Midnight Rules Relief Act
Floor Speech
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Mr. BIGGS. Mr. Speaker, pursuant to House Resolution 1616, I call up the bill (H.R. 115) to amend chapter 8 of title 5, United States Code, to provide for en bloc consideration in resolutions of disapproval for ``midnight rules'', and for other purposes, and ask for its immediate consideration in the House.
The Clerk read the title of the bill.
Mr. Speaker, today, I rise in support of H.R. 115, the Midnight Rules Relief Act.
This is an important piece of legislation that will allow Congress to more effectively and efficiently oversee Federal agency rulemaking.
Under the Congressional Review Act, known as the CRA, executive agencies must report all promulgated rules to both Chambers of Congress. This reporting requirement allows Congress to properly consider Federal regulations before they take effect. The CRA gives Congress the ability to pass a joint resolution to prevent an agency's rule from taking effect.
The CRA's disapproval mechanism gives Congress a critical check on Federal administrative overreach. Currently, however, the CRA forces Congress to introduce a single, separate joint resolution for each agency rule it seeks to render unenforceable. This one-by-one limited joint resolution under the CRA slows Congress' oversight of agency rulemaking.
Its inefficiency is most clear during the midnight rulemaking period of the last year of a President's term, when executive agencies historically issue substantially more regulations that last year of a President's term.
Mr. Speaker, H.R. 115 would make Congress' oversight more efficient during this midnight rulemaking period by allowing Congress to introduce joint resolutions covering multiple agency rules during the final year of a President's term.
My colleagues on the other side of the aisle may claim that this bill is only an attempt to slow down agency rulemaking or disincentivize Federal agencies from issuing rules on important issues, but that is incorrect. There are no provisions in this bill designed to slow down rulemaking. Rather, this bill would merely allow Congress to more efficiently exercise the oversight authority it already has and respond to the influx in agency regulations during the midnight hours of a President's term.
Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to support this legislation, and I reserve the balance of my time.
Let's just address the previous speaker first of all. We already have a 60-day legislative lookback in the law. We are not changing that. That is apparently an objection that my colleague had.
We already have in the law that a substantially similar rule cannot be introduced if the Congress says no-go on it. Apparently, that is what my colleague's beef is. That is already the law.
What we are allowing now is for Congress to actually look at more than just a piece-by-piece, one here, one there, maybe you get a dozen to 18. You really don't ever get much more than that in a congressional lookback in the CRA.
Let's review what the Biden administration has done. The rules that they have promulgated in the last year alone have an economic impact of $1.4 trillion on the economy. There are individual bills in this packet here. This is just for the last little bit, the lookback period. There are 68, and that is with 30 days to go. There are 68 of them in here that I am holding up.
One of my favorites is the $45 billion boondoggle that they have got here. It is a rule, and $45 billion is the impact on that one. Let me see if I can read it. It is the national primary drinking water regulation for lead.
Here is the deal: It doesn't get looked at under the Democrats' concerns, but it does under ours. Why do you need to look at it? It just seems to be common sense that if you are going to have a $45 billion rule, maybe we ought to get to look at that.
We are going to come together to actually be able to effectively and efficiently put together these rules in a package. They are going to be marked up. They are going to be heard. If we think that it is justified, we get a chance to vote on it. Members can make their amendments to it. They can do everything else that we can have in the process, but the current methods that we are doing right now slow this down so much that we effectively review just a handful of rules, literally, of the dozens and dozens and hundreds of rules. Like I say, there have been 68 in the last little bit here that this administration put through.
When my colleagues across the aisle start talking about this rule or that rule, I challenge them to go through here and tell me how many of these rules they have even looked at. Are they aware of what is even in these rules? Are they aware of how much they are going to cost? Are they aware of the impact that it has on the working individual or an industry or the American people as a whole? No, they don't have that.
Mr. Speaker, it is imperative that we pass this bill. I am going to leave it there.
Mr. Speaker, when I first got to Congress, I was sitting in the Senator from Utah Mike Lee's office, and I said, hey, I don't understand this. You have got a stack on your desk here of about 4 inches, and yet you have a 13-foot tall stack of documents right next to it. What does that symbolize?
