Directing Committees to Review Regulations from Federal Agencies

Floor Speech

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I thank the gentleman for yielding, and I want to commend the chairman and his committee for the hard work they're doing here today.

While we look at bad rules, Madam Speaker, already on the books, let's not take new, worse rules on in the future. With a split House and Senate, it will be a tough job to repeal existing regulations in light of the Senate requirement of 60 votes to bring something to a vote in the Senate. It will be very difficult, but we have a special parliamentary tool to block new rules with the Congressional Review Act, which mandates a Senate vote on blocking new regulations of just 30 Members of the Senate. So we can have closure in the Senate with only 30 Senators joining us.

Today, we face new EPA attempts to shut down the Portland cement industry in our Nation, costing thousands of jobs. We face an EPA grab to take away Texas' ability to issue emission permits, undermining the economy of Texas and destroying job growth in our State.

We face an HHS scheme to kick small health insurers out of the market because they can't match the administrative cost ratios of their mega-insurer competitors.

But if we use our majority in this body to disapprove these bad rules, we can then convince just 30 of our Senators to join us and go along with it to bring it to the floor of the Senate for a vote, a straight up-or-down vote. I think we have a very good chance to stop these new rules that are in the pipeline.

Madam Speaker, I urge all Members to join our effort to use the Congressional Review Act to fight bad rules and save jobs. I thank you.

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