Unfunded Mandates Information and Transparency Act of 2015

Floor Speech

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Mr. LYNCH. I thank the gentleman from Maryland for yielding and for his leadership on this issue.

Mr. Chairman, I rise in strong opposition to H.R. 50.

With all due respect to my friend from Utah--and I do respect him; I know he didn't write this bill--there is a common practice here in Congress that you name the bill in a way that describes the opposite of what it will actually do. This is supposed to be an accountability bill, but this bill ought to be named the ``Government Gridlock Act'' because that is what it will introduce.

While I certainly respect everyone's opinion and position against Big Government--I certainly understand that. You can be against intrusive government. I understand that. But you can't be against a functioning government, and that is what this bill accomplishes.

This bill, as the gentleman did point out, does allow individual taxpayers to sue. Mrs. Gilhooly and Mr. Gilhooly can sue, but so can Exxon and so can JPMorgan Chase attack regulations under this bill. This bill makes the financial ability to sustain a legal challenge as the litmus test on how much justice you get under this bill.

Even though Congress has the ability to pass laws and to direct regulators to come up with regulations, large, well-financed banks and industries like the oil industry will be able to undo the direction of Congress by proffering legal challenges with enormous resources to stop those laws from coming into effect.

A good example is the financial services industry, where we under Dodd-Frank have directed that there be 300 separate rules developed to deal with the problems created by the crisis in 2008. That crisis cost $20 trillion to the American economy. Yet, under this law, in order to prevent big banks from taking those reckless gambles, we would have to force the regulators to show that the reduction in cost to the American taxpayer justified the regulation against Wall Street.

It misses the point. We are trying to bifurcate the risks created by Wall Street from the taxpayers' requirement to bail them out. This bill ignores that reality. I think we should all oppose it, and I urge my colleagues to vote against this bill.

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