Congress will likely take up a bill next week that would effectively hogtie all federal regulators, watchdogs have warned, but it stands little chance of gaining Presidential approval.
The Regulatory Accountability Act, which the House is expected to vote on this Tuesday, would force federal agencies to subject proposed rules to an additional layer of scrutiny that has been decried has frivolous.
“The current rulemaking process is already plagued with lengthy delays, undue influence by regulated industries, and convoluted court challenges,” officials from Public Citizen and the Coalition for Sensible Safeguards said in a joint statement. “This bill would make each of these problems substantially worse.”
In a separate email, Public Citizen said that the legislation would force regulators to formulate “highly speculative estimates of all the indirect costs and benefits of proposed rules and do the same for any potential alternatives.”
“What counts and does not count as an indirect cost or a potential alternative?” the letter asked, saying that the answer depends on “industry’s imagination.”
“Federal agencies usually take years to issue health and safety standards, but this bill would make that process even longer,” it added.
Celia Wexler, a senior Washington-based representative for the Union of Concerned Scientists, blasted House Republican leaders, House Judiciary Committee chair Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) and his Democratic co-sponsor Rep. Collin Peterson (D-Minn.) for attempting to force through the bill so early in the year.
“The House has 73 new members this Congress. They barely know how to find their offices, don’t have full staffs, and yet they are being asked to vote on a complex bill rapidly and without any time for consideration,” she said. Wexler called the bill “deliberately complicated.”
“You have to be a regulatory lawyer to perceive all the traps, and even then you might miss some,” she added.
There have been versions of this bill discussed in open committee in prior sessions of Congress. In 2013, the House Judiciary Committee, under Goodlatte, discussed the bill and marked it up. In 2011, a version of the legislation passed the House.
But based on its 2011 history, the proposed legislation stands little chance of ever making it into law. In November of that year, the White House Office of Management and Budget said that if Congress passed the Regulatory Accountability Act, “his senior advisors would recommend that he veto the bill.”
“It would impose unnecessary new evidentiary standards as a condition of rulemaking,” OMB said. “It would subject the regulatory process to unneeded rounds of litigation.”
Nonetheless, House Republicans are proceeding with it. The House Rules Committee is expected on Monday to set procedure for the potential advancement of the measure.
