Regulations From the Executive in Need of Scrutiny Act of 2023
Floor Speech
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Mr. ROY. Madam Chair, it has been a treat listening to my colleagues with their newfound respect for private business and not wanting to have regulatory interference with private business.
Well, here we are talking about the REINS Act. What we are trying to do is ensure that you can't have unelected bureaucrats making decisions that have massive economic impacts and have major impacts on the lives of the American people.
With all due respect to the ranking member from Judiciary, what we are talking about is not saying you are ending what the folks in the administrative state are saying about regulations. What we are saying is that they have got to come to Congress if it is going to have a major impact. They have got to come demonstrate what it is they are proposing.
If they have got some issue that involves radiation, if they have got some issue that involves some complexities, come make the case if you are going to have a massive economic impact, like $100 million.
Here I am offering an amendment that goes a little bit beyond that; not just the economic impact, but the impact on our society, the impact on businesses to be able to function, the impact on people to be able to go out and carry out their lives.
Amendment No. 14 that I am offering here expands the definition of a major rule in the REINS Act to include any rule that references one of President Biden's major so-called diversity, equity, and inclusion executive orders.
This means that Congress would vote up or down on any rule promulgated by the executive branch that pushes radical gender or racial ideologies regardless of whether it is estimated to carry a fiscal or economic impact.
Why? Because the American people are tired of this stuff. They are tired of seeing this radical agenda being promoted by the Federal Government and pressed upon the private citizens of this country.
The executive orders covered in this amendment are meant to sow division among the American people in pursuit of radical racial and gender ideologies. For example, Executive Order 13985 is designed to ensure racial equity and support for underserved communities throughout the Federal Government.
That sounds nice in a title, but the fact is, it has directed every Federal agency to conduct equity assessments to determine whether new policies, regulations, or guidance documents may be necessary to advance equity in agency actions and programs. It has effectively made diversity, equity, and inclusion one of the most important factors, including at the Department of Defense.
We are not focusing on making sure our Department of Defense can defeat China; we are focusing on making it a social engineering experiment wrapped in a uniform. I wonder why we are having trouble recruiting people.
It has been referenced that CMS rules on health equity flirt with forcing providers to prioritize healthcare based on race. There are news articles about this. It has been referenced that the EPA and the Department of the Interior have rules that advance so-called environmental justice. Executive Order 13988 is titled: ``Preventing and Combating Discrimination on the Basis of Gender Identity or Sexual Orientation.'' Again, the title sounds, oh, that must be all nice and good. Well, it led to an HHS proposed rule that could compel hospitals receiving Federal funds to perform gender-affirming care, including surgeries. It has been used to justify moves by the VA to provide gender-affirming care to veterans on taxpayer dollars.
Executive Order 14021 is titled: ``Guaranteeing an Educational Environment Free From Discrimination on the Basis of Sex, Including Sexual Orientation or Gender Identity.'' However, the problem is, it is discriminating against women, which Riley Gaines knows all too well because she was forced to swim against a dude, and we all know she was forced to swim against a dude.
It was referenced in the Department of Education's proposed rule to leverage Title IX to restrict schools' ability to prohibit biological males from competing in girls' sports. Ironically, the rule recognizes schools may need flexibility to issue such a restriction for ``fairness in competition or preventing sports-related injury.''
The fact is, the American people are sick and tired of politicizing our entire culture through the executive actions that are being executed by this President without check from Congress, which we don't believe would have a chance of getting through the people's House.
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Mr. ROY. Madam Chair, if my Democratic colleagues support these executive orders so much, if they believe that these are the best things since sliced bread, that we need to have all of these orders that are turning our entire society upside down, that are redefining traditional roles in society that we understand the difference between men and women; if they are so excited about those policies, then why are they worried about voting on them? What is the problem?
Why must they just be executed by a faceless bureaucrat at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue or in the alphabet soup of agencies in this town?
Why shouldn't this body, the people's House, and the Senate, speak? That is all we are talking about in the REINS Act and these amendments.
Madam Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.
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Mr. ROY. Madam Chair, with respect to what the gentleman was just talking about with the marriage vote last year, regardless of one's belief and vote on the outcome of that policy, the point is, Congress voted.
The fact is, here we have rules being promulgated by bureaucrats that the people's House never gets a chance to speak to other than through a Congressional Review Act, which you are only allowed to do in a minimal amount of time. The REINS Act actually gives power to the people's House and Article I under the Constitution.
