Lee Unveils Article I Regulatory Budget Act
WASHINGTON—Today, Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) held an event with Reps. Mark Walker (R-NC), Jeb Hensarling (R-TX), and Rep. Dave Brat (R-VA) to unveil legislation designed to restore direct, accountable congressional control over the federal regulatory system.
The Article I Regulatory Budget Reform Act would, for the first time, require Congress to vote on the total regulatory burden each federal agency may impose on the American people each year. It would require a budget for federal regulatory costs similar to Congress’s annual budget for taxes and spending.
Under the discipline of a regulatory budget, Congress would be directly responsible for the size and scope of the regulatory state. Executive agencies could still issue and enforce their rules, but only so long as their impact fits within the regulatory-cost limits established by Congress.
In addition to Senator Lee, original co-sponsors to the Senate bill include Sen. Mike Enzi (R-WY) and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL). The House version, introduced by Rep. Mark Walker (R-NC), is co-sponsored by Chairman Hensarling (R-TX), and Reps. Dave Brat (R-VA), Mia Love (R-UT), John Ratcliffe (R-TX), and Berry Loudermilk (R-GA).
Senator Lee’s remarks as prepared for deliver are available below, and can be viewed here.
Thank you, Mike. And thanks to all of you for being here. It’s always great to be back at Hillsdale’s Kirby Center, and it’s wonderful to be here with all of you this morning.
It was almost four months ago that we gathered here, in front of this inspiring portrait, to launch the Article I Project – a new network of House and Senate conservatives working together on a new agenda of government reform and congressional rehabilitation.
The starting point for that agenda is the simple observation that the federal government is broken, and congressional weakness is to blame.
But it’s important not to conflate a broken federal government with an inoperative federal government. Likewise, we must be careful not to assume that congressional weakness is equivalent to congressional innocence.
Indeed, the problem that we’re here to address today – the problem of our hyperactive Executive Branch bureaucracy writing upwards of 95 percent of all new federal “laws” without winning a single vote in Congress or at the ballot box – was primarily created by the Legislative Branch for its own convenience.
At first glance, this may seem counterintuitive. After all, why would Congress willfully relinquish its legislative authority exclusively granted to it by Article I of the Constitution?
And more to the point, if the lawmaking powers now exercised by the Executive Branch were not usurped by bureaucratic agents, why is it so common to hear members of Congress rail against the federal bureaucracy and accuse its rule-writing agencies of executive overreach?
To understand why members of Congress would intentionally empower bureaucrats to legislate for them, we need to recognize that lawmaking is not just a power – it’s also a responsibility.
Legislating is hard work. This was the lesson of the classic Schoolhouse Rock episode, “I’m Just a Bill” – which, I should note for all the young people in the room, is available on YouTube.
In the animated video, a walking and talking legislative bill sitting on the steps of Capitol Hill explains to a young boy how laws are made in the federal government.
The process amounts to a “long, long journey” through Congress’s parallel committee systems. And it involves a “long, long wait” as members of the House and Senate amend and debate the bill in order to build the consensus needed for a majority to vote for it and send it to the president, who can either sign the bill into law or veto it.
Zeroing in on the moral of the story, the boy finally asks, “It’s not easy to become a law, is it?”
Nor should we expect it to be. There are 535 members of Congress representing some 318 million Americans living in thousands of communities spread across 50 sovereign states. It’s not easy for a group that large and diverse to agree on anything – let alone what the nation’s laws should be.
Legislating is also risky: if, after all that work, your constituents dislike the legislation you wrote or supported, they may vote you out of office the next chance they get!
Over the past century, successive generations of elected policymakers in Congress have sought to escape this stringent accountability inherent in constitutional lawmaking.
Instead of writing laws containing specific rules of action and distinct standards of legality, most major bills passed by Congress simply establish aspirational guidelines, while delegating to the Executive Branch the power to determine the specifics.
For the rule-writing bureaucrats, these open-ended laws are gifts that keep on giving. For instance, in the years since Congress first passed the Clean Air Act in 1977, federal bureaucrats have used the law to enact more than 13,500 pages of regulations – roughly 30 pages for every page of legislative text.
But for the American people, this kind of government without consent is a violation of the social compact at the heart of our Republic and exactly why they no longer trust the federal government.
Earning back the American people’s trust is the chief objective of the Article I Project’s agenda to re-empower Congress.
And it’s why today we’re introducing the Article I Regulatory Budget Act – a bill that will put the Legislative Branch back in charge of lawmaking and, by extension, put the American people back in charge of Washington.
