This week, the House passed three bills aimed at weakening federal regulations, past and future, that serve the public interest, rather than the interests of big corporations (especially big banks). While these bills would probably not pass the Senate as stand-alone bills, they could easily end up in continuing resolution or omnibus bills for which Democrats often have too few deal-breakers.
Making Government Accountable to Corporations, Not the People
On Wednesday, the House passed the Regulatory Accountability Act of 2017, which makes the federal government more accountable to corporate interests rather than the public.
Here is what it would do:
This bill modifies the federal rule-making process by re-writing the Administrative Procedure Act to require federal agencies to consider more than 70 new criteria when issuing rules, including alternatives to any rule proposal, the scope of the problem the rule is meant to address, and potential costs and benefits of the proposal and alternatives. The measure creates statutory thresholds for regulations to be deemed "major" rules and "high-impact" rules — i.e., rules likely to cost more than $100 million or $1 billion a year — and requires that these rules proposals be subject to additional criteria and procedural steps.
The result of these changes will be rules that are based mainly on minimizing costs to industry -- rather than maximizing public health, worker safety, and consumer and environmental protection benefits -- in a manner that overrides requirements in dozens of federal laws. Because the bill requires that agencies consider every “reasonable” way of rulemaking, opponents of a proposed rule could put forward literally hundreds of other regulatory proposals, require relevant agencies to review each proposal, and then litigate over whether the review of alternatives is adequate. These changes will significantly lengthen the rulemaking process and require agencies to waste limited funds on cumbersome bureaucratic hurdles.
It passed 238 to 183.
5 Democrats joined the GOP in voting for it:
Jim Costa (CA-16)
Henry Cuellar (TX-28)
Stephanie Murphy (FL-07)
Collin Peterson (MN-07)
Kurt Schrader (OR-05)
There were recorded votes for 9 amendments.
Rulemaking Authority: Bob Goodlatte offered an amendment to revise section 2 of Title II of the bill to restrain “unwarranted interpretation of ambiguous statutes to find implied delegations of legislative rulemaking authority, and of ambiguous statutes and regulations to expansively extend agency authority.”
It passed 237 to 183, party line with Costa, Peterson, and Ed Perlmutter (CO-07) siding with the GOP.
Organizing Opposition: Collin Peterson, Bob Goodlatte, and Jason Chaffetz (UT-03) offered an amendment to prohibit agencies from communicating with the public in order to generate support for or opposition to a proposed rule.
It passed 260 to 161. 7 Republicans voted with the Democrats, and 33 other Democrats joined Peterson in allying with the GOP:
Ami Bera (CA-07)
Cheri Bustos (IL-17)
Jim Cooper (TN-05)
Lou Correa (CA-46)
Jim Costa (CA-16)
Joe Crowley (NY-14)
Henry Cuellar (TX-28)
John Delaney (MD-06)
Eliot Engel (NY-16)
Bill Foster (IL-11)
Marcia Fudge (OH-11)
Tulsi Gabbard (HI-02)
Vicente Gonzalez (TX-15)
Jim Himes (CT-04)
Jared Huffman (CA-02)
Marcy Kaptur (OH-09)
Annie Kuster (NH-02)
Dan Lipinski (IL-03)
Stephanie Murphy (FL-07)
Richard Neal (MA-01)
Tom O’Halleran (AZ-01)
Bill Pascrell (NJ-09)
Ed Perlmutter (CO-07)
Scott Peters (CA-52)
Dutch Ruppersberger (MD-02)
Brad Schneider (IL-10)
Kurt Schrader (OR-05)
David Scott (GA-13)
Kyrsten Sinema (AZ-09)
Tom Suozzi (NY-03)
Filemon Vela (TX-34)
Tim Walz (MN-01)
Maxine Waters (CA-43)
Public Health & Welfare: Kathy Castor (FL-14) offered an amendment to exempt any rule intended to protect public health and welfare from the requirements of this act.
It failed 189 to 231. There were two party line defectors on each side: Walter Jones (NC-03) and Kenny Marchant (TX-24) joined the Dems, and Peterson and Albio Sires (NJ-08) joined the GOP.
Food Safety: David Cicilline offered an amendment to exempt any rule that provides for the prevention of the transmission of food-borne illness or addresses safety in food processing, packing, and storage from the requirements of this act.
It failed 190 to 232, party line but with Jones again voting with the Dems.
Labor/Employment: Hank Johnson (GA-04) offered an amendment to exempt rules that significantly improve the employment, retention, and wages of workforce participants, especially those with significant barriers to employment, such as persons with disabilities or limited English proficiency from the requirements of this act.
It failed 188 to 234, party line but with Peterson again voting with the GOP.
Toy Safety: Raul Ruiz (CA-36) offered an amendment to exempt rules pertaining to the safety of children's products or toys from the requirements of this act.
It failed 190 to 233, party line but with Jones and Rod Blum (IA-01) joining the Dems and Peterson joining the GOP.
Workplace Safety: Bobby Scott (VA-03) offered an amendment to exempt from the requirements of this act any rule which pertains to workplace health and safety and that is necessary to prevent or reduce the incidence of traumatic injury, cancer or irreversible lung disease at mining facilities which are subject to the Federal Mine Safety and Health Act of 1977 (30 USC 801, et seq) or workplaces which are subject to the Occupational Safety and Health Act (29 USC 651 et seq).
It failed 195 to 227, party line but with Peterson again voting with the GOP and 7 Republicans voting with the Dems.
Chemical Safety: Paul Tonko (NY-20) offered an amendment to insure that any rules made under the "Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act" are exempted from this act.
It failed 188 to 235, party line but again with Peterson voting with the GOP.
