Directing Commitees to Review Regulations from Federal Agencies

Floor Speech

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Ms. NORTON. I thank the gentleman for yielding.

The President has begun a review of regulations. Madam Speaker, you would think the majority would do something like declare victory. Instead, they prematurely held an oversight hearing with business, a one-sided hearing, rather than joining issue by calling in the agencies one by one to see what kind of a review the President is, in fact, doing.

I favor government for the good of the general welfare; therefore I have always hated government bureaucracy and regulations that make government, even the best of government, look bad. I headed a Federal agency, and I believe I will be more remembered for streamlining its processes than for the underlying mission. I eliminated a huge backlog of cases, and settled cases which had usually been carried to the full stream. Guess what? When we started to settle them, we got more remedies.

Instead, look at what the majority has done. They have changed the subject from jobs to reducing Federal power in the District of Columbia. One way in which they have done this is to spend their first month on bills which usurp control of local power and local funds from a local jurisdiction. That is the opposite of what they have claimed they want to do.

They have introduced a harsh anti-choice bill. What is the District of Columbia's spending of its local funds doing in such a bill? Yesterday, they introduced a bill to wipe out the local gun laws of a local jurisdiction after the courts have now found them to be constitutional. They have introduced a DC-only private voucher bill, not a national bill, after a compromise on vouchers for DC was already achieved and even though the District of Columbia has a home rule alternative, the largest alternative school system in the United States, where almost half of our children are in public charter schools.

The SPEAKER pro tempore. The time of the gentlewoman has expired.

Mr. CUMMINGS. I yield the gentlewoman an additional 30 seconds.

Ms. NORTON. I am grateful.

The majority has taken regulation, a subject on which there is a basis for areas of consensus, and has polarized it. They have broken their promises on jobs--look, no jobs bill--and on reducing Federal power by trying to literally usurp power from a local jurisdiction and dictate to that local jurisdiction from the Federal Government what it should be doing.

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