Providing for consideration of the bill (H.R. 5) to reform the process by which Federal agencies analyze and formulate new regulations and guidance documents, to clarify the nature of judicial review of agency interpretations, to ensure complete analysis of potential impacts on small entities of rules, and for other purposes, and providing for consideration of the bill (H.R. 79) to clarify the definition of general solicitation under Federal securities law.

Mr. Chairman, I thank the ranking member and the chairman.

I rise in opposition to H.R. 5, the Regulatory Accountability Act of 2017. I have a number of concerns with many provisions of this voluminous page, this 82-page bill. It has not gone through regular order, not one committee meeting. Congress just came into session last week. So we have got 50-plus new Members in this body who have not had one single day of an opportunity to pay any attention to learn what is in this bill. Yet, my colleagues on the other side of the aisle are going to force their folks to vote ``yes'' on this bill. I urge them to vote ``no'' and think about it. The reason they should think about it is because H.R. 5 is a destructive revision of the Administrative Procedure Act which fiendishly convolutes the agency rulemaking process through numerous analytical requirements. We call that gumming up the works.

These requirements, which are largely opposed by the Nation's leading administrative law experts, would cause years of delays in the rulemaking process and deregulate entire industries through rulemaking avoidance by agencies.

In addition to imposing over 60 new procedural requirements on regulatory protections, title I of H.R. 5 imposes a new super-mandate requiring that agencies adopt the least costly rule considered during the rulemaking that meets relevant statutory objectives and permits agencies to choose a more expensive option only if the additional benefits justify its additional costs.

The AFL-CIO has observed that this provision would make protecting workers and the public secondary. Limiting costs and impacts on business and corporations is the prime purpose of this legislation. There is little doubt that this proposal will compromise public health, workplace safety, and environmental protections. Agencies will be forced to make penny-wise and pound-foolish decisions. It costs more to remedy an environmental or financial calamity than it would be to protect the public from the calamity occurring in the first place, which the underlying regulation would do, but they don't want regulations. This is unbelievable.

Title II of the bill abolishes judicial deference to agencies' reasoned statutory interpretations, which has been a hallmark of judicial review for more than three decades. Talk about judicial restraint and not legislating from the bench. That is what the Supreme Court in its Chevron rule has emphasized over the last three decades.

In addition to incentivizing judicial activism by generalist courts, which could engage in rulemaking from the bench by making policy decisions rather than strictly interpreting the law, this provision will also make the regulatory system more costly and time-consuming because it would require agencies to take even more time to promulgate critical protections that the court ultimately decides on its own through its ability to legislate from the bench that it doesn't like. This is nonsense. It is hypocritical.

Title III of the bill further paralyzes agency rulemaking through unworkable, complex requirements, while endowing the hallowed Small Business Administration's Office of Advocacy with broad authority to act as the gatekeeper of our Nation's entire regulatory system. As the Center for Progressive Reform reported in a 2013 report, this entity, this Small Business Administration's Office of Advocacy, exists in an unchecked capacity to funnel ``special interest pressure into agency rulemakings, even though such interests have already had ample opportunity to comment on proposed regulations.''

So in other words, the Small Business Administration's Office of Advocacy is a back door wide open to corporate interests seeking to come in and undermine the regulatory authority of an agency.

At a time when there has been much talking and tweeting about draining the swamp, this measure would function as a green light to special interests to manipulate the regulatory system in their favor.

Moreover, my Republican colleagues' repeated claims that this measure will create regulation by representation, or clawback authority from the executive branch, that argument is fundamentally undermined by the fact that this bill consolidates the role of a subagency, the Small Business Administration, in such an opaque and reckless manner.

Have Members ever heard of any legislation that purports to take power back from unelected bureaucrats and then places it right back in the hands of a bureaucrat in the same piece of legislation? This is ridiculous.

Title IV of H.R. 5 would automatically delay the effective date of any rule exceeding $1 billion in costs that is challenged in court, regardless of whether the party challenging the rule has any likelihood of success on the merits, is actually harmed by the rule, or whether staying the rule would be contrary to public interest.

So while they sit here and take the rights of regular, ordinary working people to sue corporations under the guise of so-called tort reform, they turn around in this legislation, open the courthouse door wide to corporations to come in and file frivolous complaints against a regulation and automatically stall it. This is ridiculous.

This legislation is rife with corporate protections at the expense of the people, and I ask my colleagues to vote ``no'' on this legislation.

Mr. Chair, I rise in opposition to this amendment.

Mr. Chair, to say that this amendment stops judicial activism is stretching things a little bit, I believe. This opens the floodgates to judicial activism, the Goodlatte amendment, so that is why I oppose the amendment. It revises title II of the bill to eliminate agencies' ``gap-filling'' authority when interpreting ambiguous statutes.

Judicial review of final agency action is a hallmark of administrative law and is critical to ensuring that agency action does not harm or adversely affect the public. But as the Supreme Court held, in Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council in 1984, reviewing courts may only invalidate an agency action when it violates a constitutional provision or when an agency exceeds its statutory authority as clearly expressed by Congress.

That is a clear rule that has worked fine for America for the last 30 years. Over that time, this seminal decision has required deference to the substantive expertise and political accountability of Federal agencies because, after all, judges don't have political accountability because they are appointed for life. They are not elected by the people.

So this legislation is turning around this very fair and balanced court decision and, instead, imposing a new setup, one that invites judges--whom they appoint, by the way. They are the ones who have refused, for the last year, to appoint or to consider the appointment of a U.S. Supreme Court Justice so that they could get a Republican in the White House.

They did not want anybody other than somebody made to order, and this is what this legislation lays the groundwork for is that new Supreme Court Justice who has yet to be named by a Republican incoming President. But you can bet it will be one who has corporate interests at heart instead of that of middle class and working people and regular, ordinary people. You can bet that that Supreme Court representative will be ready to do away with the Chevron doctrine and comply with this legislative mandate, which is open season on regulations, allowing the Federal judiciary to impose its political beliefs on regulations.

