Federal Reserve Transparency Act of 2015--Motion to Proceed

Floor Speech

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Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, I rise to urge my colleagues to take up a piece of legislation that I am sponsoring which has recently passed the House of Representatives, the Searching for and Cutting Regulations that are Unnecessarily Burdensome Act--or SCRUB Act.

Federal regulations today impose--by some estimates--a crushing burden of $1.88 trillion on our economy. That is roughly $15,000 per household and more than the entire country's corporate and individual income taxes combined. Excessive and often unnecessary rules imposed by unaccountable Washington bureaucrats strain family budgets and create conditions where small businesses struggle to create jobs.

Nevertheless, the regulatory burden keeps growing year after year. The Code of Federal Regulations is now more than 175,000 pages long and contains more than 200 volumes. Since 2008, regulators have added on average more than $107 billion in annual regulatory costs. And as we near the end of President Obama's time in office, Americans should be prepared for a deluge of new rules. As has been widely reported, about 4,000 regulations are working their way through the Federal bureaucracy, with some experts predicting their costs to exceed well over $100 billion.

Every President since Jimmy Carter has affirmed the need to review our existing regulations to make sure that they are efficient and no more intrusive and burdensome than is absolutely necessary. Nevertheless, administrations of both parties have failed to make meaningful reductions in the regulatory burden, with some retrospective review efforts even adding costs to the economy. Most notably, according to a study by the American Action Forum, the Obama administration's much-touted efforts to review old rules actually added more than $23 billion in costs on the economy and mandated nearly 9 million additional hours of paperwork.

With family budgets stretched thin and our economy badly in need of job creation, we need to act to turn this longstanding bipartisan commitment to effective retrospective review into a reality. But to do so, we need to take the responsibility of reviewing old rules away from the bureaucrats who keep failing to make the reductions to the regulatory burden. That is why I have joined my colleagues, the junior Senators from Iowa and Missouri, to introduce the SCRUB Act.

The SCRUB Act establishes a bipartisan, blue-ribbon commission to review existing Federal regulations and identify those that should be repealed to reduce unnecessary regulatory burdens. It prioritizes for review regulations where major rules have been in effect more than 15 years, impose paperwork burdens that could be reduced substantially without significantly diminishing regulatory effectiveness, impose disproportionately high costs on small businesses, or could be strengthened in their effectiveness while reducing regulatory costs. It also sets other basic, commonsense criteria for recommending repeal of regulations, such as: whether they have been rendered obsolete by technological or market changes; whether they have achieved their goals and can be repealed without target problems recurring; whether they are ineffective; whether they overlap, duplicate, or conflict with other Federal regulations or with State and local regulations; or whether they impose costs that are not justified by benefits produced for society within the United States.

Once the commission develops a set of recommendations, our bill requires that these recommendations be presented to the House and the Senate for approval by joint resolution. If Congress votes to approve the commission's recommendations, repeal must take place.

Mr. President, I have served long enough to know that Washington's preferred solution to a tough problem is to create a commission that, once established, is rarely seen or heard from again, no matter how compelling its recommendations. Therefore, I want to lay out a few key features of how SCRUB avoids the pitfalls of so many do-nothing commissions as well as the problems encountered with other attempts to implement retrospective review.

First, our bill sets a hard target for the commission: the reduction of at least 15 percent in the cumulative costs of Federal regulation with a minimal reduction in the overall effectiveness of such regulation. The Obama administration's efforts at retrospective review--perhaps by mistake, perhaps by design--lacked a quantified cost reduction mandate. The result was the manipulation of the review process into a charade in which highly suspect new benefits were touted as a reason for adding costs. Our bill structures the retrospective review process in a way that prioritizes cost cutting while maintaining a responsible respect for benefits by calling for a minimal reduction in general overall effectiveness.

Second, our bill does not artificially limit what costly and unjustified regulations could be repealed. Under some superficially similar but fundamentally unsound proposals for retrospective review, review would be arbitrarily limited by time or subject. Such limits would not only seriously hinder the prospect of meeting a meaningful cost reduction target, but also put numerous regulations off limits for review just because they have seen minor tweaks after a certain arbitrary cutoff.

Third, our bill guarantees an up-or-down vote on the Commission's package of recommendations as a single package. This element of our bill represents the single most important feature that distinguishes it from a do-nothing commission that far too often characterizes Washington's approach to intractable problems. We should be under no illusions that every single special interest in town is going to fight to preserve the favors they have won by manipulating the regulatory process over the years, and gathering the votes to get the Commission's recommendations enacted will certainly be a difficult endeavor.

Following the models of other successful means by which Congress has addressed situations in which the costs are concentrated but benefits are widely dispersed, it is absolutely vital that the Commission's recommendations be packed together as a single bill and not subject to dismemberment by amendment.

