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Posts Tagged ‘REINS Act’
May 11th, 2015 at 3:01 pm
Resist the Nanny State with Private Citizen Defense Funds

Charles Murray at AEI has a thought-provoking idea for pushing back against the Nanny State: private citizen defense funds.

“People don’t build tornado-proof houses; they buy house insurance,” Murray explains. “In the case of the regulatory state, let’s buy insurance that reimburses us for any fine that the government levies and that automatically triggers a proactive, tenacious legal defense against the government’s allegation even if – and this is crucial – we are technically guilty.”

Defending the technically guilty is designed to make overzealous regulators think twice before going after someone. The point is to concentrate enforcement resources on the worst offenders – not the weakest targets.

Murray suggests two ways of funding his citizen defense initiative. “The first would be a legal foundation functioning much as the Legal Services Corporation does for the poor, except that its money will come from private donors, not the government. It would be an altruistic endeavor, operating exclusively on behalf of the homeowner or small business being harassed by the regulators. The foundation would pick up all the legal costs of defense and pay the fines when possible.”

But wait, there’s more!

“The other framework would be occupational defense funds. Let’s take advantage of professional expertise and pride of vocation to drive standards of best practice,” says Murray. “For example, the American Dental Association could form Dental Shield, with dentists across America paying a small annual fee. The bargain: Dentists whose practices meet the ADA’s professional standards will be defended when accused of violating a regulation that the ADA has deemed to be pointless, stupid or tyrannical. The same kind of defense fund could be started by truckers, crafts unions, accountants, physicians, farmers or almost any other occupation.”

Though it would be nice if some of the great ideas touching on regulatory reform – for example, the REINS Act – are signed into law someday, the wonderful thing about Murray’s idea is that it could go into effect without any helping hand from government.

You can read the entire article at the Wall Street Journal.

January 21st, 2014 at 7:46 pm
Time to REIN-in State & Local Govt. Too

Steven Hayward is out with a blistering piece on the need to remember that state and local governments can be just as mind-numbingly bureaucratic as the feds.

“A key principle of federalism is that state and local government would resist the centralization of power in Washington, and defend the principle of ruling with and by the consent of the governed,” writes Hayward. “It is time to recognize that this kind of government no longer exists…”

As proof he cites several stories of local cops shutting down kids’ lemonade stands, and county air pollution regulators that make more than the top officials at the federal EPA. One could add to this Santa Monica’s “ban the [plastic] bag” campaign, and any of former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s wars on salt and soda, among many others.

And it’s not just in deeply blue states that bureaucrats revel in meddling. The four lemonade stand shut-downs that Hayward spotlighted occurred in Texas, Georgia, Iowa and Wisconsin.

In a nutshell, states and localities have succumbed to a me-too mentality that simply creates mirror images of federal bureaucracy all the way down. In order to justify their existence, each level imposes fines, collects fees and issues regulations – many times at odds with each other. The duels over rule have gotten so pervasive, there’s even a judicial doctrine called “preemption” to help courts sort through competing claims over which gang of regulators gets to control citizens’ lives.

One way to limit any bureaucracy’s social footprint is to make its decisions subject to approval by the legislature that creates it. At the federal level, the REINS Act would require congressional approval before any regulation costing $100 million or more annually goes into effect. Similar efforts, with lower thresholds, could and should be pursued at the state and local level.

Putting state legislators and city council members on the record when it comes to imposing increases to the costs of living will likely reduce the number of increases imposed. After all, if it makes sense at the federal level, why not closer to home?

July 25th, 2012 at 5:55 pm
REINS Act Gets New Champion

The important reform bill, the Regulations of the Executive In Need of Scrutiny (REINS) Act, is getting new champion with the retirement of Rep. Geoff Davis (R-KY).

From an emailed press release announcing the change:

“Todd Young is one of the hardest-working and most diligent new members of Congress.  He has enthusiastically championed the REINS Act at home and in Washington,” said Congressman Davis.  “Congress has excessively delegated its constitutional responsibility for making the law of the land to unelected bureaucrats for too long.  The REINS Act is one of the most important structural reforms to restore this accountability.  I am confident that Congressman Young will be a tireless champion for the REINS Act going forward.”

Calling Young “tireless” is a good word choice.  According to the Congressman’s official bio, he put himself through night school to get an MBA from the University of Chicago and a law degree from the University of Indiana.  Prior to that, he enlisted in the Navy en route to securing an appointment to that branch’s academy.