So that is going to be bad for America. Generalist courts, which are constitutionally insulated from political accountability, should not have the power to second-guess agency experts concerning the appropriateness of highly technical regulations crucial to protecting the health and safety of millions of Americans.

Moreover, this doctrine promotes predictability for businesses and the public. Professor Levin notes that ``because citizens can put some confidence in the expectation that decisions by a centralized agency will not be readily overturned by a variety of courts in different parts of the country,'' that contributes to predictability.

Title II of H.R. 5, however, would upend this longstanding precedent by abolishing the Chevron doctrine.

This amendment further puts the thumb on the scale against lifesaving protections by ensuring that practically any statutory ambiguity will be resolved in favor of a regulated entity and against agency action, no matter how important.

This amendment is also a solution in search of a problem. As Professor Levin has testified, ``the field of administrative law has worked out a variety of political and judicial oversight mechanisms to maintain a delicate balance of power among the branches of government.''

Any administrative action based on an ambiguous statute could be challenged by an affected party, and these checks already apply to judicial review.

Finally, this measure would apply equally to regulatory and deregulatory actions. John Walke, the clean air director and senior attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council warns that if an ``administration more ideologically opposed to regulation wishes to take advantage of the inevitable vagueness, conflicts, and gaps in federal statutes, it may adopt the least protective regulation permissible under a federal law.''

Mr. Chair, because this is a bad amendment, I ask that it be opposed.

Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chair, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the Chaffetz amendment. This amendment establishes a deadline of 270 days-- a magical number of days--for some reason. There is no reason given for that being the number of days, but that is what they give to the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, or OIRA, to issue guidelines pursuant to title I of this bill.

Why 270 days?

Well, I think I can answer that question. They know that OIRA is not equipped to sufficiently deal with regulations within that same amount of time period. We have had all this budget cutting going on. We have been attacking the Federal Government regulatory authorities throughout the entire 6 years that Republicans have been in control of this House. They have done 6 years' worth of hobbling OIRA, and now they are going to come forward and impose a 270-day requirement. That is like asking someone who you have handicapped to run in a relay race that you know they can't win.

To begin with, I would note that OIRA, which typically has fewer than 50 employees, often serves as a bottleneck for the promulgation of economically significant rules, as reported last year by Public Citizen.

Moreover, as a group of the Nation's leading administrative law scholars have noted that the Regulatory Accountability Act is ``unusually ambitious and crammed with details that are impossible to summarize,'' that will ``further ossify the rulemaking process with little offsetting benefits in the form of better rules.''

Many of these new procedures task OIRA with making numerous new determinations and expanded review of formal rulemaking. In addition, to hobbling over the last 6 years, and then imposing a deadline of an arbitrary and capricious number of days, you are going to heap additional requirements upon them without increasing their staff that you have already cut.

Given the sheer breadth of these requirement, it may be difficult or impossible for OIRA to comply with the deadline imposed by this amendment, absent additional congressional appropriations, which, of course, they are not interested in.

Accordingly, I rise to oppose the amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I think what I gather is that we need better regulations. Therefore, we have to provide more requirements on OIRA with respect to the regulations it issues, while at the same time claiming that regulations are bad and we have unelected bureaucrats and all of this kind of stuff like that.

So we need better laws to allow them to regulate better. Then we are going to give them 270 days, which is a little more than we give the average agency. Well, I thank you for that, but you have not increased the manpower of the agency to deal with the new requirements that you are stacking on them. It just doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

The real reason for this amendment is to help foster the gumming up of the Federal regulatory system. That is what it is all about. There are a lot of little small ways of doing that, heaping it on top of the larger measure, which is itself just inimical to good rulemaking. This is a game, and the American people are the big losers.

Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I claim the time in opposition.

Mr. Chairman, this amendment would require agencies to provide a detailed economic assessment prior to certifying that a rule will not have a significant economic impact on a substantial number of small business entities.

I oppose this bill for a number of reasons. Number one, it forces agencies to prove a negative. The negative being that it will not have a significant--bookmark that for a second--a significant economic impact on a substantial number of small entities.

I mean, proving a negative is always very difficult to do, that it won't do this. Certainly very difficult. But then when you give the decisionmaker a vague and ambiguous frame of reference like ``significant,'' what does significant economic impact mean?

It means different things to different people. So that is vague and ambiguous. It allows for unbridled discretion by an unelected bureaucrat, to use that term that my friends like to use, but in this instance I am using it with respect to a newly appointed plutocratic bureaucrat like, say, Linda McMahon at the Small Business Administration, a billionaire. Give that to, you know, a bureaucrat such as that and let them decide whether or not it has a significant economic impact. They are going to say, yes, it has a significant economic impact. They are going to do it every time because that is their agenda. They support a pro-big-business agenda. That is what they represent, and so that is how they would rule.

When you add that it has to be a substantial number of small businesses, well, what is a substantial number? Is it 10 percent, 20 percent, 50 percent?

That is up to whoever the decisionmaker is, the unelected bureaucrat. We see the setup. I think the American people understand what this amendment seeks to do. It requires agencies to provide a detailed economic assessment of the economic impacts of a proposed or final rule prior to certifying that the rule will not have a significant economic impact on a substantial number of small businesses.

Title III of H.R. 5 substantially increases agencies' responsibilities with respect to rulemaking, including a requirement to supply a detailed statement that includes the factual and legal basis of the reasons why an agency has determined that a proposed or final rule will not have a significant economic impact on small businesses. Boy, you can just chase your tail all around for days trying to meet that standard.

This onerous measure will force agencies to expend already strained resources and incur considerable costs to implement the bill. Also, giving corporations an opportunity to contest these arbitrary decisions if they go the right way in court.

Unsurprisingly, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that an identical version of this legislation considered last Congress would cost $55 million over the 2015-2020 period, assuming appropriation of the necessary funds.

By requiring agencies to quantify the economic effects that a rulemaking will have on small businesses, which may be unknowable in some cases, this amendment may task agencies with providing an economic report on a counterfactual hypothetical basis. This requirement would do little to ease compliance costs or promote small business development or growth, and more likely it will lead to regulatory avoidance and ossification and less small business activity because the big businesses are going to be allowed to crowd them out. Accordingly, I oppose

this amendment and urge my colleagues to do the same.

Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, it is already covered in current law, so why do we need this amendment?

Well, it is a messaging piece to be able to say to the listening audience that we support small business. Well, gosh, I think we have answered that question here on this side whether or not they really do support small business. It is clear they support big business, and that is what this amendment is going to help facilitate without adding to the overall bill. For that reason, I ask that we oppose it.

Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I respectfully claim the time in opposition.

Mr. Chairman, I oppose this amendment which would prohibit Federal agencies from making any public communications that would promote a pending regulatory action.

We can all agree that the rulemaking process should be transparent, flexible, and accountable to the public. But rather than achieve this goal, my colleagues' amendment would decrease transparency in the rulemaking process and burden agency rulemaking with little corresponding benefits to the public.

A variety of statutes, including the Administrative Procedure Act and agency specific statutes, already prescribe the method that agencies may communicate to the public with regard to proposed rules. Agencies should, and indeed are required by law to, communicate why rules are beneficial to the public. For example, in 2014, the Department of Defense proposed a rule to protect servicemembers and their families from predatory lending schemes. In a press release discussing the rule, the Defense Department highlighted the benefits of the rule such as ``this proposed rule would better protect Active Duty servicemembers and their families from excessive debt.''

This plain language explanation of the proposed rule would be flatly prohibited by this amendment. Indeed, there is little that an agency could discuss about a pending rule that would not be considered to be promoting the rule within the meaning of this amendment.

In the context of the proposed deregulation actions, in 2003, Bush administration officials posed with chainsaws and scissors next to a stack of papers to promote efforts to cut red tape. It is doubtful that this form of public communication would be permissible under this amendment. By the way, to see the Bush administration officials with a chainsaw and scissors going at regulations reminds me of what we are doing here today.

In the context of a veto threat of a similar antiregulatory proposal last Congress, the Obama administration stated that similar requirements would prevent agencies from efficiently performing their statutory responsibilities and potentially lead to a less informed public.

Mr. Chairman, I oppose this amendment, and I urge my colleagues to do so as well.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, Congressman Gerald Connolly wanted it to be known for the record that agency employees are already barred under appropriations bills from engaging in publicity or propaganda. Agency employees are specifically barred from engaging in substantial grass-roots lobbying campaigns when those campaigns are aimed at encouraging members of the public to pressure Members of Congress to support

administration or department legislative or appropriations proposals.

Mr. Chairman, I have no further speakers.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the gentleman's amendment.

Mr. Chairman, any time I hear the name ``Mercatus Center'' I think of pro-big business, antiregulation. This amendment imposes even more paralyzing rulemaking requirements to the more than 60 analytical and procedural requirements that are already mandated by title I of this bill. You are giving them more homework on top of homework--busywork, red tape. Gum up the works--that is what this is all about.

The amendment would require agencies to assess the economic impacts of major rules every 5 years, including a cost-benefit analysis of the rule every 5 years, an estimate of the rule's cost on regulated entities, and whether these costs exceed an agency's initial estimates, among other requirements. Worse yet, once this information is compiled, the amendment would also require the agency to reopen the public docket on the rule for 60 days to consider modifications to the underlying rule.

Under current law, Federal agencies already conduct an extensive retrospective review process of existing rules and have already saved taxpayers billions in cost savings. This is yet another attempt to derail the rulemaking process by paralysis through analysis.

Since 2011, the Obama administration has made a durable commitment to ensuring the retrospective review of existing regulatory protections. Pursuant to Executive Order Nos. 13563 and 13610, agencies are already required to conduct a periodic review of existing rules to protect public health while reducing paperwork burdens.

Furthermore, as the Obama administration stated in the context of a veto threat of a similarly draconian antiregulatory proposal, ``it is important that retrospective review efforts not unnecessarily constrain an agency's ability to provide a timely response to critical public health or safety issues or constrain its ability to implement new statutory provisions.''

This amendment would do just that by requiring agencies to conduct a perpetual notice-and-comment process for major rules that have been adopted long ago. I urge my colleagues to oppose this amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Cuellar).

Mr. Chairman, the bottom line is that my friends on the other side of the aisle, in their quest to satisfy the big businesses that fund these campaigns, don't like regulations that protect the health, safety, and well-being of Americans, including children, including the elderly, the weak, the sick. They are trying to get rid of the Affordable Care Act; trying to kill those regulations; trying to kill regulations on Dodd-Frank, which is protecting people from financial ruin by Wall Street barons.

This is an incessant march toward a deregulatory environment. We can't let it continue unabated. We must protest. We must speak out. We must do the right thing to protect the people of this

country. For that reason, I urge my colleagues to oppose this amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chair, I claim the time in opposition.

Mr. Chair, I appreciate my friend Mr. Young's amendment which establishes a 90-day compliance period for guidance documents when, in the underlying legislation, it makes clear that during any compliance period for guidance it is nonbinding. So I rise in opposition to this amendment which imposes an unnecessary and burdensome 90-day waiting period for agencies to issue guidance documents.

Importantly, as a form of nonlegislative rule, guidance documents do not have the force of law and are not subject to the Administrative Procedure Act's notice and comment requirements. Section 104 of H.R. 5 already clarifies that these documents are not legally binding and may not be relied upon by an agency as legal grounds for agency action.

This provision additionally requires agencies to make this document available to the public and provide a plain and prominent statement that the document is not legally binding. Given the requirements that already exist in current law and the additional requirements imposed by title I of this bill, it is difficult to ascertain why an additional 90-day compliance period for guidance that is not legally binding is warranted.

Furthermore, in all cases, regulated entities have ample opportunity to challenge rules, including guidance, as ``arbitrary or capricious'' under the Administrative Procedure Act where an agency lacks statutory authority to issue the guidance or the guidance is otherwise legally unsound.

Indeed, as Justice Elena Kagan noted in 2015 in Paralyzed Veterans v. Mortgage Bankers, the APA contains a variety of constraints on agency decisionmaking, the arbitrary and capricious standard being among the most notable.

