David Cay Johnston: “I rise in support of the Abraham amendment. I congratulate the Senator for, first, his concern about small business…”

“I rise in support of the Abraham amendment. I congratulate the Senator for, first, his concern about small business, which is a concern of all Members on regulations; second, for having an appropriate screening mechanism to prevent the agency overload. Agency overload, Mr. President, is one of the principal problems with this bill. We are all in favor, at least everyone that I have heard, says they are in favor of cost-benefit analysis, says they are in favor of risk assessment. The question is, do we give the agencies more work than they can do and overload their capacity to do it? In its original form, the Abraham amendment might well have been subject to that criticism in that any rule on a look-back which the advocate designated would go into the workload of the agency. However, in the form that the Senator from Michigan has proposed, there is an appropriate screen because the head of OIRA would have to concur with that judgment, which would ensure, I believe, that those rules which have a major effect on small business would be included in the workload, as they should be, but that we could prevent the agency overload.”