Regulations from the Executive in Need of Scrutiny Act of 2011
Floor Speech
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Mr. McKINLEY. Mr. Chairman, I rise today to offer an amendment that would reduce the threshold for a major rule from $100 million or more to $50 million. This would ensure greater accountability.
Let's keep this in perspective. I base this amendment on legislation that has already been adopted by the House--in 1995--with bipartisan support which lowered the threshold to $50 million. It passed with a vote of 277-141 with much of today's leadership who were here at the time supporting it.
Also, in perspective, in fiscal year 2011, only 2.6 percent of all the rules were classified as ``major,'' and in 2010 it was only 3 percent that met that criteria. Keep that in consideration. Would you be satisfied with only 2 or 3 percent of your food being inspected or 2 or 3 percent of the aircraft which we fly?
According to the Small Business Administration, in 2008 it cost the economy $1.75 trillion in regulations. We just went through a gut-wrenching supercommittee that tried to reduce $1.5 trillion, but yet we let, every year, hundreds of billions of dollars pass through without involvement of Congress.
Since January of this year, we have already seen 67,000 more pages of regulation, 88 million hours, man-hours, have been lost by businesses and employers trying to respond to the regulatory reform. None of this has had congressional oversight or approval.
Canada realizes there needs to be more accountability, and they require all rules and regs of $50 million or more to come before their legislative body.
Congress, having jurisdiction of only 2 or 4 percent may be better than nothing, but I believe America deserves better. We need a system of checks and balances. No wonder the American people have lost their confidence in Congress and the Federal Government. I'm hopeful that the chairman will see the issues that I have raised here today and work with me on future legislation to correct that.
With that, I yield 30 seconds to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Smith).
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Mr. McKINLEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate your willingness to work with me on these issues.
Since Congress deserves to have more specific numbers that have not been available from GAO and the CBO relative to lowering this threshold from $100 million to $50 million, I ask unanimous consent, for now, to withdraw my amendment, Mr. Chairman.
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