This Week on the Hill: An Anti-Regulatory Agenda
By Elizabeth Skerry
This week on Capitol Hill, Republicans have been pushing an anti-regulatory agenda at warp speed that threatens public health and safety as well as long standing norms of legislative procedure. Make no mistake: this is all being done to benefit corporate special interests at the public’s expense. Here’s what’s happening:
CRA Chaos
In the late hours on May 21, Senate Republicans voted to overrule their own referee, the parliamentarian, so it could move ahead on three Congressional Review Act (CRA) resolutions of disapproval that will invalidate Clean Air Act waivers issued to California. These waivers have long allowed California to establish protective pollution standards without being preempted by the Environmental Protection Agency’s national standards.
The CRA allows Congress to override agency actions within a certain time period and with only a simple majority in the Senate. The issue is that these emission waivers are ineligible to be targeted using the CRA. The CRA specifies several criteria that both the rules and the resolutions targeting them must meet to be considered lawful and valid. The California waivers do not meet the CRA’s requirements, as both the Government Accountability Office (GAO) and the Senate Parliamentarian affirmed.
Yet in a corrupt payback to Big Polluters, Senate Republicans moved ahead with the reckless maneuver, setting up a vote on the resolutions on May 22. Senate Democrats, for their part, mounted a vigorous defense on the floor in an effort to emphasize the extreme consequences of going through with this plan.
By ignoring the parliamentarian and the GAO, the Senate majority circumvented the filibuster (the 60-vote supermajority requirement for most bills to pass in that chamber) and set a dangerous precedent that defies legislative procedure and congressional norms, with harmful implications that will damage our democracy for the foreseeable future. The door will be wide open for the Senate to ignore the parliamentarian on other matters, including whether policy provisions added to the reconciliation bill are eligible for inclusion under Senate rules.
Public Citizen is fighting back to ensure the Senate doesn’t continue this dangerous break from its own rules. You can join the fight too.
Awful Anti-Regulatory Attacks
On Wednesday, May 21, the House Oversight Committee met to mark up two dangerous anti-regulatory bills, the Unfunded Mandates Accountability and Transparency Act (UMATA) (H.R. 580) and the Modernizing Retrospective Regulatory Review Act (H.R. 67). These bills seek to delegitimize and weaken the regulatory process that all of us rely on for protection from potential harms caused by regulated industries – like Big Business that places unsafe products in the market or banks that engage in risky financial activities – putting corporate profits before the common good.
UMATA would increase the private sector’s involvement in the rulemaking process at the expense of consumers, workers, the environment, and public health and safety, and it would further delay rulemakings.
The Modernizing Retrospective Regulatory Review Act would force agencies to waste time and resources reviewing regulations already on the books, which will do nothing to protect Americans from under-regulated or unregulated hazards. Instead, it will drown government agencies in busy work and distract them from addressing significant threats to public health and safety, such as polluted drinking water, toxins in our food and other products, or safety hazards in the workplace.
Unfortunately, UMATA and the Modernizing Retrospective Regulatory Review Act were voted out of committee and referred to the full House for consideration.
Additionally on May 21, the House Judiciary Committee met to mark up another two dangerous anti-regulatory bills, the Separation of Powers Restoration Act (SOPRA) (H.R. 1605) and the Prove It Act (H.R. 1163).
SOPRA would make it easier for corporations to bring challenges in court to block many necessary improvements to regulations, especially those ensuring clean air and water, safe food and consumer products, safe workplaces, and a stable and strong economy.
The Prove It Act would slow down the regulatory process under the guise of “helping small businesses.” In reality, it would significantly expand the role of the Small Business Administration’s Office of Advocacy, an office that has a history of working with big corporations and major trade associations to weaken public protections. If this bill were to become law, small businesses and all Americans would suffer while large corporations would prosper.
Unfortunately, SOPRA and the Prove It Act were voted out of committee and referred to the full House for consideration.
Public Citizen is actively pushing back against all these awful bills and urging lawmakers to ensure they never become law.
In short, the Republicans’ anti-regulatory agenda consists of skirting legislative procedure, undermining regulations that protect people and the environment, and delegitimizing agency expertise, all in the name of corporate greed. Public Citizen will continue to challenge these heinous actions and cast light on who congressional Republicans are really working for: corporations and their lobbyists.