Further, to put it simply, an up-or-down simple majority vote requires an actual viable pathway to repealing these regulations. Subjecting the package to the supermajority threshold would represent nothing but a death knell for the prospect of repealing these onerous rules. Moreover, because extended debate in the Senate exists to allow Senators to modify a proposal under debate, the lack of amendment opportunities seriously undermines the rationale for subjecting it to the supermajority threshold typically required to end debate. And this carefully tailored exception to the cloture rule is hardly a wild departure from precedent; rather, it follows the precedents set by numerous other pieces of legislation such as trade promotion authority and the Congressional Review Act, both of which have long earned bipartisan support.

Fourth, for any given regulation, the Commission is authorized to recommend either immediate repeal or repeal through what we call cut-go procedures, whereby agencies, on a forward basis, would have to offset the costs of new regulations by repealing Commission-identified regulations of equal or greater cost. These procedures allow immediate repeal in the most urgent cases and staggered repeals of other regulations to assure a smoother process for agencies and affected entities.

Mr. President, a process such as cut-go proves critical for two particular reasons. First, it provides an avenue for addressing the many regulations on the books that impose unjustifiable costs in pursuit of a legitimate goal. While some regulations on the books could undoubtedly be repealed without any meaningful negative consequences, numerous others provide important protections but in an inefficient and costly manner. The cut-go process allows agencies to repeal costly rules and replace them with more sensible ones--for example, prescribing performance standards instead of specific, oftentimes outdated technology--in a manner that reduces costs on the economy while maintaining or even improving regulatory effectiveness.

Second, the cut-go process holds agencies accountable to Congress's laws, a perennial problem in the regulatory process. Bureaucratic agencies--so often devoted to increasing their own power and insensitive to the costs they impose on the economy--frequently use the excuse of limited resources to avoid retrospective review. By imposing a reasonable limit on prospective rulemaking until an agency complies with congressionally enacted repeal recommendations, cut-go ensures that the agency cannot simply ignore its duty to repeal.

Mr. President, these are just a handful of the numerous reasons why the SCRUB Act provides a uniquely visible pathway to accomplishing the longstanding bipartisan goal of repealing outdated and ineffective regulations. I wish to thank my colleagues from both sides of the aisle--and both sides of the Capitol, by the way--who have joined in support of this bill, especially Senator Ernst for her leadership on this issue on the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. Even though she has only been in the Senate for a year, her strong and effective leadership on this issue has been a model for how to hit the ground running. I call on my colleagues in the Senate to follow the House's lead and pass this effective, commonsense approach to rooting out unjustifiably burdensome regulations. Also, as I understand it, the House has passed this bill just today. Religious Liberty

Mr. President, I also wish to address another subject--the subject of religious liberty. Congress is convening for the second session of the 114th Congress at a moment in time rich with significance for religious freedoms. January 6, for example, marked the 75th anniversary of President Franklin Roosevelt's famous ``Four Freedoms'' speech. During the depths of World War II, President Roosevelt used his 1941 State of the Union Address to describe a world founded on what he called ``four essential human freedoms.'' One of these is the ``freedom of every person to worship God in his own way.''

At the end of the week, on January 16, it is Religious Freedom Day. It commemorates the 230th anniversary of the Virginia General Assembly's enactment of the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom. Thomas Jefferson authored the legislation and, after he left to serve as U.S. Minister to France, his colleague James Madison secured its enactment.

Of his many accomplishments--and Jefferson had a lot of accomplishments--Jefferson directed that three of what he called ``things that he had given the people'' be listed on his tombstone. One of them was the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, which laid the foundation for the protection of religious freedom in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Mr. President, last fall I delivered a series of eight speeches on the Senate floor presenting the story of religious freedom. I explained why religious freedom itself is uniquely important and requires special protection. At no time in world history has religious freedom been such an integral part of a Nation's character as it is here in the United States.

The story of religious freedom includes understanding both its status and its substance. The status of religious freedom can be summarized as both inalienable and preeminent. As James Madison put it, religious freedom is ``precedent, both in order of time and in degree of obligation, to the claims of civil society.''

Madison also explained that religious freedom is the freely chosen manner of discharging a duty an individual believes he or she owes to God. As we have affirmed so many times in statutes, declarations, and treaties, it includes both belief and behavior in public and in private, individually and collectively.

Tonight, President Obama delivers his final State of the Union Address. According to the Washington Post this morning, President Obama will speak about unity, about coming together as one American family. Until very recently, religious freedom was such a unifying priority. Last month, I described to my colleagues the unifying statement about religious freedom called the Williamsburg Charter. Published in 1988, it brought together Presidents and other leaders in both political parties, the heads of business and labor, universities and bar associations, and diverse communities to endorse the first principles of religious freedom.

The charter boldly proclaims that religious freedom is an inalienable right that is ``premised upon the inviolable dignity of the human person. It is the foundation of, and is integrally related to, all other rights and freedoms secured by the Constitution.'' It asserts that the chief menace to religious freedom is the expanding power of government--especially government control over personal behavior and the institutions of society. And the charter also declares that limiting religious freedom ``is allowable only where the State has borne a heavy burden of proof that the limitation is justified--not by any ordinary public interest, but by a supreme public necessity--and that no less restrictive alternative to limitation exists.''

