Guidance Out of Darkness Act

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. KILEY of California. Mr. Speaker, the basic premise of this bill, which I am happy to cosponsor, is that we should not have secret laws in the United States.

A major opportunity that we have right now is to modernize our government and to rein in the inexorable growth of the administrative state, restoring power to our elected representatives, States, local communities, and the American people themselves.

When we think about the administrative state, we think about all the regulations that are churned out, one after another, and compiled in the ever-growing Federal Register. The reality is, that is just the tip of the iceberg. Layered on top of all of that are these so-called guidance documents. These are memos, Dear Colleague letters, bulletins, all manner of what is referred to as ``regulatory dark matter.''

With respect to the ranking member, this is not a melodramatic term. It is actually quite appropriate. In physics, ``dark matter'' refers to the mysterious substance that makes up about 85 percent of the mass of the universe, but no one really knows what it is. Similarly, all of these guidance documents make up a great deal of the regulatory activity in our country, yet the agencies themselves can't even manage to track them down. How is an individual or a small business supposed to find out what this particular interpretation of the law is and how it will affect them, let alone how Congress is supposed to figure out how the laws that we have passed are ultimately being enforced and administered?

This is a commonsense measure that says that all of these guidance documents, which have real teeth when it comes to the enforcement of regulations, need to be compiled in one place that is searchable and accessible to every American citizen. It is a positive step for transparency and toward restoring government by the people.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source