns, cheese, Asiago cheese versus old Asiago cheese, that is what gets regulated by our government. There is virtually nothing that is untouched in regulation by this government.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. BIGGS. Mr. Chair, I yield myself the balance of my time.

When we start looking at the regulatory environment and you start talking about a trillion dollars' worth of regulation being piled up by the Biden administration, a trillion dollars, you wonder why there is a persistence in inflation. That is one of the reasons.

I want to talk about something that my colleague said just a moment ago. He said: If you constrain the bureaucracy from making rules, somehow you are thwarting the purpose of government.

Mr. Chair, let me remind everyone what the purpose of government is. The purpose of government is to protect the rights and liberty of the American citizen. It is when you delegate from this body--who are elected by the people we represent--to executive agencies and you give them carte blanche, which is basically what we do, we rarely even do a CRA, you are undermining that liberty, that freedom. That is one of the most insidious problems of this runaway regulatory bureaucracy that we have today.

My amendment simply says: If you are going to impact the United States of America's economy by more than $50 million, we, the people's Representatives, should be okaying that regulation that ostensibly is going to be made and produced by people who are experts.

Well, let the people's Representatives adjudicate through a vote whether we agree with the so-called experts, and then we will be the ones who are held accountable, and we are the ones who should be held accountable.

Mr. Chair, I urge everyone to vote for my amendment. I yield back the balance of my time.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source