House Approves Bill to Curb Regulation, Despite Veto Threat

The House on Wednesday approved a long-sought regulatory reform bill that had already prompted a White House veto threat, establishing a pattern likely to continue throughout the 114^th Congress.

The Unfunded Mandates Information and Transparency Act, sponsored during the past four congresses by Rep. Virginia Foxx, R-N.C., passed 250-173. It would “shed light on how federal policies impact the budgets of state and local governments and private sector employers,” Foxx said in a statement. “Americans are better served when regulators are required to measure and consider the costs of the rules they create.”

The bill (H.R. 50) would expand and codify parts of the 1995 Unfunded Mandates Reform Act to require independent regulatory agencies to comply with its standards relating to the rulemaking process and to allow judicial review of regulatory actions that fail to comply with that law, according to a Congressional Budget Office analysis. CBO’s score said the bill would increase net direct spending by $18 million from 2015 to 2025, primarily for costs incurred at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

The Office of Management and Budget, in a veto threat issued Feb. 3, said the bill “would create needless grounds for judicial review, unduly slowing and increasing the cost of the regulatory process “would introduce needless uncertainty into agency decision-making and undermine the ability of agencies to provide critical public health and safety protections.”

The Obama administration has been pursuing new cost-benefit analysis of regulations for six years, but Republicans and industry continue to protest burdensome rules.

The bill’s passage was blasted by Americans for Financial Reform, a coalition of consumer, labor and civil rights nonprofits, which called it “the latest effort to cripple regulators' ability to protect the public interest by loading them down with new paperwork requirements and enabling even more industry lawsuits.” Attacking an amendment to the bill to reduce the controversial consumer bureau’s budget authority by $36 million, the coalition said the bill “would tilt the playing field even further in favor of financial sector companies and lobbyists. It would be a gift to Wall Street and would invite a resurgence of the reckless practices that caused such enormous economic damage just six years ago.”

Because of the Republican takeover the Senate, the bill’s chances for reaching the president’s desk are far higher than in past congresses.

(Image via bioraven / Shutterstock.com)