I want to do that here on another issue.
We would like to expand the definition of ``major rule'' to include any rule likely to result in an increase in mandatory vaccinations. This means Congress would vote to approve any rule promulgated by the executive branch to push mandatory vaccines.
Last Congress, remember, we were told to wait for the courts to save the American people from an unconstitutional vaccine? While we fiddled and waited for the courts to catch up, millions of Americans were forced to choose between their job and a jab, that they likely didn't need and that didn't stop transmission.
On September 29, 2021, President Biden announced vaccine mandates for upwards of 100 million Americans, forcing Americans to choose between their jobs and a jab.
On March 11, 2023, Biden finally ended his unconstitutional vaccine mandates at the end of the COVID emergency, frankly, because we were forcing it and forcing the question.
The OSHA mandate, which was struck down by the Supreme Court and formally withdrawn on January 28, 2022, a year prior, required all businesses with 100-plus employees to either vaccine or test.
Why should we wait on the Supreme Court to check the unconstitutional, unlawful, and tyrannical actions by an executive branch that shut down the greatest economy in the history of the world, forcing people to choose between their livelihoods, their ability to make money, their families, their ability to go to school, the ability of a nurse to be able to go in and perform her job in a hospital? We did that. Let's not forget that we did that.
We watched Secretary Becerra fumbling yesterday, fumbling in a hearing, unable to answer the question: Can you tell me, sir, whether or not it was any benefit whatsoever for 2-year-old kids to be forced to wear masks and we had mandates through the Head Start program? He refused to answer the question in committee because he knew full well he had no good answer to that question.
He knows it, and everybody in America knows it. This is about wrestling power away from a bureaucratic state that shut down this economy, harmed the American people, and it should never happen again.
That is the point of the REINS Act, to wrestle power back from Article II and the executive branch no matter who is there.
The Trump administration's hands: Unclean.
The Biden administration's hands: Unclean.
This is a nonpartisan statement.
The people's House should speak. We should stand up to the tyranny of an executive branch that overstepped its bounds and restricted the freedom and liberties of the American people and harmed them.
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Mr. ROY. Madam Chair, well, I am tempted to yield all my time to the gentleman from New York because he is basically making the case for me more effectively than I can.
The gentleman from New York is basically acknowledging everything that I am here saying that I am trying to do to protect the American people from the tyrannical state of the executive branch, but in this case, my Democratic colleagues on the other side of the aisle.
I want everybody in America to understand what they just heard from the ranking member of the House Committee on the Judiciary in the United States House of Representatives.
Your 2-year-old should be forced to be masked.
That is what the ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee just said here on the floor of the House of Representatives, that the power of the government, the full power of the Federal Government should be a part of ensuring and forcing your children, your 2-year-old child to be masked.
We heard it yesterday when the Secretary of HHS refused to actually answer that question, so I am really glad to hear that the ranking member of the House Committee on the Judiciary acknowledges what everybody in America understands, which is that the Democratic Party led by the President and by my Democratic colleagues in the House and the Senate are fully comfortable with the power of the government being used to shut down your businesses, force you out of work, unless you take an experimental vaccine that has not been proven to actually do what the gentleman just said, which is with respect to transmissions.
More importantly, my father, who is 80 years old, is dealing with the ravages of polio. I firmly understand the importance of vaccines, and I am proud that my children and I have been able to be protected by those vaccines, fully tested after years of testing.
To say that this politicized vaccine should have been used to shut down the economy and to kill the ability of my constituents to be able to go about their lives, and to force children into the corner wearing masks to get set back years in their education, that is precisely why this amendment matters. It is precisely why we are here reining in the Federal Government, and it is precisely why this amendment would make this a better piece of legislation, and why I hope my colleagues would support it.
Madam Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.
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Mr. ROY. Madam Chair, I move that the Committee do now rise.
The motion was agreed to.
Accordingly, the Committee rose; and the Speaker pro tempore (Mr. Waltz) having assumed the chair, Mrs. Gonzalez-Colon, Acting Chair of the Committee of the Whole House on the state of the Union, reported that that Committee, having had under consideration the bill (H.R. 277) to amend chapter 8 of title 5, United States Code, to provide that major rules of the executive branch shall have no force or effect unless a joint resolution of approval is enacted into law, had come to no resolution thereon.
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