Jason Chaffetz

Mr. CHAFFETZ

Mr. CHAFFETZ. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Collins). He is the author and lead sponsor of the underlying bill.

Mr. CHAFFETZ. I yield the gentleman an additional 30 seconds.

Mr. CHAFFETZ. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Last Congress, the ALERT Act--which is part of this bill now--passed the House twice with bipartisan support. Put simply, the ALERT Act provides regulatory transparency requiring Federal agencies to provide monthly updates on regulation expected to be implemented in the next year. That shouldn't be controversial. As the bill's author, Mr. Ratcliffe, indicated, transparency should not be a heavy lift. That is what we are trying to provide. But that transparency is lacking. If you talk to small businesses and large businesses, you talk to citizens, you talk to advocacy groups, they will all tell you to one degree or another that this is not necessarily crystal clear. They have had this problem and challenge. The Obama administration has shown a troubling tendency to minimize the amount of public attention. The Fall 2015 Unified Agenda of Federal Regulations, a document disclosing regulations currently under consideration by Federal agencies, now contains more than 2,000 new regulations--2,000. By the administration's own estimates, 144 of those regulations are expected to cost the public more than $100 million each--each. Not just one-- each. You have got a universe of 2,000 regulations coming your way, America--144 of those are going to cost you about $100 million apiece, and you don't even know what they are. We don't necessarily know what they are. That is why we think there should be disclosure. That is why they call it the ALERT Act. It keeps the public informed about what Federal regulators are doing in their name and how much the regulations cost. The bill requires the heads of Federal agencies to provide a monthly update, which is new. That seems reasonable. A monthly update to the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs with clear information about each rule. OIRA is then required to publicly disclose on the Internet both the monthly updates and the annual review identifying the costs of each regulation. That seems fair. It seems balanced. It seems easy to me. I appreciate Mr. Ratcliffe and the good work that he has done bringing this to our attention and fighting for it. I urge its adoption, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. CHAFFETZ. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the balance of my time. In conclusion, with all due respect, to suggest that it would be overwhelming to produce cost estimates and put them up on the Internet on a monthly basis, we are asking for transparency, but imagine the burden that is also put on the American people. Some of these may be really good ones. They may be really good regulations. But there may be some that they haven't quite researched and that other companies, organizations, individuals, nonprofits, suddenly have to reconfigure for. That takes some time. They need to know that things are coming. That I think is a reasonable thing to do. I, again, appreciate what Mr. Ratcliffe has been championing. I would urge the passage of this bill and the underlying bill as well. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. CHAFFETZ

Mr. CHAFFETZ. Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to the motion to recommit.

Mr. CHAFFETZ. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman from Rhode Island (Mr. Cicilline) is one of my favorite people. We get to serve on a committee together, and we have done other things together. He is a genuine human being who puts forth his heart, and I personally appreciate it, as I know he cares deeply and passionately about this body and the work that he does. I also want to thank Mr. Jason Smith, who has put forward a very important bill, something that I think is a reasonable, commonsense approach to deal with regulations of the past. There is no prohibition about putting regulations forward, but going back and looking, taking a scrub, if you will, and looking at past regulations, what this bill does is it simply creates a bipartisan commission--bipartisan--to go back and look at these, and they produce a report. That report comes to Congress, it has to pass both bodies, and it has to get the signature of the President. That is a very reasonable thing to do. So I urge ``no'' on this motion to recommit, ``yes'' on the passage. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. CHAFFETZ

Mr. CHAFFETZ. Mr. Chairman, I move that the Committee do now rise.

Mr. CHAFFETZ. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition.

Mr. CHAFFETZ. Mr. Chairman, this amendment indicates a fundamental misunderstanding of the purpose and the function of the bill. The SCRUB Act merely clears the underbrush of outdated and unnecessary regulations. There is no reason to exclude any specific agency from retrospective review. A regulation identified as unnecessary remains unnecessary, regardless of its subject matter or agency that originally issued it. I am sure that there are regulations that were issued in the 1920s, 1930s, or 1940s--pick your decade--that were well-intended, but the world has changed, and I think it is time that we actually go and review this. In the case of this amendment, it could disadvantage veterans who are likely to bear the burden of unnecessary regulations. So with all the laws and all the regulations, guess what. The Veterans Administration isn't getting it done. So let's clear the underbrush of regulations. Let's work in a bipartisan way to fix the Veterans Administration. But it is not unreasonable to ask for a bipartisan group of people to go in and look at this and study this and make these types of recommendations. I think that is reasonable, it is balanced, and it is not going to harm veterans. In fact, I think it is actually going to help veterans. I think it is going to help an administration and a bureaucracy that is so bloated, once things get in, they never come out. That is what we are trying to change, and that is why I think this amendment is unnecessary and counterproductive, and I urge a ``no'' vote. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. CHAFFETZ. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Jody B. Hice).