Young will need that doggedness to pass the REINS ACT into law.

Currently, there is no congressional oversight of bureaucratic “major rules” costing the economy $100 million a year or more in compliance costs.  The REINS Act would change that by requiring administrative agencies to submit proposed major rules to Congress for an up-or-down vote in both chambers before becoming law.  The aim is to stop rogue agencies like EPA or HHS from legislating through rulemaking what they can’t get Congress to pass through the normal lawmaking process.

What are Young’s prospects?  This year, Rep. Davis convinced the GOP-dominated House to pass the bill, but like every House reform, the REINS Act died from inaction in the Democratic Senate.  But if after the November elections the GOP can hold the House and gain the Senate with conservative reformers – or Republican incumbents scared straight by conservative primary challengers – then expect to see the REINS Act make great strides towards passage.

Our constitutional system needs Congress to get back in the game on regulation, if for no other reason than to reestablish accountability between the laws that govern us and the people we elect to pass them.

Good on Davis for picking Young to succeed him.  Now voters in the several states need to send another crop of conservative reformers to the Senate to help him out.

December 7th, 2011 at 6:41 pm
House Passes REINS Act, Senate Likely to Dither

Huzzah to the 241 members of the House of Representatives who, in a thinly bipartisan vote today (4 Democrats voted in favor), passed H.R. 10, better known as the Regulations from the Executive In Need of Scrutiny (REINS) Act.  As the acronym indicates, the bill wants to limit President Barack Obama’s ability to impose job-killing regulations on the economy.

How does the REINS Act purport to do its job?  If passed by the Senate and signed by the President then every new federal agency regulation inflicting at least $100 million in economic costs would be subject to an up-or-down vote by both houses of Congress.  ($100 million is the threshold for “major” regulations these days.)  When those bills fails – which they almost certainly will unless they are inextricably intertwined with a national security issue – the bureaucrats who dream up these obstacles to economic growth will have to go back to the drawing board and divine a less expensive way to grow the federal government.

Characteristically, the Democrats running the Senate and the one occupying the White House have promised to do nothing to help pass this bill.  (The President even threatened to veto it should enough Senate Dems have the temerity to save their states’ small business owners from the paperwork onslaught thanks to 219 new regulations poised to add thousands of dollars per worker in compliance costs.)

Today, fiscal conservatives can cheer passage of a real “job creation” bill thanks to the conservative plurality in the House of Representatives.  Next year, it will critically important to elect more of these to the Senate – and hopefully the presidency – so that America can get back to work.

October 28th, 2011 at 6:51 pm
REINS Act Moving Forward

Previously, I’ve written about the need to pass the Regulations from the Executive In Need of Scrutiny (REINS) Act by Rep. Geoff Davis (R-KY).  If passed, the bill would require all new bureaucratic rules costing $100 million or more to have an up-or-down, standalone vote in Congress, plus the President’s signature before going into effect.

The main purpose of the REINS Act is to give Congress a check on the administrative state so that job-killing regulations get a chance to be eliminated before going into effect.

This is yet another example giving the lie to President Obama’s charge of a do-nothing Congress, the House majority continues to move bills that will help the economy.  The House Judiciary Committee reported the bill favorably yesterday.  Here’s hoping it gets fast-tracked for a full House vote soon.

September 16th, 2011 at 2:49 pm
Boehner Rides the REINS

Speaker John Boehner’s jobs plan is well targeted. It was especially encouraging to see him lead with useful attacks on the regulatory state. As a matter of fact, if you look at the summary of his plan, you’ll see that item number one is about requiring congressional approval for “major” new regulations. What he’s referring to is the REINS Act, which we wrote about a couple of times while I was at the Washington Times. This is good stuff, and very important. Please do read those two links in the previous section for an explanation. The first of those came almost a year ago to the day; the numbers need updating, but this paragraph provides a sense of the problem:

Under the Obama administration, bureaucrats have gone wild, with the Code of Federal Regulations reaching a record 163,333 pages last year (and growing). That’s an increase of 22,000 pages since 2000. In 2008, the Small Business Administration estimated that the annual cost to the economy of these regulations was $1.75 trillion, which was even before the regulatory explosion under Mr. Obama.

On deregulation, Boehner is on the right track.