Accordingly, I oppose the amendment, and I urge my colleagues to do the same.

Mr. Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous materials on H.R. 5.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Chairman, it is a new day in America. For 8 years, the Obama administration has brought us one thing in response to the Nation's need for recovery from hard times--failure.

Bold, innovative measures to unleash American freedom, opportunity, and resourcefulness could have brought prosperity's return after the Great Recession, just as under Ronald Reagan following his era's recession.

But the Obama administration responded differently, with measure after overreaching measure, through regulation, taxes, and spending. It was consumed by the folly of trying to force transformation from the American people through command and control from Washington. Everywhere it went, it sought to choose the winners and losers.

When Washington tries to choose the winners and losers, we all lose. And lose we have. We have a national debt of $20 trillion thanks to the outgoing administration's blowout spending. We have an economy that for 8 years has failed to produce enough good, new, full-time jobs to sustain growth and restore dignity to the unemployed. We

have 92 million Americans outside the workforce, a level not seen since the Carter years, and nearly $2 trillion of American wealth is commandeered each year to be spent as Washington bureaucrats see fit, through runaway regulation.

But it is a new day in America. An incoming administration promises a new approach to make America great again. Central to that approach is regulatory reform. The Obama administration abused regulation to force its will on the American people. The assembling Trump administration promises to wipe out abusive regulation, freeing Americans to innovate and prosper once more. Today's legislation will give this new administration the tools.

The heart of today's bill, the Regulatory Accountability Act, title I, restores to the people the true right to be heard by Washington's regulators. It commands Washington bureaucrats to listen to the facts and ideas offered by the people and to follow them when they are better than the bureaucracy's own. It calls on regulatory agencies to achieve the benefits Congress has called on them through statutes to achieve. But it gives the people full opportunities to offer fresh alternatives for doing so and to vet with the agencies the facts and ideas that work and those that don't.

After the public has fully contributed its say, agencies must choose the lowest cost alternative proven to work, achieving the needed benefits but rejecting unneeded costs. That leaves resources free to generate the benefits, create the jobs, and yield the higher wages only the private sector, through hard work and ingenuity, can achieve.

The other titles of the bill strongly buttress this reform.

Title II, the Separation of Powers Restoration Act, wipes out judicial deference to agency interpretations of statutes and regulations and restores to our system of checks and balances the rule Justice Marshall declared in Marbury v. Madison that ``it is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is''--not the bureaucracy. When title II is law, our courts will no more be rubber stamps for runaway regulatory interpretations that burst the bounds of what Congress truly intended through statutes.

Title III, the Small Business Regulatory Flexibility Improvements Act, provides teeth to existing law written to prompt regulatory agencies to tailor flexibility for small businesses into their rules. Small businesses have fewer resources to comply with Washington's mandates. They need flexibility to survive. The terms of existing law for too long have been ignored by Washington bureaucrats. Title III assures the law will no longer be ignored, resulting in freedom and flexibility for America's small businesses, which create the lion's share of new jobs in this country and are pillars of communities across this land.

Title IV prevents one of the most egregious of bureaucrats' regulatory abuses: the promulgation of new rules that impose over a billion dollars in annual compliance costs, which must then be complied with even while meritorious litigation challenging their issuance proceeds in court. Title IV, the REVIEW Act, eliminates this abuse, forcing agencies to stay their billion-dollar rules administratively if they are timely challenged in court.

And in titles V and VI of the bill, the ALERT Act and the Providing Accountability Through Transparency Act, this legislation delivers much-needed, greater transparency for the public about what new regulations agencies are developing and proposing so they can better prepare to comment on what is proposed, shape what is promulgated, and comply with final rules.

With the help of these reforms, we can truly make America more competitive again, put Americans back to work, and free America's entrepreneurs to innovate and launch more exciting new products and services again.

I thank my colleagues, Small Business Committee Chairman Chabot, Subcommittee Chairman Marino, Representative Ratcliffe, and Representative Luetkemeyer, who have joined me in contributing titles to this legislation.

I urge all of my colleagues to support this bill, and I reserve the balance of my time.

House of Representatives, Committee on Oversight and

Government Reform,

Washington, DC, January 6, 2017.

Hon. Bob Goodlatte,

Chairman, Committee on the Judiciary, Washington, DC.

Dear Mr. Chairman: I write concerning H.R. 5, the

Regulatory Accountability Act of 2017. As you know, the

Committee on the Judiciary received an original referral and

the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform a secondary

referral when the bill was introduced on January 3, 2017. I

recognize and appreciate your desire to bring this

legislation before the House of Representatives in an

expeditious manner, and accordingly, the Committee on

Oversight and Government Reform will forego action on the

bill.

The Committee takes this action with our mutual

understanding that by foregoing consideration of H.R. 5 at

this time, we do not waive any jurisdiction over the subject

matter contained in this or similar legislation. Further, I

request your support for the appointment of conferees from

the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform during any

House-Senate conference convened on this or related

legislation.

Finally, I would ask that a copy of our exchange of letters

on this matter be included in the Congressional Record during

floor consideration to memorialize our understanding.

Sincerely,

Jason Chaffetz,

Chairman.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Utah (Mr. Chaffetz) who is the chairman of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee and a member of the Judiciary Committee.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from California (Mr. McCarthy) who is the distinguished majority leader of the House.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Marino), the chairman of the Regulatory Reform, Commercial and Antitrust Law Subcommittee and the chief sponsor of one of the bills contained herein.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Chabot), the chairman of the Small Business Committee, a member of the Judiciary Committee, and the chief sponsor of one of the bills contained herein.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Ratcliffe), a member of the Judiciary Committee and the chief sponsor of two of the measures contained here.

Mr. Chairman, may I inquire how much time is remaining on each side.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Peterson), the ranking member of the House Agriculture Committee.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Luetkemeyer), the chief sponsor of one of the bills contained herein.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Rothfus).

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Kelly).

Mr. Chairman, at this time it is my pleasure to yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Knight).

