Volume 145, No. 159 covering the 1st Session of the 106th Congress (1999 - 2000) was published by the Congressional Record.
The Congressional Record is a unique source of public documentation. It started in 1873, documenting nearly all the major and minor policies being discussed and debated.
“THE REGULATORY IMPROVEMENT ACT OF 2000” mentioning the Environmental Protection Agency was published in the Extensions of Remarks section on pages E2382-E2383 on Nov. 11, 1999.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
THE REGULATORY IMPROVEMENT ACT OF 2000
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HON. GEORGE W. GEKAS
of pennsylvania
in the house of representatives
Wednesday, November 10, 1999
Mr. GEKAS. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to introduce the Regulatory Improvement Act of 2000. This bill would bring a greater degree of rationality and sounder science to the regulatory process.
We are all aware that regulations have a huge effect on society. They seek to protect the health and safety of the American people, and they seek to protect the natural environment. They deal with transportation, agriculture, communication, manufacturing--literally every walk of American life. They also directly and indirectly cost consumers billions and billions of dollars. There is a consensus, I believe, that the relationship between these benefits and these costs needs to be better known. This is the fundamental aim of the bill.
Let me say, first, that our effort rides on the shoulders of enormous work that has been done by our colleagues in the Senate, particularly Senator Thompson, the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs. He joined Senator Levin to introduce a bill that has the same goals as this one. While there are differences between the two bills, our effort follows from and builds on the work of our colleagues in the other body. I applaud them for their work.
While significant details differ, the contours of this bill are quite similar to theirs. This bill would require federal agencies promulgating major rules to conduct essential analyses of the rules they propose. These analyses will not only cause the agencies to do better thinking about the problems they confront, but they will also allow fuller public discussion of the regulations that are proposed by executive branch agencies.
In the past, we have been shocked at the sight of agencies moving forward precipitously, and in the face of conflicting scientific information, with regulations having massive effects on economic growth and progress. We were pleased to see the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit put the brakes on the Environmental Protection Agency's massive effort to stall economic progress in Pennsylvania and numerous other parts of the country.
That being said, however, I have never weighed in on the substance of these regulations because their true anticipated benefits were never known. As Chairman of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Commercial and Administrative Law, I was not satisfied that the administrative processes were being followed as these regulations were written. I did not have confidence that the agency was acting rationally and in the best interest of the nation. Nor did many other Members of Congress on both sides of the aisle.
Once the Regulatory Improvement Act of 2000 is passed, we will be able to have confidence in the decisions made by regulatory agencies. This bill will cause more information about the decisions of regulators to come to light allowing everyone--Congress, the press, and the public--to understand the benefits of major regulations. It will also direct agencies toward addressing common causes of injury and disease, rather than popular fears about injury and disease. These are different things, and the federal bureaucracy needs to use sound science to solve the real problems that face Americans, rather than problems that are merely exaggerated in the public mind. Too often, interest groups feed distorted statistics and selective anecdotes to a hungry media in order to advance some agenda. If the regulatory process was better anchored to scientific analysis, the practice of fomenting hysteria among the public would not work as well. Americans would not have to live with trumped up fears.
The bill requires cost-benefit analysis of major regulations, along with risk assessment and substitution risk evaluation of major regulations that address health, safety, or environmental risks. In general, a major regulation is one that has an effect on the economy of
$100 million or more.
Cost-benefit analysis would allow Congress, the press, and the public to learn how cost-effective a given regulation is. We would be able to see how much value we are getting back when we give something up pursuant to regulation. Cost-benefit analyses of different regulations could be compared and we could see what regulations bring large improvements and what regulations bring small improvements to American life. We include in our bill a requirement that agencies analyze a wide variety of regulatory alternatives. Doing so will reveal what the incremental costs and benefits are along a range of options. This will help agencies choose the right place to draw the line--the place where we get the most benefits for the least cost.
Risk assessment is a characterization of the nature of the harm addressed by a regulation, and our bill requires it for regulations addressing health, safety, and the environment. Rather than anecdotes and fear, we need sound scientific descriptions of what causes a given harm, how the harm is caused, and what the chances are that a harm will occur. We also need to reveal what assumptions these assessments rely on. Certain harms are extremely rare, and even speculative, yet sometimes we protect against them more carefully than the harms that befall hundreds of Americans every day. Quality risk assessment will reveal where this has been the case, so we can refocus our efforts on real improvements in quality of life for all Americans.
A substitution risk assessment should study what risks might be created or threatened in the process of avoiding another risk. Substitution risk assessment is the reason most people do not jump into automobile traffic to avoid meeting a bicycle on the sidewalk. The risk this would create is greater than the risk avoided. I do not suggest that any current regulations actually create net risks, but there have been examples where a significant new harm was created by a regulation. We want to avoid this in the future, for the good of our people and for the credibility of the regulatory process.
Let me make some key points about this bill, though I recognize that mine will not be the only view on these subjects. First, to do an effective cost-benefit analysis, all effects of a regulation must be quantified in comparable terms. We must be able to compare apples to apples and oranges to oranges. Otherwise, the true effects of a rule will be obscured. Note well, Mr. Speaker, that accurate cost-benefit analysis does not require tough choices to be made. It illustrates the choices that inevitably are being made in a proposed regulation.
Second, anything that we refer to as a law, including administrative law, must be enforceable. That is, there must be someone to review the actions of the agency. The best source of this kind of review, the one that has always been recognized in this country, is the courts. In the 104th Congress, I was the original author of legislation to make compliance with the Regulatory Flexibility Act judicially reviewable. Judicial review made it into the Regulatory Flexibility Act in the Small Business Regulatory Enforcement Fairness Act of 1996. Today, we have seen the benefits of judicial review. A very small number of agencies have been reversed or remanded by the courts, while the clear majority of agencies are now assiduously following the law. If we intend this bill to be followed once it is law, there should be judicial review. This bill is silent as to review, which means that its provisions are subject to judicial review under the Administrative Procedure Act, which it amends.
These are just two important points I want to lend to the debate on how to achieve rational regulation. I am pleased to introduce this bill, and again acknowledge the hard work of colleagues who have laid the foundation for it.
We realize the window of opportunity for advancing this bill is small. It would represent true improvement of the regulatory process, which is a serious challenge to the status quo. We intend to conduct hearings and move this bill at the outset of the next session. We hope that our vision of regulatory improvement proves out and attracts the support of an administration that has so far only offered to reinvent the regulatory wheel.
I am confident that we will succeed and that the vision we all share--of safe and healthy people, unburdened by irrational regulation--will be achieved through this legislation.
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