June 1, 2016
Fighting executive overreach, Rep. Salmon reins in agency “guidance”
Washington, D.C. — Rep. Matt Salmon (AZ-05) released the following statement after introducing a bill to subject executive agency “guidance” to Congressional oversight. “When we watch the news at night, we see the countless ways the federal bureaucracy has involved itself in our lives. Unfortunately, existing laws that subject rules and regulations to congressional scrutiny only apply to items called ‘rules’ or ‘regulations’. As the President’s minions in the alphabet soup of Washington D.C. agencies increasingly issue lawless edicts termed ‘guidance’ to harass the American people, we need to extend these requirements to include all decrees from the officers of the state.”
The Congressional Review Act empowers Congress to review new federal regulations and vote to block the regulation. What is known today as “regulatory dark matter”, regulations that don’t go through the traditional notice and comment process, can pile up without any congressional oversight. This bill will amend the Congressional Review Act to allow Congress to overrule guidance documents through the same process.