Congress made these principles law 5 years later by almost unanimously enacting the Religious Freedom Restoration Act--an act that I had a great deal to do with. One way to know the value of something is by the effort made to protect it. In RFRA, government may burden the exercise of religion only if it is the least restrictive means of furthering a compelling government purpose. That is the toughest standard found anywhere in American law. By this statute, we declared that religious freedom is fundamental, it is more important than other values and priorities, and government must properly accommodate it. The Coalition for the Free Exercise of Religion supporting RFRA was the most diverse grassroots effort I have ever seen in all of my years in the U.S. Senate.

Five years after RFRA, Congress unanimously enacted the International Religious Freedom Act. Twenty-one Senators serving today voted for it-- 12 Republicans and 9 Democrats. So did Vice President Joe Biden and Secretary of State John Kerry when they served here. That law declares that religious freedom ``undergirds the very origin and existence of the United States.'' It calls religious freedom a universal human right, a pillar of our Nation, and a fundamental freedom.

That is what unity looks like. With a Presidency no less than any other aspect of life, however, actions speak louder than words. While President Obama has paid lip service to religious freedom, as I assume he will in his annual Religious Freedom Day proclamation this week, the actions of his administration tell a different story.

In 2011, the Obama administration argued to the Supreme Court that the First Amendment provides no special protection for churches, even in choosing their own ministers. The Court unanimously rejected that bizarre theory. The administration ignored religious freedom and RFRA altogether when developing the Affordable Care Act and its implementing regulations. When religious employers argued that the administration's birth control mandate did not adequately accommodate their religious freedom, the administration fought them all the way to the Supreme Court. The Court again rejected the administration's attempt to restrict religious freedom.

Yesterday, 32 Members of the Senate and 175 Members of the House of Representatives filed a legal brief with the Supreme Court supporting religious organizations that are again arguing that the Obama administration's birth control mandate violates the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. I want to thank my friend from Oklahoma, Senator Lankford, for working with me on this important project. I know religious freedom was important to him when he served in the House and he is already a leader on this critical issue in the Senate and I am pleased to see him in the chair today.

This mandate requires religious organizations to violate their deeply held religious beliefs or pay crushing monetary fines. The plaintiffs in these cases include Christian colleges, Catholic dioceses, and many organizations that minister to the elderly and disadvantaged as part of their religious mission. They want to provide health insurance for their employees and students in a manner that is consistent with their religious beliefs.

The Obama administration, however, is working hard to make those religious groups knuckle under to its political agenda. It provides blanket exemptions for churches that do not object to the birth control mandate but denies exemption to religious employers that do object. Yet it is fighting to force compliance by religious nonprofit organizations that do object to the mandate on the basis of deeply held religious beliefs. Not only is that policy simply irrational, but it treats religious freedom as optional.

Here is how I put it last month: Subjugating religious beliefs to government decrees is not the price of citizenship. To the contrary, respecting and honoring the fundamental rights of all Americans is the price our government pays to enjoy the continued consent of the American people.

If that is true, then religious freedom must be properly respected and accommodated. And I believe it is true.

Religious freedom should be a primary consideration, not an afterthought. Religious freedom should be given the accommodation that a preeminent right requires, rather than begrudgingly be given the least attention politically possible.

If our leaders wish to abandon the religious freedom that undergirds America's origin and existence, they should say so. If Members of Congress now reject what they once supported and insist that religious freedom is less important than the political reference of the moment, they should make that case.

If the Obama administration wants to repudiate treaties we have ratified, asserting that religious freedom is a fundamental human right, the President should be upfront about it.

As with many things that happen in the twilight of a Presidency, I expect to hear much in the State of the Union Address tonight that speaks to President Obama's legacy. What will he be remembered for? What great principles or causes will be associated with the Obama Presidency?

Part of President Roosevelt's legacy is that State of the Union Address 75 years ago that affirmed that practicing one's faith is an essential human freedom. What a tragedy to have President Obama be remembered for hostility to--rather than protection of--religious freedom.

In the coming days, I will be presenting to each of my Senate colleagues the collection of speeches on religious freedom that I offered on the floor last fall. I hope they will encourage us in Congress, as well as our fellow citizens, to unite in our commitment to this fundamental right.

This is important. Even though we may agree or disagree with certain religious beliefs, they still ought to have the right to believe them. They still ought to have the right to worship the way they want to. The fact of the matter is that is what has made America the greatest country in the world--bar none. I don't want to see it destroyed because we are doing everything we can to undermine religious freedom in this country. I refuse to allow that to happen, and I hope my colleagues will take this seriously as well. I know a number of them do, including the current Presiding Officer.

I just want everybody to know that as long as I am in the Senate, I am going to be fighting for religious freedom and I hope that all of us will also.

God bless America.

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