Virginia Foxx: “I want to thank the gentleman from California for yielding time. I rise today in support of the regulatory reform…”

“I want to thank the gentleman from California for yielding time. I rise today in support of the regulatory reform package before us today and in particular title IV of H.R. 4078, the Red Tape Reduction and Small Business Job Creation Act, which embodies my bill, H.R. 373, the Unfunded Mandates Information and Transparency Act. My bill represents the first comprehensive reform modernizing the bipartisan Unfunded Mandates Reform Act since its inception in 1995. This bill is supported by State government advocates, including the National Council of State Legislatures, which, in a letter to Subcommittee Chairman Lankford, stated that: UMRA has enduring shortcomings that your amendment corrects. In particular, expanding the scope of reporting requirements to include new conditions of grant aid is essential. NCSL's members repeatedly point to this exclusion in the underlying statute as one of the law's major flaws. This bill responds to those concerns by allowing a committee chairman or ranking member to request that the Congressional Budget Office perform an assessment comparing the authorized level of funding in a bill or resolution to the prospective costs of carrying out any changes to a condition of Federal assistance being imposed on any respective participating State, local or tribal government.…”