Comment Integrity and Management Act of 2024

Floor Speech

I rise in support of the Comment Integrity and Management Act again, as I was saying. I was very eager to support my friend Mr. Higgins' legislation here.

The basic issue is that it has gotten easier for people to post comments online in a rulemaking. That is a really good thing because it means that the process of implementing regulations is more accessible, more transparent, more open, and more participatory, but a number of the agencies have found, I think, what Members of Congress have found. Sometimes you get the same paragraph 100 times, 1,000 times, or 3,000 times.

This bill would simply allow agencies to post a representative sample of mass comments like this. If they choose to do that, they still are required to post the number of such comments received so that the volume of public sentiment is still fairly and effectively registered.

The bill would also require agencies, within 1 year, to establish policies for handling computer-generated comments, which is a growing concern to manage with the recent remarkable advances in artificial intelligence.

I am eager to hear from Mr. Higgins because I view his legislation as one that supports the administrative rulemaking process, which is so much under attack these days. There are people who say that we shouldn't have rules and regulations. Of course, the way our system works is that, in Congress, we pass laws like the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act, but we don't get into all the fine details. That is left to the executive branch to do a rulemaking. That, too, is an open process where people can register their concerns and send comments in.

We want to make sure that that process continues to operate effectively and is not overwhelmed and overburdened by AI and computer- duplicated comments.

So I thank Mr. Higgins, and I thank Chairman Comer and his staff for working with our side to address some of the concerns we had with the original language.

I understand the administration and some outside groups have also registered some concerns about the legislation that have been addressed. We have worked with them and our majority counterparts to incorporate their feedback into this revised version of the bill.

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to support the bill at this time, and I reserve the balance of my time.

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