Guidance Out of Darkness Act
Floor Speech
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Mr. COMER. Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to support H.R. 890, the Guidance Out Of Darkness Act, or the GOOD Act.
Regulatory guidance includes agency statements that, while not intended to have the force and effect of law, establish agency policies on statutory, regulatory, or technical issues. Since such guidance communicates how an agency will administer a law and its programs, it has a significant effect on regulated entities.
Regulated entities and the public should know what agency guidance says about the laws and programs that affect them. However, guidance documents are not easy to find. They are not consistently posted on agency websites.
This inconsistency burdens regulated entities. It especially burdens small businesses that often lack the resources to hire compliance experts. The problem is so bad that agency guidance documents are known as ``regulatory dark matter.''
For a brief time, the prior administration brought needed sunshine to this situation. Following the GOOD Act's passage by the House during the 115th Congress, the prior administration voluntarily adopted the bill's reforms through an October 2019 executive order after the Senate failed to act.
Under the executive order, guidance was required to become fully transparent online. Across the government, each agency was directed to make available on its website a single searchable, indexed database with links to all guidance documents in effect.
As a result, for the first time, members of the public could easily find whatever agency guidance they needed online in one central location. The order was in effect during 2019 and 2020 but has since been rescinded.
Ever since, agencies have been pulling down their guidance web pages, and guidance has once again fallen into darkness, increasing the potential for agency abuse.
This is why we need to once again pass the GOOD Act in the House and require agencies to publish their regulatory guidance in a single, easily accessible location. The American public deserves nothing less from their government.
I thank my committee colleague, Representative Ro Khanna, for cosponsoring my legislation. I especially thank the ranking member for working with my staff to strengthen the bill and helping us advance a bipartisan bill here today.
Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to support this simple and necessary transparency bill.
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