Hank Johnson: “This amendment would require agencies to provide a detailed economic assessment prior to certifying that a rule will not…”

“This amendment would require agencies to provide a detailed economic assessment prior to certifying that a rule will not have a significant economic impact on a substantial number of small business entities. I oppose this bill for a number of reasons. Number one, it forces agencies to prove a negative. The negative being that it will not have a significant--bookmark that for a second--a significant economic impact on a substantial number of small entities. I mean, proving a negative is always very difficult to do, that it won't do this. Certainly very difficult. But then when you give the decisionmaker a vague and ambiguous frame of reference like ``significant,'' what does significant economic impact mean? It means different things to different people. So that is vague and ambiguous. It allows for unbridled discretion by an unelected bureaucrat, to use that term that my friends like to use, but in this instance I am using it with respect to a newly appointed plutocratic bureaucrat like, say, Linda McMahon at the Small Business Administration, a billionaire. Give that to, you know, a bureaucrat such as that and let them decide whether or not it has a significant economic impact. They are going to say, yes, it has a significant economic impact. They are going to do it every time because that is their agenda. They support a pro-big-business agenda. That is what they represent, and so that is how they would rule.…”