A group of Republicans quietly issued a legislative plan this week to stop agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency from raising what they call the “hidden tax” of increased regulation.
The plan would roll back tactics employed by the Obama presidency that uses executive authority to push ahead a policy agenda through regulation, rather than through Congress.
It would accomplish this by employing a “regulatory budget” to constrain agencies from laying on trillions of dollars in added costs through rules and regulations, a group of House lawmakers led by Sen. Mike Lee of Utah announced this week.
The plan was outlined in a paper issued by the lawmakers called “Leashing Leviathan: The Case for a Congressional Regulatory Budget.” The lawmakers used the paper to explain the reasons for passing legislation they introduced Wednesday to put their ideas into motion.
“Federal regulations are estimated to cost the American people between $1 trillion and $2 trillion in compliance costs per year,” the report says. “For instance, a recent analysis found that 36 executive branch regulations issued since 2009 have inflated the prices of household appliances – items such as dishwashers, microwave ovens and air conditioners — by $1,639,” it says, alluding to the many energy-efficiency standards the Energy Department has rolled out.
“The regulatory price inflation was even more dramatic for anotherstaple product for most Americans: cars and trucks,” the plan underscores, referring to regulations put in place by EPA. “The same 36 regulations issued during President Obama’s administration included several fuel-efficiency and safety requirements that pushed up the price of vehicles by a whopping $9,100.”
The regulatory budget bill would give Congress the authority to tie the hands of agencies that exceed a specified cost limit for their regulations. Agencies also would have to account for the cost of their regulations each year in asking Congress to approve budget requests. Congress can rescind the regulations in appropriations bills if an agency exceeds its budget cap.
“The effect of our regulatory budget would be twofold,” the plan says. First, the regulatory cost caps would provide bureaucrats a “much-needed incentive to reduce the unnecessary economic friction in their rules.” This would be achieved by forcing agencies to modernize or eliminate old rules, while simultaneously making all new rules as cost-effective as possible.
“Second, the regulatory budget would take a significant step toward making Congress once again responsible for the nation’s laws,” it says.
The budget would not revoke all lawmaking authority that the White House has, nor would it tilt regulations toward one particular goal or another. “All it would do is compel the people’s elected lawmakers in Congress to confront the out-of-control regulatory state that they have enabled by making them politically responsible for its costs,” the plan says.
“When unelected bureaucrats routinely use decades-old laws to write new regulations, extracting trillions of dollars from American businesses and families every year and subjecting the country to government without consent, our public institutions — and Congress in particular — lose their moral credibility,” it reads.
“And without the people’s trust, the stability of the entire political system is threatened.”
