Midnight Rules Relief Act
Floor Speech
Mr. Speaker, despite the bill's title, H.R. 115 is not really intended to address midnight rules, but rather is an effort by our Republican colleagues to advance their antigovernment, deregulatory agenda under cover of darkness.
This legislation may appear to be a modest change to the Congressional Review Act, but do not be fooled. It would enable the Republican-controlled 119th Congress to use a turbocharged CRA to nullify every rule issued by public agencies under the Biden administration for the entire year of 2024 in a single party-line vote.
Under the CRA, if a rule is overturned, agencies are forever prohibited from considering, without new congressional authorization, a ``substantially similar'' rule, an unreviewable, vague, and harmful standard that would undermine agencies' statutory missions.
Doing away with dozens of rules at once, as the Republicans intend with this bill, would substantially weaken agencies' ability to protect the public long into the future.
While historically the CRA has been used sparingly, after Donald Trump's first inauguration in 2017, the Republican-controlled Congress used the CRA to repeal 16 rules issued by the Obama administration, an all-time high. Critical rules on teacher training, internet privacy protection, and the prevention of water pollution from coal mines, among many others, were all repealed over a few short weeks.
It seems that Republicans have even bigger ambitions for the next deregulatory spree as they pursue their unabashedly antigovernment agenda.
Rather than consider agency rules on their individual merits, they want to package as many rules as possible into a single resolution to eliminate them all at once with little debate or deliberation over the merits of each individual rule. The results of this single vote could be catastrophic.
Right now, there are dozens of regulations at risk of summary execution, including rules that ensure the safety of bath seats for infants, implement the National Suicide Hotline Act, create dust-lead and lead pipe safety standards, update chemicals listed under the Toxic Substances Control Act, update heavy vehicle automatic emergency braking standards, and ensure all cell phones are hearing aid compatible, among others.
Why do Republicans feel they even need this power? Maybe it is because they realize that many of the agency rules that they constantly rail against are actually popular with the American people.
Taking a series of votes making it easier for corporations to pollute the environment or take advantage of the most vulnerable would likely not be well received. Better to overturn as many rules as possible in a single vote, reducing transparency and obscuring the consequences.
Make no mistake, whether those votes are held individually or en bloc, the American people will be the ones to bear the consequences. With Republicans in charge of the House, Senate, and White House, it is likely that every rule the Biden administration has issued in the last year will be on the chopping block, along with the protections those rules provide to our constituents' health, safety, and economic well- being.
In addition, striking down a bundle of rules at once means not only that each rule will not be considered on its own merits but also that months and years of agency time and taxpayer dollars, along with the expert analysis and public comments from industry, nonprofit groups, and individual Americans, all will have been wasted.
Members on both sides of the aisle have recognized that midnight rulemaking, if left completely unchecked, can lead to abuses by the executive branch, but true midnight rules are rarely issued, and there is already a lookback period under the CRA to address rules promulgated at the end of any congressional term.
If we are truly concerned about so-called midnight rules, we have other options to check them. For example, at the end of President George W. Bush's administration, I authored a bill that would delay implementation of rules issued near the end of a President's term, giving his or her successors a chance to review such rules and to determine if they should go forward.
I believe there are ways we could work together in a bipartisan manner to address this issue.
Where past efforts tried using a scalpel to address the problems associated with midnight rulemaking, today's Republicans would instead use a machete, hacking away at the Biden administration's regulatory agenda and furthering their ideological goal of radically transforming our government.
None of this should be a surprise. H.R. 115 is a key plank of Project 2025, the blueprint for the incoming Trump administration. Project 2025 calls for ``dismantling'' the administrative state and argues that doing so must be ``a top priority for the next conservative President.'' That is because, according to the document, ``the only real solution is for the national government to do less.''
To be clear, the ``less'' that they want to do refers to the important and expert work undertaken by the country's Federal agencies protecting consumers, workers, and the public from corporations and people that break the law.
We should reject any backdoor efforts that would eviscerate vital regulations, would open rules and protections to even more political interference, and could prevent agencies from ever working on similar issues again, all with just the most cursory examination by Congress.
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Mr. NADLER. 115.
Mr. Speaker, the gentleman from Arizona says the Biden administration has enacted rules that will cost $1.4 trillion. Over what period of time, he doesn't tell us, and I don't know whether it is correct or not, but I am sure, in terms of the budget, the Democratic and Republican staffs of the Appropriations Committee are looking at them very carefully every year.
He picked one as an example, $45 million to protect against lead poisoning. Lead poisoning is a real problem. It leads to mental deficiencies in children. If there is a $45 million rule to deal with this, that sounds fine to me.
The real question is, maybe we ought to examine that rule. Maybe, as Mr. Biggs said, there is something wrong with that rule. Maybe we ought to repeal that rule, but we have the procedure to do that in the current law.
What this bill seeks to do is to say: Don't look at that law. Take 25 rules and put them together so that you can't examine any one of them, and in one vote, we will get rid of 25 rules. Maybe some of them are good rules, and maybe some of them are bad rules, but no one is going to get a chance to debate them because we have one vote, one bill.
That is what this bill does. This bill says to combine all the CRAs into one CRA vote. CRAs are a proper exercise of congressional power. It helps us control the executive, whether it is Democratic or Republican. Nobody argues against a CRA--well, maybe a particular CRA, but no one argues against the idea of a CRA. A CRA ought to be looked at individually. We ought to look at the merits of the CRA, maybe debate it on the floor. Maybe Republicans support it and Democrats oppose it, or maybe the other way around. Maybe it splits not along partisan lines. Maybe it is very clear that we want to do it, but we ought to look at it.