I will let my colleagues dig into the details of the legislation, and I look forward to the input of the esteemed panelists that we’ll hear from later this morning.
If you’re interested in learning more about this reform and the ideas behind it, I would encourage you to pick up a copy of the A1P policy brief, “Leashing Leviathan: The Case for a Congressional Regulatory Budget.”
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Senators Demand DOJ Cease Investigation Into Opponents of President Obama’s Energy Policies
WASHINGTON – Sens. Mike Lee (R-UT), Ted Cruz (R-TX), Jeff Sessions (R-AL), David Perdue (R-GA), and David Vitter (R-LA) sent a letter to Attorney General Loretta Lynch Thursday demanding that the Department of Justice end its use of law enforcement resources against political opponents of President Obama’s energy agenda.
“These actions provide disturbing confirmation that government officials at all levels are threatening to wield the sword of law enforcement to silence debate on climate change,” the letter reads. “As you well know, initiating criminal prosecution for a private entity’s opinions on climate change is a blatant violation of the First Amendment and an abuse of power that rises to the level of prosecutorial misconduct.”
The letter goes on to demand that Attorney General Lynch confirm that all investigations into any private individual’s views on climate change end within 14 days and promise not to initiate any future such investigations. Full text of the letter is available here.
“Threatening prosecution of those who dare to challenge the most outlandish scaremongering by climate activists strikes at the very heart of the Free Speech protections on which this nation was founded,” Lee said. “Issuing subpoenas to harass researchers and academics with whom they have communicated, as some state attorneys general offices have done, shows a basic disregard for Americans' Freedom of Association. The public expects us to prevent such abuses, not perpetrate them. It is our responsibility to contain the inevitable chilling effects by calling for an end to any consideration by the Department of Justice of such harassment at once.”
“Freedom of thought and inquiry is at the very heart of liberty,” Cruz said. “Sadly, the Obama administration and its allies in state attorney general offices across the country are threatening to use the power of government to intimidate and ultimately silence companies and researchers who do not agree with the government’s opinions about the allegedly harmful effects of climate change and what should be done about it. This is an abuse of power and a direct assault on the First Amendment. The Obama Justice Department should immediately cease any further consideration of such action and should instead do everything in its power to protect the freedom of thought of all Americans.”
“I have serious concerns any time that the Department of Justice uses its power to repress constitutionally protected speech and open dialogue on any public policy issue," Perdue said. "Given the unprecedented politicization of the Obama Justice Department, the Senate Judiciary Committee’s oversight responsibilities have become more important than ever before. There is no place in our democracy for politically-motivated investigations by the Department of Justice.”
“Unnecessary government intrusion of private citizens’ lives is an unfortunate characteristic of the reign of the Obama Administration,” Vitter said. “It is contemptible for the Justice Department to target and threaten individual American citizens and private or non-profit organizations in pursuit of its far-left environmental agenda.”
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Lee Questions Experts on Impact of Robots on Automation
WASHINGTON—On Wednesday, Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) chaired a Joint Economic Committee hearing titled “The Transformative Impact of Robots and Automation.” Hearing witnesses included Dr. Andrew McAfee, Principal Research Scientist at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT); Mr. Adam Keiper, Fellow and Editor of The New Atlantis;” and Dr. Harry Holzer, Professor at Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy.
Lee questioned witnesses about the future of coding-related jobs, mentioning the innovative programs that some Utah schools have implemented to give their students an introduction to basic coding. He also asked about the innate human desire to create value and to be valued, and whether it could be hazardous to implement policies that subsidize non-work. You can watch the exchanges here.
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Lee NDAA Amendment Calls for Study of Selective Service Needs
WASHINGTON – Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) filed an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act Thursday that would strike a requirement that women register for the selective service and replace it with a requirement for the Department of Defense to issue a report on the current and future national security needs by July 1, 2017.
“Forcing women to register for the draft would be a sea change not only for our Armed Services but culturally as well,” Lee said. “I simply have not seen enough research from the Department of Defense on why this is needed or how it would work,” Lee continued. “My amendment would not prevent any woman from earning a combat role, but it would require the Pentagon to study whether we need to force women to fight.”
The decision by the Department of Defense last year to open all Military Occupational Specialties to service-members regardless of gender created a legal dilemma for Congress, as Rostker vs. Goldberg (1981) found that selective service was constitutional because of the combat restrictions on women’s service. Lee’s amendment would also ensure that Congress is the only branch of government that can change the application and interpretation of the Military Selective Service Act.