Mr. Chair, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

The facts are plain, the conclusion is clear: the rampant tide of unchecked, unbalanced Federal regulation is overwhelming job creators and households all across this Nation. Thanks to Washington's endless excess of regulations, hardworking Americans face higher prices, lower wages, fewer jobs, and fewer new business starts; and America as a whole is less competitive, less innovative, and less prosperous.

Federal regulations now impose an estimated burden of an amazing $1.89 trillion per year. That burden is burying America's job creators and suffocating job opportunities. It equals roughly $15,000 per U.S. household, over 10 percent of America's GDP, and more than the GDP of all but eight countries in the world.

The Obama administration set new records for numbers and effects of major regulations, over 600 in total, with an average of 81 per year. That is roughly one every 3 working days. Through just August 2016, these rules had economic effects of over $740 billion and imposed 194 million paperwork burden-hours; and this only built upon the insufficiently checked regulation already imposed by previous administrations.

This problem must be solved, and this bill is the number one solution to this problem. Its bold, innovative measures will unleash American freedom, opportunity, and resourcefulness by dramatically reducing new regulatory costs; and they will do that while still allowing agencies to achieve the benefits that Congress' statutes have tasked them to achieve.

Far fewer costs, all the benefits, who could be against that? We all should be for it, just as the American people are.

Support the American people. Support the Regulatory Accountability Act. I urge my colleagues to do so.

Mr. Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chair, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. Chairman, if Congress is effectively to rein in the runaway administrative state, a crucial part of the plan must be to overturn, legislatively, the doctrines of judicial deference to agencies' interpretations of the statutes and regulations they administer. These doctrines, founded in the Supreme Court's decision in Chevron v. NRDC and Auer v. Robbins, have, over the years, turned the courts far too much into a rubberstamp rather than a vigorous check on the self-serving tendencies of agencies to interpret the law to expand their own power.

Title II of the bill, the Separation of Powers Act, delivers this legislative reversal of Chevron and Auer. There is one thing, though, that still needs to be added to that portion of the bill; that is language to check the potential that once they are restored--the full interpretive powers that rightfully belong to them--our Article III courts will not engage in judicial activism.

To put a point on it, judges must not be allowed to use the Separation of Powers Act as a license to interpret ambiguous statutes always to expand agency power. My amendment, therefore, succinctly but powerfully provides just that. It prohibits courts from reading ambiguities in statutes to contain implicit delegation of legislative rulemaking authority to agencies or from reading those ambiguities expansively to extend agency power.

Although it failed in its task, the Chevron doctrine was originally crafted to help check that kind of judicial activism. As we end the failed Chevron experiment, we should make sure we do not go back to judicial activism. I urge my colleagues to support this amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I include in the record a list of organizations supporting H.R. 5.

I urge my colleagues to support this important amendment.

Agricultural Retailers Association,

Washington, DC, January 11, 2017.

To All Members of the U.S. House of Representatives: On

behalf of the Agricultural Retailers Association (ABA), I am

writing to urge a vote in support of H.R. 5, the ``Regulatory

Accountability Act'' sponsored by Representative Bob

Goodlatte (R-VA). This legislation includes a number of

important provisions designed to reform the Federal

rulemaking process.

All stakeholders have a right to fair, open, and

transparent rulemaking that respects the proper role of the

states and the intent of Congress. For decades, there have

been Executive Orders issued from both Republican and

Democrat Administrations highlighting the importance of an

open, transparent, and fair regulatory process. H.R. 5 is an

important step forward in codifying the principles that

Presidents of both parties have issued in Executive Order

12004 (Issued in Match 1978), Executive Order 12291 (Issued

in February 1981), Executive Order 12866 (Issued in September

1993), Executive Order 13132 (Issued in August 1999), and

Executive Order 13563 (Issued in January 2011).

Some of the reforms in H.R. 5 include provisions such as

requiring federal agencies to use less costly regulations,

rather than more costly proposals, to obtain a stated

objective; requiring federal agencies to explain how their

proposed regulations would impact small business owners,

their employees, and customers; prohibiting any new rules

with a significant economic impact from taking effect until

litigation against such proposal has been fully settled

without impacting existing regulations; and requiring Federal

agencies to publish mandatory transparency reports.

Rep. Collin Peterson (D-MN) plans to offer an amendment on

the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives to prohibit

agencies from using social media to sway public opinion in

favor of a pending agency proposal. This common-sense

amendment is necessary to prevent actions taken by federal

agencies such as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency

(EPA) that the General Accountability Office (GAO) found took

unlawful actions during its `Waters of the United States''

(WOTUS) proposed rulemaking. ARA urges all House members to

vote in favor of the Peterson amendment and to vote ``Yes''

on final passage of H.R, 5.

Sincerely,

Richard D. Gupton,

Senior Vice President,

Public Policy & Counsel.

Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I just want to say that title I of the bill contains several key requirements for the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, OIRA, to put out high-quality, governmentwide guidelines that all agencies can follow. These include, for example, guidelines on cost-benefit analysis, risk assessment, consistency with the Information Quality Act, and good guidance practices.

Since the importance of these issues and the need for swift and effective implementation of reform, the amendment's institution of a 270-day deadline for the issuance of these guidelines is very reasonable, very constructive. I urge my colleagues to support this amendment.

I thank the gentleman for his amendment. Title III of the bill contains important reforms to make sure agencies finally take seriously Congress' directive to write rules with flexible accommodations for small businesses, the source of most of our Nation's job creation.

Congress' demands for flexibility began with the Regulatory Accountability Act during the 1980s, but agencies have never fully complied. One of the key ways agencies have skirted the law's requirements has been to certify their way out of any need to actually provide flexibility by finding that a proposed or final rule will not have a significant impact on a substantial number of small entities.

This amendment puts the brakes on an inadequately substantiated certification by requiring certifications to include economic assessment details sufficient to support the certifications. I support the amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding, and I support his amendment.

Title I of the bill contains critical reforms to the rulemaking process first introduced in the 112th Congress. In one sentence, one could say that these reforms have one ultimate goal--to assure a fair rulemaking process that achieves the benefits Congress seeks and keeps unnecessary costs to a minimum.