Forest Management: Raul Grijalva (AZ-03) offered an amendment to strike language in the underlying bill that would require the Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management to perform regulatory flexibility analyses for forest and land management plans.
It failed 185 to 236, with Costa, Peterson, and Kyrsten Sinema (AZ-09) voting with the GOP.
Accountability to the Banks, Not the People
Yesterday, the House passed two bills designed to weaken Dodd-Frank financial reforms.
The first was the SEC Regulatory Accountability Act:
This bill would require the Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) Chief Economist to conduct a cost-benefit analysis of proposed regulations and explain how their expected benefits justify their costs to a wide range of actors, including: market participants, individuals, businesses, and other bodies (including state and local governments). Under the bill, the SEC would also have to forecast their effect on investor choice, market liquidity, and small businesses. Only after these burdensome new requirements were met could could the SEC issue new rules. H.R. 78 would also require the SEC to identify and assess available alternatives to the new regulation and explain why the new regulation meets the regulatory objectives more effectively than the alternatives.
Simply put, H.R. 78 is another in a long line of Republican measures since 2011 to undermine the 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. If enacted, it would undermine the SEC’s mandate to police the financial markets, protect investors, and help prevent a market crisis. It would substantially impede the SEC’s ability to propose or adopt any rule, by requiring the SEC to meet several new requirements that are weighted significantly in favor of industry at the expense of investor protections. To add insult to injury, no new funding is authorized to enable the agency to shoulder the new operational burdens imposed by the bill, which means the SEC will be compelled to divert resources from other critical divisions like Enforcement.
As if the burdens imposed on the SEC with respect to new rules is not enough, H.R. 78 would also force the SEC to review every one of its existing regulations within one year of the bill’s enactment, and every five years thereafter, to determine whether existing regulations are ineffective, insufficient, or excessively burdensome, and to modify, streamline, expand, or repeal them in accordance with that review. This guarantees that the agency will be mired in continuous litigation, unable to issue any new rules, and potentially unable to maintain even its current rules.
It passed 283 to 184. One Republican—Walter Jones (NC-03)—joined Democrats in voting against it, and 9 Democrats joined Republicans in voting for it.
Here are the 9 Democrats:
Sanford Bishop (GA-02)
Tony Cardenas (CA-29)
Henry Cuellar (TX-28)
Josh Gottheimer (NJ-05)
Scott Peters (CA-52)
Jacky Rosen (NV-03)
Kurt Schrader (OR-05)
Kyrsten Sinema (AZ-09)
Tom Suozzi (NY-03)
Four amendments received recorded votes.
Conflicts of Interest: Al Green (TX-09) offered an amendment to require the SEC to identify, analyze and address potential conflicts of interest related to its rulemakings.
It failed 192 to 233, a party line vote but with Jones voting with the Democrats.
Financial Stability: Green offered a second amendment to exempt regulations promulgated to maintain or support US financial stability or prevent or reduce systemic risk.
It failed 191 to 232, a party line vote but with Jones voting with the Democrats and Peters and Sinema voting with the Republicans.
TBTF: Mark DeSaulnier (CA-11) offered an amendment to require the Chairman of the SEC and his immediate family to divest from too-big-to-fail banks.
It failed 194 to 233, a party line vote but with Jones and Brian Fitzpatrick (PA-08) joining the Democrats.
Codes of Conduct: Jamie Raskin (MD-08) offered an amendment to require the Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission to be trained on ethical standards and codes of conduct to ensure all regulations promulgated are not compromised by a conflict of interest, specifically regarding prior employment and legal representation of too-big-to-fail banks.
It failed 196 to 231, a party line vote but with 4 Republicans joining the Democrats: Jamie Herrera Beutler (WA-03), Charlie Dent (PA-15), Fitzpatrick, and Jones.
Relief for the Banks, Risk for the People
The second bill passed yesterday was the Commodity End-User Relief Act, an assault on derivatives regulation under Dodd-Frank:
This bill would reauthorize the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) through 2021 and make several significant changes to the way the CFTC operates as a commission and regulates derivatives and swaps under 2010’s Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act.
The bill would fundamentally harm the process that the CFTC follows when conducting the cost-benefit analysis of new regulatory proposals by (1) significantly expanding the criteria the CFTC must use in evaluating proposed rules; (2) changing the standard of evaluation from ‘costs and benefits’ to a much more burdensome ‘reasoned determination’ of costs and benefits and (3) requiring the CFTC to assess whether a proposed rule ‘maximizes net benefits’ compared to all possible regulatory alternatives. The last change would almost certainly force the CFTC to evaluate a potentially limitless number of alternative rules before it could adopt a new rule – significantly increasing the agency’s workload and limiting the agency’s capacity to regulate commodities and derivatives trading as market conditions warrant.
The bill also includes language that would make each cost-benefit analysis of every proposed CFTC rule open to lawsuit - further slowing the rulemaking process while heaping added cost on the already limited funding for the CFTC.
The bill would also direct the CFTC to develop an approach to the regulation of derivatives trading that takes place outside the U.S., prohibiting the regulation of transactions booked by the foreign subsidiaries of U.S. banks, including transactions that have a direct and significant connection to the U.S. economy – in conflict with the language in Dodd-Frank.
It passed 239-182, with one Republican—Walter Jones (NC-03)—voting with the Democrats and 7 Democrats voting with the Republicans.
Here are the 7 Democrats:
Sanford Bishop (GA-02)
Henry Cuellar (TX-28)
Josh Gottheimer (NJ-05)
Scott Peters (CA-52)
David Scott (GA-13)
Kyrsten Sinema (AZ-09)
Tom Suozzi (NY-03)
