Blake Farenthold: “The Constitution vests all legislative powers in Congress. Unfortunately, past Members of this institution have given…”

“The Constitution vests all legislative powers in Congress. Unfortunately, past Members of this institution have given away a lot of that power to government agencies like the EPA, the Department of Health and Human Services, and an alphabet soup of agencies. President Obama is using his pen and telephone to talk to the ideologues who work in and run these agencies to change laws, to make laws without coming to Congress. Unelected, faceless Federal bureaucrats are making regulations that have the force of law, not elected representatives of the people. There are reams of rules. There are so many rules out there, I bet the average person can't go a couple of hours without violating a rule or regulation they probably don't even know about. The REINS Act is a great first step in reining in these job-killing regulations. The legislation before us is important to America. The REINS Act brings accountability back to the system. When a regulation with an economic impact of more than $100 million comes out of one of these agencies, it has got to be approved by Congress. That is our job; the Constitution says so, the people who elected us to make laws. And the people will hold us accountable for those laws if they are bad laws. How do you hold a faceless Federal bureaucrat accountable? We have seen through the VA that it is practically impossible to fire one of these bureaucrats.…”