Mr. CHAFFETZ. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, I want to first start by thanking the leadership of Jason Smith in bringing this bill before us. I rise in support of H.R. 1155, the Searching for and Cutting Regulations that are Unnecessarily Burdensome Act of 2015, also known as the SCRUB Act, which we have been talking about. The bill addresses an important issue facing American taxpayers: ever-growing regulation. Each year the Federal agencies add regulation after regulation piling up into an already complex and crowded regulatory system. The Code of Federal Regulation now exceeds 175,000 pages, and every year the Federal Government promulgates thousands of new regulations. It is hard to keep up with all the regulation time and time again. In just the fall of 2015, the semiannual Unified Regulatory Agenda contained 2,000 more regulations, including 144 regulations expected to cost over $100 million each. This ever-growing stack of regulations has considerable impacts on the economy. I want to be clear. This happens no matter what the administration is--Democrat, Republican, Bush, Obama, it doesn't matter. It is a natural tendency of the executive branch to want to do what Congress is supposed to do, and there are just things that get implemented that need to be scrubbed out of the system so we can get to some sanity and some reasonableness, so that people can understand what their government is expecting of them. I think there is room and there is place for regulation, but it is a limited one. It needs to be well understood, and it is reasonable to search, cut, find, and get rid of these burdensome regulations. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. CHAFFETZ. Mr. Chairman, The Washington Times cited the Federal Register. In 1 year alone, there were 81,611 pages of new regulations. I think it is time that we go back and look at those. I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. Graves) for his passion on this topic.

Mr. CHAFFETZ. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. Blum). I appreciate his passion on this issue.

Mr. CHAFFETZ. Mr. Chairman, I would like to make my counterpart aware that I have one additional speaker and then I am prepared to close. At this time, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Hultgren).

Mr. CHAFFETZ. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the balance of my time. I urge passage of this bill. I want to congratulate our colleague, Congressman Jason Smith, for his good, diligent work on this. A lot of Members have had a deep-seated interest in this. There has been, I think, a good discussion about this. In general, I think what we are proposing is very fair and it is very balanced. We are asking for a bipartisan group of people to go back and review things. I think it would be naive at best to think that things that were added as regulations in the 1940s or the 1950s are automatically--automatically--by default necessary today. Sometimes you have to go back and look. And we are asking to do this in a bipartisan way. That is not a heavy lift. It is not unreasonable. It is very balanced in its approach. I think it is the right thing to do. Is there a proper role of regulation? Of course. It doesn't mean that everything needs to be regulated. I worry about the men and women, the young entrepreneurs, that are trying to get things done because they run into hurdles they never knew were there. We handcuff people. There are unintended consequences. The economy is different today than it was in the 1930s or the 1940s. It is reasonable to go back and try to scrub out some of these regulations and do so in a bipartisan way, but, yet, there is opposition to that. Nevertheless, I think we put together a good bill. I urge Members to vote for it. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. CHAFFETZ. Mr. Chairman, I claim the time in opposition.

Mr. CHAFFETZ. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Marino).

Mr. CHAFFETZ. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I simply want to say that I concur with the gentleman from Pennsylvania who has studied this and spent a considerable amount of time with this. We would urge a ``no'' vote on this amendment. This amendment removes title II of the bill, which is one of the bill's truly most important provisions. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. CHAFFETZ. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the amendment.

Mr. CHAFFETZ. Mr. Chair, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Marino).

Mr. CHAFFETZ. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. CHAFFETZ. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I again concur with the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Marino). This amendment strikes the applicability of judicial review of agency compliance with this legislation. That is why I am urging a ``no'' vote on this amendment. The legislation will begin a much-needed review of our Nation's regulatory structure and hopefully identify many outdated regulations. This amendment gets in the way of that. I think it would slow this process down. It gets rid of something that, again, makes it an alteration that I think has been well debated and well discussed. I urge the passage of the overall bill, but I stand in opposition to this amendment. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. CHAFFETZ. Mr. Chairman, I claim time in opposition to the amendment.

Mr. CHAFFETZ. I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, we are not proposing to hurt or kill babies, and we are not proposing to put handcuffs on certain regulators in the financial institutions. What we are asking for is to simply have a bipartisan group of people--bipartisan--look at regulations that may be outdated and scrub them. I think that is a reasonable expectation. That is not asking too much. It doesn't mean that every regulation is going to go away. There are some good regulations, but there are a lot of bad ones and there are a lot that are outdated. Things come into this institution, whether they come in through laws or they come from the executive branch. They never go away. A lot of them are unnecessary. The bill creates a bipartisan, impartial commission to conduct a comprehensive review of the Federal regulations system. The commission will identify out-of-date and expensive regulations. Independent agencies function very similarly, if not the same, as executive agencies, and the regulations impose significant costs on the economy. Unfortunately, independent agencies often impose major regulations without reporting any quantitative information on benefits and costs, which makes it even more important that those regulations be reviewed. Mr. Chairman, there is no need to distinguish independent and executive agencies in requiring the Federal agencies to clean up out- of-date and unnecessary regulations. A regulation identified as unnecessary remains unnecessary regardless of whether it came from an independent agency or an executive branch agency. It doesn't matter. It should be reviewed or be eligible to be reviewed. We think that is reasonable, and that is why we would urge a ``no'' vote on this particular amendment. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. CHAFFETZ. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.