Quantcast
Channel: GardnerPath - Legislation
Viewing all articles
Browse latest Browse all 10

Gardner touts the REINS Act despite it's obvious Constitutional flaws

0
0

With Congress'disapproval rating at about 90%, Cory Gardner is touting a new House-passed bill, the REINS Act (Regulations from the Executive in Need of Scrutiny). Very clever name. Here's a bill that would actually give members of Congress more authority and power, taking any discretion away from the executive branch.

Whether you like the executive or not, you have to admit that Congress isn't exactly a public institution that deserves more authority over our day to day lives. With disapproval ratings that high, more than likely even family members of Congressmen don't think they are doing a good job. Why would we want to entrust them with even more?

The bill will never pass the Senate and no president in the history of presidenting would sign it, so it seems Gardner and Boehner have yet again put more priority in a go-nowhere bill than legislation that would actually make a difference for you and me.

What is the REINS Act? It says that any new big regulation, before being put in practice must be approved by Congress. Other than the absurdity of pushing a bill that won't become law and the problem of actually giving Congress more influence on technical and scientific matters, the REINS Act has many problems: practically and constitutionally.

Try passing laws, instead of promoting unpassable political agendas

First, Congress already has the power to override regulations they don't like. IT'S CALLED LEGISLATING! If they don't like a regulation, Congress can pass a law amending or repealing the law that allowed the regulation in the first place.

Regulations, unlike legislation, are not made out of thin air. Regulations are made because Congress passed a law saying that a certain administration official must write a regulation doing something. The way Congress can stop that regulation is to change the law. You know, do their jobs!

There are already procedures in the Constitution for writing laws, the GOP just doesn't feel like really trying to make law, they just want to score political points. Well ok, they can't really pass laws, because the GOP's radical agenda won't get through the Senate or be signed by the president.

Instead, they voted on a bill that would prevent them from having to change the laws of the US to further their agenda. They would never need to compromise or legislate with the REINS Act, they could successfully prevent laws from being executed without actually changing the law (meaning, without actually doing their jobs).

That's not Constitutional!

Not only is that process of changing the laws without having to change laws a slap in the face to our legal system, it's most likely unconstitutional. The Constitution says that to create laws certain procedures must be followed: most importantly for this bill, look up bicameralism and presentment.

Bicameralism is the idea that we have two chambers of Congress and for a law to take effect, the law must be debated and approved by majorities in both chambers. Presentment is that the President must be presented with and sign every law that Congress has approved (unless they override a veto, but that's an important check as well.) See INS v. Chadha for a much more intelligent reading of this than mine.

Yes, these are a lot of hoops to jump through, but nothing about making laws was meant to be easy. The key was on good debates and discussion, not speedy legislating (which we seem to have forgotten with everything else speeding up).

So to create a law, the law must be approved by both houses and must be signed by the president. But the same goes for amending a law or repealing a law. And that's an important distinction that the REINS Act fails to take into account.

Regulations are written pursuant to an existing law. In fact, the law was written with some vagueness in it specifically for later regulations to interpret and execute. Those regulations are written by subject matter experts (not elected hillbillies on power trips) and give the existing law a little meat on the bones. They flesh the thing out, giving the law the exactness that is needed to properly execute it.

The REINS Act says that those regulations must be approved by Congress in about 90 days or they don't go into effect. This would mean that regulations implementing an existing law could be indefinitely withheld as long as one house didn't bring the issue up for a vote.

One chamber of congress could indefinitely stop the execution of a law of the United States by not acting. That, in practice, is changing(or repealing) the law. The other chamber would not have a role, nor would the president. One chamber would thus be changing the law of the land without passing the Constitutional requirements of bicameralism and presentment. That one chamber's agenda would make law without passing a single piece of legislation.

That's bad.

Luckily, the REINS Act itself isn't going to be able to get through the Constitution's procedures to become law. It got through the GOP-led House, but the Senate won't pass it or vote on it and the President won't sign it. So it won't be law.

It is just another sad example of how this GOP-led House is accomplishing absolutely nothing, because of its single-minded obsession with political gain. It's wasting time while the nation's economic strengths waste away.

Categories: 

Viewing all articles
Browse latest Browse all 10

Latest Images

Trending Articles





Latest Images