He said, the 4 inches are the total number of laws passed by Congress in the last year. The 13 feet is the total number of rules and regulations promulgated by administrative agencies. That is what we are facing.
When my colleague says, hey, we can look at 25--do you know what the high recently has been? It has been 17 in a year, 17 individual ones. Guess what? My bill doesn't say you can't look at these. In fact, it does the opposite. It encourages us to look at the rules. If they are good, they will stand. If they are not good, they will fail. That is what Congress is supposed to do. Another colleague would say, we are trying to expand Congress' power.
No. The Founders were clear. In the Constitutional Convention it isn't three separate coequal branches. It is three separate but unequal branches.
The legislative branch is supposed to be the most powerful. That is why it got funding. That is why the House is supposed to do the funding because we are the people's House. We are ostensibly closest to the people in the Federal Government.
They don't want you to look at the rules promulgated by unelected bureaucrats. They want you to just blithely go ahead with it. That is the problem.
So when my colleague stands up and says, well, I don't know the cost. Maybe that cost is $45 billion. Maybe Biggs is right, maybe he is wrong. I don't know what is in the regulation. Maybe it is good, maybe it is not.
The essence of that argument is that we really shouldn't look at it. Really? Don't look at the law?
That is not what we are saying. We are saying, indeed, look at the regulation, and let's get as many regulations as we possibly can and look at them. That is what we are trying to do.
Let me give you one right now. This is another one right here. If you happen to be fortunate enough to buy a piece of property, no matter how large or how small, and you can pay cash for it--and oddly enough, I was able to buy a couple of acres of property not long ago--it was actually a long time ago, about 25 years ago now, back before property blew up in cost in my area--well, if I were to pay cash now, that transaction is going to be heavily regulated, and it is going to cost the economy and cost taxpayers $2.2 billion.
By the way, these aren't Biggs' numbers, these are the Biden administration's numbers. When the Biden administration's number says we imposed $1.4 or $1.37 trillion on our regulations, that is not me talking. That is the Biden administration admitting that their regulatory impact is $1.4 trillion.
Maybe we should look at that. Let me just add this: This notion that, gee, we need to look at these one at a time, and if we only get through 16 or 17 that is really odd because--it is ironic, actually. Tomorrow probably or the next day, you are going to see an omnibus, a short-term omnibus, come to the floor. They are calling it a CR, but it is really a short-term omnibus. In that bill are loads and loads of spending, loads and loads of policy.
Guess what? They are all going to vote for it. They just don't want you to look back at the rules that this administration has put into place.
Mr. Speaker,
Mr. Speaker, when the gentleman from New York says we ought to know what is in the rule, he doesn't know diddly crap about the lead pipe rule that he keeps referring to. He doesn't know diddly about any of these other rules. He has admitted that.
He doesn't know about them, doesn't know how much they cost, and he doesn't know whether they would have a good cost-benefit analysis. Guess what? Most of this body doesn't either.
What he is arguing is you really shouldn't look at it because this bill does not change regular order. It does not change regular order. That means somebody is going to be drafting this bill. It means somebody is going to debate this bill in a committee. It means somebody is going to debate it on the floor, and that means you are going to have an opportunity to look at these rules, and if it has benefit, you can amend it.
You can amend that bill to remove that from your CRA. That is the way to get this through. I do find it--I have got to mention it again-- laughable to say you shouldn't combine 20 rules that are made by unelected officials who we haven't seen their rule, we haven't participated in their rulemaking process generically--that is normal-- and then stand up here and tell us we shouldn't have that lookback.
We shouldn't do that, when awkwardly, those same folks are going to vote on a massive omnibus spending package in the next 48 hours. They haven't seen the language. You know why I know they haven't seen the language? I know because it isn't out yet. I haven't seen the language, but they are going to vote for it. They don't want you to know what is in these rules promulgated by unelected officials. That is the doggone shame of it all.
Mr. Speaker,
Mr. Speaker, we can walk around this barn all day long. When you say, look, we want you to do this on a single rule over and over again, that is not real. That is the way it has been. We don't know. Congress doesn't know.
That is why your constituents come up and say to you, hey, why is this going on? Why is now a financial adviser going to be regulated very tightly to the tune of $7.2 billion adjudicated by the Biden administration? Why is that?
