On the recordNovember 17, 2016
Earlier this week, the majority leader and the committee chairs sent a letter to hundreds of government departments and agencies, saying stop, stop with the overregulation of our economy. It is time to stop this. We heard the results of the election loud and clear. This motion to recommit misses the forest through the trees, and the ever-increasing avalanche of Washington regulation is stifling job creation, suffocating recovery, and strangling our economy. Federal regulation since 1980 has been estimated to have cost this country $4 trillion worth of annual GDP--a full 25 percent--by 2012; and things have only gotten worse since then as the record-setting Obama administration has piled evermore costs on top. Now here they come again. Here is the list in fine print of over 180 new midnight regulations they want to jam through before the end of this administration. In administration after administration, the most abusive period of regulation has been the midnight rule period--the last, vanishing months of an outgoing administration as it seeks to cement the last pieces of its regulatory edifice in place. This is the time when the pace of executive branch regulation most easily overwhelms Congress' institutional capacity to check executive overreach. With one simple change to the Congressional Review Act--this bill--it will free Congress to disapprove any and all midnight regulations in one fell swoop.…