The amendment is cosponsored Sens. Ted Cruz (R-TX), Jim Inhofe (R-OK), Ben Sasse (R-NE), Mike Rounds (R-SD), and Roger Wicker (R-MS).
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May 27, 2016
"to elevate the condition of men--to lift artificial weights from all shoulders, to clear the paths of laudable pursuit for all, to afford all an unfettered start and a fair chance, in the race of life." --Abraham Lincoln
Chairman's Note: The Climate Change Bullies
It has long been obvious that the Democratic Party’s assertion that the science of climate change is “settled” is little more than a cheap public-relations ploy masquerading as a monopoly on scientific knowledge. To give the matter a moment’s thought is to recognize that science – that field of inquiry dedicated to testing new theories, challenging prevailing views of the natural world, and overturning the conventional wisdom of the scientific community – cannot be settled.
But for anyone still skeptical that the Democratic Party’s science-is-settled claim is not just a hackneyed platitude but a tool of propaganda, consider the recent statements from the Obama Administration’s top lawyer and head of the Department of Justice (DOJ), Attorney General Loretta Lynch.
On March 10 Attorney General Lynch told the Senate Judiciary Committee that the DOJ has engaged in internal discussions exploring the possibility of prosecuting organizations and individuals for holding opinions about climate change that she and the other lawyers at DOJ find objectionable. Attorney General Lynch even admitted that she has already referred the matter to the criminal investigative division within the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
So “settled” is climate-change science that fealty to its irrefutable and permanent conclusions must be compelled through the threat of violence by the nation’s top law-enforcement agency.
Outrage and condemnation are the appropriate responses to the Obama Administration’s inclination to deploy the DOJ and FBI to harass American citizens for holding unfashionable opinions.
"So at the same time that we denounce the tinpot bully and resist with unshakeable firmness his attempts to suppress debate on today’s most controversial topics, we must not forget also to mock him."
Initiating criminal prosecution for a private entity’s opinions on climate change is a blatant violation of the First Amendment and an abuse of power that rises to the level of prosecutorial misconduct. That’s why I recently joined four of my colleagues – Senators Cruz (TX), Sessions (AL), Perdue (GA), and Vitter (LA) – in sending a letter to Attorney General Lynch demanding that the DOJ immediately cease its ongoing use of law-enforcement resources to stifle private debate on climate change.
But it’s also important to see this episode for what it really is. Threatening to imprison those who disagree with the Democratic Party’s radical climate-change agenda is not only a stunning indulgence of the authoritarian temptation – it’s an embarrassing attempt, by a lame-duck president desperate for attention, to short-circuit a debate that could not be won fair and square. Like the playground bully who picks up the ball and walks home when he knows he’s going to lose the game, by attempting to stifle free inquiry and debate, rather than engage in it, the Obama Administration is doing what sore losers always do.
So at the same time that we denounce the tinpot bully and resist with unshakeable firmness his attempts to suppress debate on today’s most controversial topics, we must not forget also to mock him.
The Impact of Automation on Education and the Workforce
Issue in Focus: Let’s Stop Government Hacking Before It Starts
Should a Department of Justice prosecutor under the direction of President Obama’s Attorney General have the power to hack into the phone or computer of virtually anyone in the United States if they have convinced just one sympathetic judge of their choosing to give them a warrant to do so?
That is the question the Supreme Court of the United States sent to Congress in late April, and if Congress does not act before December 1st, Attorney General Loretta Lynch will be given this new power.
The issue stems from the arcane way the procedural rules that govern how federal criminal trials are conducted (a.ka. the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure) are written and changed.
For two years now, the Obama administration has pushed for changes to Rule 41(b)(6)(B) that would allow a single judge to issue a nationwide warrant empowering the federal government to hack into any computer that they believe may be part of a botnet. Last month the Supreme Court approved that new rule.
Botnets are a tool used by hackers to commandeer computers by often unsuspecting third parties towards the hackers own ends, whether it be sending spam email, coordinating a denial-of-service attack, or distributing pornography.
The new rule, if it is adopted, would revolutionize the manner in which the government is able to access your phone or computer. Currently, the government must apply for a single warrant in the judicial district where the search would take place. Under the new rule, however, this deliberate and focused process would be scrapped in favor of a nationwide warrant to search millions of devices anywhere across the country.
This is not just a “procedural” rule change. This would change the substantive privacy rights of every American.
Congress must step up its oversight of this issue. Under current law, Congress can stop the change to Rule 41(b)(6)(B) from going into effect with simple majority disapprovals from both the House of Representatives and the Senate. But we have to act before December 1st, otherwise the change automatically goes into effect.
