House Republicans will make a new push next week to rein in federal rules and regulations that can cost local governments companies millions of dollars each year — 23 years after Republicans first sought to limit unfunded federal mandates.
GOP leaders will call up legislation to amend the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act of 1995. That law required agencies to try to limit the cost of federal rules on local governments and companies, but Republicans say it has fallen short of its promise over the last two decades, and needs improvement.
For example, the original law required agencies to consider less expensive alternatives to “major” regulations that will impose costs of $100 million or more per year.
Republicans say the government has found several ways around that rule. For example, the 1995 law says closer scrutiny of regulations is only required when those regulations are launched with a notice of proposed rulemaking, but a federal report found that about one third of these major rules aren’t launched that way.
The bill, from Rep. Virginia Foxx, R-N.C., would close that loophole and require scrutiny for all major rules, regardless of how they came about.
According to a Republican report on the bill, several independent federal agencies are exempt from the original law, but Foxx’s bill would correct that.
Foxx has tried to pass her bill to improve the law for the last few Congresses, and said it’s needed because federal rules are still running roughshod over companies and local government officials.
“Every year, Washington imposes thousands of rules on local governments and small businesses,” she said last year when she first introduced the bill. “Hidden in those rules are costly mandates that stretch state and city budgets and make it harder for businesses to hire.”
Republicans have spent the last few years finding stories that bear out her assessment, and found some examples showing that even regulations costing less than $100 million can hurt localities.
In 2017, for example, Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam “wrote the EPA provided Tennessee with only 8 percent of the $32 million it will cost the state to implement Clean Water Act programs,” according to the GOP report on Foxx’s bill.
That same year, the U.S. Virgin Islands got $5.4 million to pay $36 million in expenses to implement the Clean Air Act regulations.
The Government Accountability Office also told Republicans that federal agencies today don’t have to consider lost revenues due to regulations, and only need to consider if expenditures of more than $100 million are needed to implement it.
Foxx’s bill would require agencies to factor in possible lost profits due to regulatory compliance, which could be a change that turns more regulations into “major” rules that need more scrutiny.
And finally, the bill would codify some the changes President Bill Clinton tried to implement through an executive order in 1993, such as worrying more about the private sectors often costly contribution to compliance.
As expected, the GOP-backed bill is a partisan measure — the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee approved it in March in a party-line 20-10 vote. That means it will likely to be difficult to get through the Senate.
But the bill could help Republicans maintain their image as the party that’s more worried about people’s jobs as they head into the 2018 midterm elections. The GOP continues to play up how its tax cut bill means more money in the pockets of everyday people, and passing Foxx’s bill will let them argue they’re also out to protect companies and local governments from being forced by the federal government to spend money they don’t have.