The gentleman's amendment, of which I am a cosponsor, responds to an extreme example of rulemaking abuse that played out during the 114th Congress. That abuse was the Environmental Protection Agency's advocacy campaign to skew the information submitted for its administrative record and promote lobbying on behalf of its massive proposed waters of the United States rule.

It is one thing to propose a rule and open the agency's doors impartially to information from all members of the public. It is quite another to promote public submissions to guarantee the cooking of the administrative record to support the agency's view and to advocate lobbying of Congress to support that view.

This amendment makes sure that the biased agency activity manifest in the waters of the United States rulemaking never happens again.

Mr. Chairman, I support the amendment.

I thank the gentleman from Louisiana, and I support his amendment.

Mr. Chairman, many of the reforms in title I of the bill focus on assuring better decisionmaking and cost control for major rules-- typically, those that impose more than $100 million or more per year in costs.

One of these reforms is the commonsense requirement that an agency, when it publishes a major rule, include a plan for reviewing how the rule is working within 10 years. A focus of that review is to determine whether it is possible, after the rule has been put into practice, to find new ways to lower the rule's costs.

The gentleman's amendment speeds this process up, requiring review within 5 years, and increases Congress' oversight, requiring reports by agencies to Congress on their reviews. Most importantly, the amendment requires that, if an agency's report to Congress shows the rule's costs in practice are higher than anticipated at promulgation, the agency must institute a notice-and-comment process aimed at identifying revisions that can lower costs.

This is a measure that can only strengthen the bill's effectiveness and help lower unnecessary burdens on the American people. I support the amendment.

Mr. Chair, I thank the gentleman for the time.

I support his amendment. Agency guidance is a crucial part of our regulatory system--flexible because not legally binding, but needed so regulated entities can understand how best to comply with agency rules.

Guidance, if it responds in a timely way to the regulated community's need for it, helps everything to function smoothly. But one thing that does not help is agency heel-dragging in the issuance of guidance as the regulated community comes up against legal or practical deadlines by which it needs to implement compliance measures. Too often agencies hurry up and wait to produce needed guidance, then tell those who waited long and hard for it to hurry up and respond, pronto. That can leave very little time for the regulated community to act before deadlines hit.

To solve this problem, the amendment offers a simple but much-needed solution. It requires that, within ``good-guidance'' guidelines to be issued by the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs under the bill, there be guidelines for agencies generally to assure at least 90 days for regulated entities to institute measures consistent with newly issued guidelines.

I support the amendment.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I thank the gentleman from Georgia for the customary 30 minutes.

We will get to the content of the bills in a moment, but there is a procedural issue here that disenfranchises millions of American citizens in this process.

We are in the 115th Congress since the founding of this country. We were just sworn in last week to begin that. There are 56 new Members who just started serving last week that have never served in this body before, and there were 56 people that served in the last session who are no longer with us. What we are doing here is we are taking bills that those former Representatives worked on and new Representatives have not worked on and advancing them to the floor without going through committee, without going through the regular order.

So, for example, you have two bills, H.R. 5 and H.R. 79. We will talk about them in a moment. These are Committee on Financial Services bills. They should have gone to that committee, and members of that committee, Democratic and Republican, would have had the chance to amend those bills in that committee and mark it up before it comes to the floor. That is the normal process. Both parties are now constituting those committees; we are putting people on them.

I heard you, Mr. Speaker, read just before we began this debate how a number of Members were officially appointed to those committees. That is what we do in our first week or two.

Fifty-six new Members should have a say on these bills. They will get a vote on the floor on these bills, but they were completely excluded from the committee process that wrote these bills. That is wrong, Mr. Speaker, to not allow 56 new Members of this body to be the lawmakers that the people of their districts elected them to do. In fact, it disenfranchises the tens of millions of people collectively that those 56 Members represent. And I hope that, for future legislation, we can move through regular order and allow the new Members, as well as those who are returning, to be part of the lawmaking process.

With regards to these bills, we have largely seen these bills in prior sessions that people who are no longer in this body worked on.

The HALOS Act, I was proud to support last session and I am proud to support again. It addresses a potentially real problem. There is guidance from the SEC that--in our Rules Committee meeting yesterday I questioned the subcommittee chair--largely also addresses those concerns, but it is better to do it in statute and it is better to do it in the broader language that is included in the bill, which is why many Democrats--I hope a majority--support the HALOS Act.

The United States is the leader in innovation in the global economy, and this is a small piece of that. What we are talking about here are demo days where entrepreneurs can pitch their idea. I, personally, have been able to attend a number of those, and it is a question of who can be in the room when that occurs.

Should it only be millionaires who are allowed in that room? Or can it be the next great generation of entrepreneurs? Can it be students? Can it be aspiring entrepreneurs? Can it be community members who want to learn what it means to pitch and how to do it and how ideas are spread, or maybe they are looking for a job?

It doesn't change who can invest in those startup companies. They still have to be qualified investors. By the way, I hope we have the opportunity to work with Republicans on the definition of ``qualified investor'' because I think it is unfair to restrict investment opportunities to multimillionaires. We need to allow educated and qualified investors of all levels.

Just because somebody is rich doesn't mean that they are a good investor, and just because somebody has not yet earned a lot of money doesn't mean that they can't be trusted to invest $10,000 or $50,000 of their own money.

We made progress in the original JOBS Act with the result of crowdfunded investing, but that is only a small piece--almost an insignificant piece. Private placements are the much larger piece of capital formation for venture-stage startups in our country. If there is a way we can have an alternative to the net worth test that allows individuals to, perhaps, take a qualitative test of their knowledge and, therefore, qualify as an investor, they ought to be able to do that, too.

This bill does not do any of that. That is a controversial area. It is one that it will take Democrats and Republicans working together on to help fund tomorrow's great companies and allow opportunity for all people, not just millionaires and billionaires.

