Sunshine for Regulatory Decrees and Settlements Act of 2015

Floor Speech

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Mr. KILDEE. Mr. Chairman, my main concern with this bill is the provision that would prevent a new regulation from taking effect until it has been available online for at least 6 months after the already exhaustive public notice and comment period that is required of new regulations. This may be a well-intended procedure, but it could potentially harm the very people that are in need of protection under some of the rules being promulgated.

I know there is an exemption that may relate to health and safety that could include a Presidential action, but it requires us to know of an impending threat in order for that procedure to be utilized.

I am thinking about what happened in my own hometown of Flint, Michigan, where people cannot wait 6 months for the Lead and Copper Rule, for example, which is under review right now, to be modified. Due to mismanagement by the State government and the weakness in the Safe Drinking Water Act's Lead and Copper Rule, thousands of children in Flint, Michigan, have been exposed to dangerous lead. Lead exposure is not good for anyone, but it is particularly dangerous for young children.

According to the CDC, lead exposure is one of the most dangerous neurotoxins. It has wide-ranging impacts affecting IQ. There are behavioral implications. There are developmental implications for the central nervous system.

It is heartbreaking, then, to see, as a result of the failure to adequately supply support in regulation to drinking water programs, that levels of lead in my own hometown have poisoned children. Changes to the Lead and Copper Rule, which I have participated in and are underway right now, could have prevented this. Right now, as a matter of fact, those changes are pending.

If this legislation is passed, basically what we are saying to the people of Flint and other potential communities that could have lead exposure is that we have to wait another 6 months for that protection, 6 more months potentially of dangerous lead leaching into the pipes, going into the bodies of young children.

This notion that regulation is always wrong and always bad--I know that is not the position that is taken--but the effect of this legislation would be to slow down the regulatory process, very often regulations that need to be changed, need to be adjusted to provide essential protections to public health.

The notion that we are supposed to somehow know that an imminent threat is present and allow this expedited process that is anticipated in this legislation belies logic. They didn't know, until after blood levels showed increased lead levels in children, that such a problem existed.

When we know that there are necessary changes, when the EPA, through its process, as they have done with the Lead and Copper Rule, know that there are ways to improve the protection to kids, we ought to implement those regulations as soon as we possibly can.

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