Political Quotes

“I rise today to ask my colleagues to sign Discharge Petition No. 19, which would discharge an open rule for the consideration of H.R. 830, the Regulatory Flexibility Amendments Act of 1993. This bill has over 250 cosponsors. The Regulatory Flexibility Act was passed by Congress and signed by President Carter back in 1980. In passing the RFA, Congress recognized that Federal regulations have a disproportionate impact on small businesses and small governmental entities and that Federal regulations ought to be written flexibly, to take this impact into consideration. The RFA requires regulators to prepare a regulatory flexibility analysis for any new regulation which will have a significant impact on small entities and to find ways to minimize those effects. The RFA requires regulators to find the least costly way to implement regulations. Because judicial review of agency compliance with the RFA is prohibited, there is no recourse against Federal bureaucrats who ignore the RFA. Most Federal agencies routinely ignore the RFA by passing boilerplate exemptions from the act. Without judicial review, these determinations cannot be challenged. In short, the regulators are judge, juror, and executioner. H.R. 830 would put some much-needed teeth into the RFA by allowing judicial review, and would otherwise strengthen the act. H.R. 830 is strongly supported by the small business community.”