This bill says take 25 CRAs and have one vote so that we can't look at the merits of the individual CRAs, and with one vote, we may be doing immense damage to the health, safety and welfare of the American people, or not. We have no way of knowing because we can't study the CRAs individually.
This bill is pernicious because it combines everything into one vote and denies us the ability to look at the merits of each. Therefore, it ought to be defeated.
Mr. Speaker, another rule on the chopping block is to update heavy machinery emergency brakes.
Does my colleague also want to roll back this rule, a rule that will save lives?
If the will of the people is truly that we roll back these lifesaving measures, my colleagues should have the bravery to vote down each rule individually. Then you can tell your happy constituents that you voted for lead poisoning, and you voted for not implementing a national suicide hotline.
Let me say this: The gentleman from Arizona gets it exactly backward. First of all, he says the cost of all of the regulations is $1.2 trillion.
What are the benefits? Maybe they are far greater than that. We ought to know.
If you find a rule that you think is wrong, if you think the cost of this rule outweighs the benefits, fine, bring a CRA to the floor. That is not what this bill does. This bill says don't bring a CRA to the floor. Bring a combination of 25 or 30 CRAs to the floor so that you can't examine them individually.
Maybe some of them make sense. Maybe, in some cases, the regulation outweighs the benefits, or the cost outweighs the benefits. Maybe in another case, it is a different regulation, the benefits outweigh the costs. We should look at it as an individual CRA. That is why the CRA process was designed.
What this bill does is to upend that process by saying we are not going to look at the individual regulation. We are not going to look at the individual CRA. We are going to put 25 or 30 or 40 or 50 or 100 CRAs together in one vote with presumably an hour of debate on the floor. It is saying you can't look at the merits. That makes no sense.
Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman wants to criticize the Republican leadership of the House for not bringing to the floor the 12 appropriations bills that they promised they would and that they should, and instead putting them all in one omnibus bill, I join him in that criticism. It is not the way to run the ship of state. I join him in that criticism of the Republican leadership of the House.
Let's go back to the lead paint. It costs $45 million we are told. How much does it save in children not getting lead paint poisoning, in hospital costs? It saves a lot more, presumably.
We have agencies that Congress has established over the last more than a century, since World War I, since the Wilson administration, to make determinations that Congress can't.
How many parts per million of cadmium should be permitted in drinking water? I don't know, but the EPA makes that judgment. Now, if someone in Congress thinks the EPA made the wrong judgment, that it is costing more than it is worth, bring a CRA. That is why we have CRAs. Don't talk about the total cost of all regulations because the total benefit of all regulations is many times greater than that.
Certainly, if you are talking about looking at anything, bring a single CRA. This bill, again, says to Congress, don't look at what the administrative agencies have done. Don't look at whether it makes sense to have this regulation or not. Just take 25 or 35 or 45 CRAs, repeal 35 or 25 or 55 rules without having a chance to really look at any of them because someone in the Republican leadership decided that they should.
If this bill passes, Congress will not have the chance to examine any subject of a CRA. That is why this bill is so pernicious and ought to be defeated.
Mr. Speaker, this bill does exactly the opposite of what the gentleman from Arizona says. This bill does not give us the chance to look at a regulation and decide whether it makes sense.
This bill puts all the regulations together so that we can't look at them. We can't look at any one of them in particular because they are all together in one vote with one hour of debate on the floor.
Let me give you an example of a rule that is on the chopping block. You have a rule ensuring that all cell phones--it is a new rule--that all cell phones are hearing aid compatible, a rule that requires cell phone makers to update their tech.
Does my colleague want to roll this back? What is the cost that my colleague would stomach to ensure our seniors can call and hear their family members and friends? That is just one regulation.
Maybe you think it costs too much money for the tech companies to satisfy grandma and grandpa, that they shouldn't be able to talk to their grandkids or their family members by phone because it costs the tech companies too much money. All right. Make that case on the floor with a CRA. I will debate it because I think the opposite, but make that case on the floor with a CRA.
This bill says don't make that case on the floor with a CRA. Put all the CRAs together so you can't debate the merits of any one of them.
We are going around in circles, but let me just add one thing. We call this the Midnight Rules Relief Act, but it is a big midnight. It extends the entire year, the last year of any President's administration. A whole year, that is hardly a midnight rule.
Again, if you want to look at the merits of a rule--and the gentleman says we have only like 20, 25 a year maybe or maybe we will have 250 next year, who knows. It depends on the politics. Debate the bill.
When a bill comes to the floor, there is 1 hour of debate. We are supposed to debate 25 CRAs in an hour. Some of them may be good, and some of them may be bad. Each CRA deserves its own consideration by those who support it and by those who oppose it.
This bill says, no, all together in one bill, so you can't really oppose or support any particular one of them. Take it or leave it on all of them, and you have no time for debate.
Mr. Speaker, the gentleman from Arizona just said that the greatest number of CRAs that we have had in a given Congress is 17. Okay, I will take him at his word. Why not have 17 votes? Why not debate each for up to an hour so we know what we are doing? This bill says put them all together so we don't know what we are doing.
Mr. Speaker, this legislation is just the latest Republican effort to undermine the regulatory process. It would allow Donald Trump and his Republican enablers in Congress to wipe away dozens of lifesaving regulations and consumer protections in one single party-line vote under cover of darkness.
Mr. Speaker, I urge all Members to oppose this dangerous legislation, and I yield back the balance of my time.
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