Regulations from the Executive in Need of Scrutiny Act of 2013

Floor Speech

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Mr. ROKITA. I thank the chair for yielding me time.

Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of the REINS Act, and I rise in support of the man who introduced it, my friend and colleague from Indiana, Mr. Young.

I want to start out by addressing something the gentleman from Tennessee debated and talked about just a little bit earlier. He said that ``we don't get anything done here.'' I would like to take some opposition to that.

Just this week, we solved in a permanent fashion, Mr. Chairman, the student loan situation. We didn't do it with Democratic-inspired price fixing; we tied it to the market. Now, it's true it was very much a Republican bill when it left this House, then it was wisely adopted by the Senate in agreement last week, and it came back over here for a final vote 99 percent the same as it left. That's getting something done. That is real.

But let's take the gentleman's point a little bit further. Let's say sometimes we don't get something done; let's say sometimes we don't agree. The gentleman's solution is to let the unelected, unaccountable, nameless, faceless bureaucrats handle it, who aren't directly elected by anybody.

That is an abdication of the constitutional duty of this House, of this branch of government. It is our duty to make the laws; it is our duty to make the rules. And not only is it our duty to debate and pass legislation--hopefully not every time with our names on it--but it's also our constitutional duty to oversight the executive branch. That's exactly what the REINS Act acts to do.

How dare we decide we don't want to address, we don't want to tackle the big issues, Mr. Chairman, because they're too controversial; let the bureaucrats do it. That's not the way to run a government, that's not a way to run this branch of government, and that's not the way to run this House.

It's time this body starts doing its second and equally important constitutional duty, and that is oversight of the executive branch. The REINS Act, again, helps us do that in large measure. For that reason, I urge my colleagues to support this bill.

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