What this bill does is it continues to restrict the actual investors to the millionaires. Okay? But it allows other people in the room at least. That is a start. It allows an MBA student who him- or herself wants to, perhaps, come up with their own company to hear 10 or 20 companies pitch so they can assemble their own deck; somebody who might have a great amount of value to give as a mentor who themselves is a veteran of a number of companies. Maybe they are not quite worth a couple of million dollars. Maybe they are worth only--only, right?-- $500,000. Maybe they were a reasonably successful person worth $500,000, but they have a lot of knowledge to give.

Without the HALOS Act, it would be unclear whether that person would even be allowed in that room. So we want to make sure that mentors, up and coming, young entrepreneurs, and, frankly, up-and-coming entrepreneurs of all ages have access to the knowledge and the learning that can occur in these pitch events.

Congress has a role in making sure we have laws in place that really help build an environment that promotes innovation. When we passed the JOBS Act in 2012 that allowed for crowdfunding, Congress took a step forward. We have room to go there, room to go with private placements.

The HALOS Act is a small step, but it is a good one and a noncontroversial one. It creates a clear path for startups to participate in demo days, sponsored by government entities, nonprofits, angel investment groups, et cetera, and

a clear safe harbor from the SEC with regard to the definition of general solicitation to make it clear that business experts and others can be in the room, while maintaining that only existing accredited investors can actually participate in offerings under Regulation D for the purchases or sale of securities that are mentioned in those demonstrations.

Currently, sponsors of demo days are relying on the 12-year-old, no- action letter by the SEC to make sure that they don't face the consequences of failing to comply. The guidelines outlined by the SEC's no-action letter are actually incorporated into the HALOS Act. So, in many ways, this clarifies and puts in statute something that has been at the whim of the SEC for too long.

The gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Collins) and others will join me in talking about the importance of angel investors for early stage capital to create jobs, to allow tomorrow's great entrepreneur who might not have any resources of their own today to raise the resources they need to hire people and succeed.

The Center for Venture Research estimates that U.S. angel investors invested $24.6 billion in about 71,000 small businesses in every area, every congressional district of our country. Many of those were startups in the early stages of building a company.

Tomorrow's company that employs 10,000 or even 50,000 people is today's garage startup trying to figure out how to get $50,000 or raise $100,000 to make their payroll or buy their inventory.

Angel investors focus their investment on local startups and much more so than, for instance, national venture capital firms that tend to be clustered at the coast. It is an important way we can continue to grow the economy in every ZIP code in this country, across the heartland and the middle of the country, not just the coasts where the venture capital firms themselves are situated.

The Colorado-based digital home design firm, Havenly, started by two sisters, utilized demo days as networking opportunities to perfect their pitch to investors, a very common path. After participating in a 500-startup demo day, the pair received nearly $13 million in investment capital from qualified investors. Now Havenly is a thriving business, employs hundreds of interior designers across the country, and I am proud to say it has a staff of 40 people in their Colorado headquarters. Havenly is a perfect example of how demo days provide opportunities to startups that create real jobs for real people in our country.

The HALOS Act simply gives the same opportunities to other startups that thousands of others have had when getting off the ground.

I believe the HALOS Act is the appropriate approach to regulatory relief. I appreciate the bipartisan nature of the legislation. It is targeted to provide clarity around a specific potential problem and certainty around what these events can entail.

Now, there is another bill under this rule as well. It is a bad bill. It is not a strong bipartisan bill. It is called H.R. 79. Since we began the 115th Congress here, the Republicans are promoting a deregulation agenda. Often this agenda results in this body, Congress, potentially being buried in having to do inordinate amounts of work to review the executive branch of government.

Now, we all believe in oversight of the executive branch. Believe me, Mr. Speaker, you are going to hear many Democrats speaking up about how important oversight of the executive branch is, particularly for the incoming administration.

We are not the executive branch. Congress delegates authority to agencies, under the laws we write, to fill in gaps and decide how best to implement the law. If we disagree, we can always change or amend the authorizing statute to make more clear the intent of this body.

However, these bills being brought to the floor by the Republicans would either require Congress to spell out exactly what ways to implement a policy in a changing world or give the authority of how to interpret and implement law to the judicial system, neither of which are wise or expedient choices regardless of who occupies the Presidency.

While I certainly will have more sympathy with this approach with President Trump in the White House than President Obama in the White House, I still believe this is the wrong way to go about the separation of powers under our Constitution.

This bill sets out 60 new analytical requirements that agency actions must meet before they can be implemented. In other words, any attempt by agencies to protect the public from toxic substances, make sure our planes and trains are meeting safety regulations, or make sure our food is toxin free would be subject to 60 new bureaucratic hurdles, effectively creating more and more red tape to tie the bureaucracy up rather than make their work quicker and more efficient, which is what Democrats seek to do.

This bill would bury the agency rulemaking process under a blizzard of bureaucratic hurdles and documentation requirements, literally burying the executive and administrative branch of government in red tape and paperwork. This bill would hold the regulatory process hostage to the whims of the very corporations and bureaucrats whose rulemaking it is designed to address.

The process that the bills call for have been roundly discredited by so many experts on regulatory policy from the left and the right and consumer advocates as well. The administrative law and regulatory practices section of the American Bar Association stated that these burdens would reduce transparency, reduce public input, threaten public safety, and, most importantly, not result in any better rules.

This bill is nothing other than a recycled effort that 56 Members of this body have not had a chance to participate in writing through the committee process to slow down the government and get in the way of agency rulemakings that are critical for protecting public health, safety, and our environment.

We are simply failing our constituents that we are elected to serve by spending time on legislation that would deliberately sabotage our own ability for our government to function efficiently. This is a bill that would make government less efficient. That is not what I hear when I am back home from my constituents--Democrat, Republican, Independent. I don't hear: Go to Washington to make government less efficient. My constituents want government to be more efficient.

Finally, this bill is being considered under a structured rule limiting the amendment process. There were over 30 amendments filed. Yet, we are only considering 16 amendments under this very overly restrictive rule. This is particularly onerous because, again, there was no opportunity for the 56 new Members through the committee process to amend this bill.