Well, I don't know. Well, you are in Congress. Well, yeah, but it is a rule. You know, we put it on autopilot because we think the experts really are experts. Maybe they are. Maybe they are not. One thing this bill does is it says look at what the bureaucracy is doing. Look at what the fourth branch of government is doing here. Look at this.
If my colleague from New York says, hey, we don't know if something is good or bad, let me reiterate: We are not changing regular order. We are not changing regular order. Someone has to draft the bill. You are going to debate the bill. You are going to debate it in committee. You are going to debate it in rules. You are going to debate it on the floor. There will be opportunities to amend it. That is called regular order.
His criticism of our leadership for not bringing 12 bills, I am always there. I am always critical of it. This is probably the only thing that we have agreed on today so far. Well, his party did the same just a couple years ago, too. It goes back and forth.
There is a problem with that on both sides, but what I am encouraging and what this bill encourages is a real lookback, a real follow through on regular order, and a real understanding of what the rules are doing to the American people.
Some of them may be excellent. Some of them may not be so, but this is an opportunity to actually get Congress doing its job. Maybe that is why there is reticence to support this bill.
Mr. Speaker,
Here we go, Mr. Speaker. We are going to walk around the barn one more time. Let's go around that barn just one more time and say the same thing again.
My colleague and I are obviously diametrically opposed. He thinks that if this bill passes you won't look back, you won't specifically look at any iterated rule. I am telling you, nothing seems further from the truth than that to me because here is the deal: Somebody is going to have to draft that bill. They are going to have looked at some of these regulations. They then are going to bring it to the committee chairs, you are going to be sitting in a committee, and you are going to have a markup on this.
The gentleman from New York knows this because we both sit on the Judiciary Committee, and I sit on the Oversight and Accountability Committee, and we have almost indeterminable debates in markups. They go forever. Everybody gets 5 minutes for everything, for every amendment. If you have 25 rules sitting in there, guess what? You are going to have everybody in that committee probably taking 5 minutes a piece on all 25 rules and fully examining that rule and deciding whether they want to keep it in the CRA.
Right now do you know what happens? You might look at as many as 15 or 20 rules per Congress. That is it. We are talking literally hundreds and hundreds of rules that pass that are promulgated. Some may be great. Some may be bad. What this bill does is it encourages Congress to finally do its job.
I am all in on doing the 12 approps bills separately, but even with the 12 approps bills, you will have multiple lines that you are looking at, and you won't necessarily see all those lines.
It is time that we start looking at the rules and see what the administrative state is doing to Americans. That is the bottom line. They don't want that. They don't want that. That is a crying shame to me. It is a crying shame.
Mr. Speaker,
I am glad we agreed finally on the second thing, and that is we are going around in circles.
I want to make a couple quick points as I round the barn one more time. The most CRAs done in a year was in the 115th Congress. Mr. Speaker, 17, only 17--which by the way, that is the same year that Mike Lee had 13 feet of regulations promulgated by the administrative state.
I just want to remind you what happens in the last year and why this is critical. Regulatory promulgation kind of goes at a flat line. Then that last year of a Presidency, of an administration, boom, it spikes up. It spikes up. That is the reality. That is why we have always had the 60-day lookback. If it extends now to the whole year, if it were to do that, you are going to be dealing with a spike.
I am just getting back to this point. If the most you have ever looked at ever is 17 in a year, then you don't know what the other hand is doing, the other hand being the administrative state.
I am just saying let's do it. Let's look at them, and let's make this work.
Mr. Speaker, I urge everyone to pass this bill, and I reserve the balance of my time.
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Mr. BIGGS. Mr. Speaker, I am also prepared to close, and I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. Speaker, so you have thousands of regulations in 2024 promulgated, thousands, impacting us by $1.4 trillion. The most CRAs you have ever had is 17, and we are told, oh, just trust the administrative state.
I can't do that.
My constituents can't do that.
Americans can't do that.
We are trying to come up with a reasonable approach to make this more workable, and that is what this bill is. That is what H.R. 115 is. It encourages Congress to do its job. That is why this is so important.
I urge my colleagues to join me and vote in favor of H.R. 115. Let's get this passed and let's make Congress the legislative branch it is supposed to be per the Constitution.
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Mr. BIGGS. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.
The yeas and nays were ordered.
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