Directing Committees to Review Regulations from Federal Agencies

Floor Speech

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Mr. COHEN. I want to thank the ranking member for the time.

Madam Speaker, my subcommittee, Courts, Commercial and Administrative Law, has had hearings on these bills, the REINS Act, as well as the regulatory reform bills that have been proposed. The REINS Act would require all measures that have a cost of $100 million or more, before their regulations go into effect, within 70 days of the promulgation of those regulations, they would have to be approved by a positive vote of this House and our equal House, the Senate, and signed by the President before they go into effect.

The reality, Madam Speaker, is this would stifle government and stifle growth, because, as we have seen, the Senate has difficulty doing much of anything within 70 days. In fact, it had difficulty doing much in 2 years. And to ask the Senate, where any one Senator can put down a slip on a judicial nomination or hold up legislation if they so choose unless they get what they desire and want, the last vestige in reality that we have in this county of ``don't ask, don't tell''--don't ask the Senator what they want and don't tell what they got--all of these regulations would be at the whim and caprice of any one individual Senator.

That is not what the American public wants. The American public wants the government to work. They want the House and Senate to work. They don't want the system in the Senate where one Senator can kill almost anything, to where ``Senator No'' can stop the government from actively promoting the general health, welfare, and safety of the American public.

Now, the REINS Act wasn't needed, apparently, during the time that George Bush was President, and yet there were more regulations and rules during that time than there have been during President Obama's time as President. It is interesting to note that my colleagues on the other side understood the separation of powers doctrine and the fact that article II allows the executive to carry out and administer the laws, and they should be able to do so.

But once President Obama came into office and there was financial services reform--the financial services reform we needed, because without regulations the financial services sector almost took this country into another Great Depression. They did take us into a Great Recession, costing us jobs and jobs and jobs and jobs.

The high unemployment rate is the result of the lack of regulation in the housing industry, in the financial service industry, where those two worked together to almost bring down this Nation's economy and the world's economy to where we had a day when President Bush brought us the TARP to save our economy. And in a bipartisan fashion we passed the TARP that Secretary Paulson told us we had to pass because we were on the brink, as President Bush also said, of financial collapse. Yes, financial collapse because of the lack of regulation. And yet in this Congress, the 112th, we're being asked to say that no regulations would take effect unless the House, and the Senate--that body known not for its alacrity but for its ``deliberateness''--would have to act and possibly pass something within 70 days.

Health care legislation; regulations couldn't go into effect to keep young people on their parents' insurance until they're 26 unless the Senate acted within 70 days. Preexisting conditions would continue to be an impediment for children to get insurance and to be treated. Lifetime caps would continue to exist because we couldn't get regulations approved within 70 days.

The fact is, it's the executive's responsibility to carry out the laws that the Congress passes, that Congress is not the Executive. And because Barack Obama is President is no reason to change what the Founding Fathers set up as a great document, with three separate and equal branches of government being challenged now. The REINS Act would go back to what the Founding Fathers wanted. It would go back on the Constitution, which we spent time reading on this floor--the entire Constitution--that included article II, the powers of the executive, an equal branch of government to the legislature. And the REINS Act would say that the Constitution doesn't matter; that the Congress, the legislative branch that is supposed to pass the laws, will also be a part of executing the laws.

I hold the Constitution in high regard and don't believe we should shred it because we want to have an opportunity to slow up financial regulations passed as part of the Dodd-Frank bill and health care for the American public. The whole idea of this review of regulations that we've gotten and this discussion on this floor of the House has taken this House to a place where the American public doesn't watch the Congress make laws and make improvements to create jobs and to improve the welfare of the American public, but it makes it a debating society, because we already have the power to review rules, and we do it in the Judiciary Committee and we do it in all committees. But now we're going to have reality television; and C-SPAN, instead of watching us pass laws, is going to watch us discuss what we already have been doing, always do, and are supposed to do, which is review regulations and have oversight but not veto over the executive.

So, Madam Speaker, it is with great regret that I participate in this debate because this debate is not a part of a law and an action and a bill to improve the American public but simply a political show. And with all due respect to the chairman of the committee and the members who have brought this legislation, it violates the Constitution, which we read. That shouldn't have been a show. That should have been something we held deeply to our hearts. This violates the Constitution and the powers of article II.

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