“We need to pass the REINS Act so Congress is in charge of regulation,” Fiorina told the debate audience, referring to an obscure bill intended to hobble federal agency action. Though it is unlikely that many people in the audience know what the REINS Act is, this bill has long been one of the top priorities of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce — the primary lobbying group representing big business as a whole. Moreover, the bill has a fairly high chance of becoming law if Republicans gain control over both houses of Congress and the presidency. The bill passed the GOP-controlled House on multiple occasions.
REINS is a general attack on federal regulatory system. Congress often passes laws that delegate authority to federal agencies to work out the details of relatively broad policy objectives set by federal statutes. The Clean Air Act, for example, requires the Environmental Protection Agency to set “standards applicable to the emission of any air pollutant from any class or classes of new motor vehicles or new motor vehicle engines” if the EPA determines that those emissions “cause, or contribute to, air pollution which may reasonably be anticipated to endanger public health or welfare.”
There are many reasons why Congress may wish to delegate authority in this way. The EPA employs scientists and policy experts who have far more expertise in motor vehicle emissions than members of Congress, so the EPA is more likely to make educated judgments about the details of environmental policy. New studies may reveal that a particular emission that was previously viewed as benign is actually far more dangerous — or they may reveal the opposite, that a chemical once viewed as dangerous is actually much less so. The Clean Air Act permits the EPA to respond relatively nimbly to these developments rather than having to push through new legislation every time a researcher publishes new data that should inform regulators. Similarly, EPA regulators can adapt to new technological developments, encouraging the use of certain technologies while relaxing standards related to others as new ways of reducing emissions are discovered.
REINS, however, would effectively lock much of the federal regulatory system in place. Under this bill, any new regulation that has an “annual economic impact of $100 million or more,” an amount that seems large, but that actually amounts to less than 0.0006 percent of the U.S. economy, must be approved by Congress or else it does not go into effect. Moreover, the bill provides that if Congress does not act “by the end of 70 session days or legislative days . . . then the rule described in that resolution shall be deemed not to be approved and such rule shall not take effect.”
The United States, of course, has a Congress that can barely decide whether to fund the government or avoid a catastrophic debt default. So it’s easy to imagine what would happen if Congress were given a tight deadline to approve dozens of tweaks to America’s regulatory structure every year. Changes to that structure would, for the most part, cease to exist.
It should be noted, moreover, that REINS is not a deregulatory bill — or, at least, it would not be an effective effort at deregulation. As Sally Katzen, a former chief overseer of the federal regulatory process, wrote about the REINS Act, “agencies sometimes propose eliminating outdated rules. But even these efforts at regulatory streamlining would nonetheless get caught in the REINS Act net, as deregulatory rules are nevertheless still rules.”
REINS, in other words, only makes sense if you believe that the Code of Federal Regulations has achieved a moment of perfection, and that changing its rules at this or any future date would always be a step in the wrong direction.
Original Article
Source: thinkprogress.org/
Author: Ian Millhiser
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