Political Quotes

“let me start with just a quick overview of the Congressional Review Act which brings us here to the floor today. Under the American legal system, administrative Agencies can make rules, and there is a very robust process for doing so. The Agency often gives a notice of proposed rulemaking so the world will know what they are considering doing and then solicit comment from affected stakeholders, the public, a wide variety of people. So you start with an Agency that seeks to make a rule. They have to follow the processes of the Administrative Procedures Act, which is a very careful statute, well-policed by the courts, with a very robust precedent around that. And at the end of the day, the Agency creates a rule, and they adopt the rule. Now, you could always appeal that rule to a court, but what Congress decided many years ago was that in that situation where an Agency had gone through the APA process and had promulgated a rule, that there would also be a congressional review of that rule, not just a court. And the filing of the rule here in Congress triggers a period of review in which Senators or Members of the House can call up the Congressional Review Act and seek to disapprove the rule. So this whole thing was originally designed and--for all the decades since the Congressional Review Act was first passed--has always been to address Agency rulemaking under the Administrative Procedures Act.”