Bonnie Watson Coleman: “Thank you to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Cummings), the ranking member, for this opportunity to speak. I rise today…”

“Thank you to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Cummings), the ranking member, for this opportunity to speak. I rise today also in opposition to H.R. 50, the misleadingly named Unfunded Mandates Information and Transparency Act of 2015, which passed out of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform on a strictly partisan vote. This bill neither improves nor streamlines the regulatory process. Instead, this ill-conceived bill is an assault on consumer protections, gives private industry an unfair advantage to weigh in on rules, and erects new, unnecessary barriers in the regulatory process. H.R. 50 would require agencies to provide the private sector with an unfair advantage to influence proposed regulations. The supporters of this bill claim that it creates parity between the private and the public sectors, but that is simply not true. What it really does is provide the private sector with a sneak peek of proposed rules before they are even made public. This bill propels regulated private sector entities to the front of the line while pushing the consumers these laws are designed to protect to the back of the line. It further gums up the regulatory process by allowing opponents to delay or invalidate rules through litigation. The existing Unfunded Mandates Reform Act of 1995 prohibits courts from using the law to stay, enjoin, invalidate, or otherwise affect an agency rule. H.R.…”