There was a new Member that appeared before the Rules Committee yesterday. Unfortunately, he was not even allowed to advance his amendment to the floor under this rule.

Another example is an amendment offered by a new Member, Ms. Blunt Rochester, who filed an amendment that would ensure that LGBT employees are protected from workplace discrimination. It would allow Federal agencies that are tasked with protecting the civil rights of employees to continue to do their work without being hamstrung with unnecessary requirements.

Civil rights protections do not fit neatly into a corporate monetary analysis, and our government has a responsibility to ensure that all Americans are protected from arbitrary or unjust discrimination based on race, gender, sexual orientation, or gender identity.

Given the breadth and scope of this legislation, an open amendment process would have allowed this amendment to be debated if the majority wanted, perhaps even voted down, although I hope the majority would have approved it. It would have produced a more thoughtful piece of legislation. Yet, we are not even allowed to have that debate on the floor of the House, which is why this rule is wrong and why I stand in strong opposition to it.

We should be considering legislation to create permanent, high-paying jobs, investing in infrastructure to grow our communities, fixing our broken immigration system, and streamlining and improving our tax system through tax reform rather than recycling old bills

that 56 Members have not even had the opportunity to put their imprint on.

I urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' on the rule for those very reasons.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, when we defeat the previous question, I will offer an amendment to the rule to bring up a bill that would establish a national commission to investigate foreign interference in the 2016 election.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to insert the text of my amendment in the Record along with extraneous material immediately prior to vote on the previous question.

Mr. Speaker, we have all been very concerned about the reports from our own intelligence agencies about foreign interference in the 2016 American elections.

I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Cummings) to discuss our proposal, the ranking member of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

I yield an additional 1 minute to the gentleman from Maryland.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson Lee), the distinguished ranking member of the Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, Homeland Security, and Investigations.

I yield the gentlewoman an additional 30 seconds.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 4\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Swalwell).

Mr. Speaker, I am prepared to close if the gentleman from Georgia is.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, so, in summary, when we defeat the previous question, we will then bring forward our bill to establish an independent report on foreign interference in this most recent 2016 election, something that the American people deserve to see, that we need to see. We need to put safeguards in place to prevent our election system from being hijacked by foreign powers.

With regard to the rule, Mr. Speaker, it is a bad, closed rule, particularly given the chance that 56 new Members of Congress have not had the opportunity to add their imprint to the bills that are before us.

The gentleman mentioned, oh, the Democrats did this 10 years ago. Well,

that is hardly an excuse that the American people buy. There were many things about the Democrats' tenure in this body the American people didn't like; and to simply cite some of those less popular elements of Democratic leadership and now say: Well, now we Republicans are going to do earmarks; now we Republicans are going to have a closed process that doesn't allow amendment; now Republicans are going to gut the ethics rule.

In over 200 years, you can always cite some precedence for that from both Democrats and Republicans, but those aren't good things. We want to learn from our mistakes, I hope, and not say, just because some Democrat or some Republican did this in 1952, it is a good thing to do today.

Mr. Speaker, we are 6 days into the next Congress. After we defeat the rule, hopefully, and defeat the previous question, we can bring forward an independent study on foreign interference.

With regard to these two bills, I urge my colleagues to join me in voting ``yes'' on the HALOS Act and, of course, oppose the ridiculously broad H.R. 5, Regulatory Accountability Act, which would simply add more paperwork to the bureaucracy, further reducing the efficiency of a branch of government that many Americans believe is already too inefficient.

I urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' on the previous question and ``no'' on the rule.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.

I thank the chairman for his leadership.

Mr. Chairman, we all know that small businesses and entrepreneurs are what drive the American economy. We meet them in our districts and we see firsthand the benefits that their dreams and hard work provide to our constituents and to our communities.

These innovators, entrepreneurs, and risk-takers are really small- business people who are critical for our country's economic prosperity. Small businesses helped to create more than 60 percent of the Nation's net new jobs over the past two decades. So if our Nation is going to have an economy that provides opportunities for every American, then we must promote and encourage the success and growth of our small businesses and our startups.

In order to succeed, these companies need capital and credit--the lifeblood for growth, expansion, and job creation. Yet, the government continues

to construct arbitrary walls that cut them off from essential financing as smaller companies are caught up in red tape that was created, frankly, for the largest public companies, but those public companies have the financial means to hire lawyers and accountants and management consultants and all of those things that would then guide them through the sheer weight, volume, and complexity of the Federal securities laws.

Congress has made strides in tailoring the regulatory environment for smaller companies, most notably when we passed with strong bipartisan support the Jumpstart Our Business Startups, or JOBS Act, in 2012. The JOBS Act's benefits are notable as more and more companies use its provisions to raise investment capital in both the public and private markets.

One essential form of capital for many startups comes from angel investors--sophisticated, high net-worth individuals who invest their own money into startups and other early stage companies. Not many college students of whom I am aware would fit that definition of a sophisticated, high net-worth individual. In 2015, angel investors deployed over $24 billion to about 71,000 startups--many of these investments going to companies in their own communities and States. Beyond capital, angels provide advice and guidance to help these companies succeed and create jobs.

Mr. Chairman, I believe that it is important to note that companies such as Amazon, Costco, Facebook, Google, and Starbucks, among a myriad of others that we have not necessarily heard of as public names, were all initially funded by angel investors. Without angel investors, these very successful companies would have never gotten off the ground.

Yet, the Securities and Exchange Commission, whose neglect of its statutory mission to facilitate capital formation necessitated that Congress pass the JOBS Act in the first place, has further restricted startups from interacting with angel investors at demo days and similar pitch events. Startups rely on demo days and similar events to build relationships with angels and other investors and generate interest in their companies and their ideas. These events existed prior to the JOBS Act, but the SEC's rules jeopardize their future.

H.R. 79, the Helping Angels Lead Our Startups, or HALOS Act, is a commonsense, bipartisan bill that is aimed at removing a significant regulatory hurdle for innovative companies and startups that seek early stage equity investments. Specifically, the HALOS Act would clarify that these demo days, which are sponsored by angel investor groups, universities, municipalities, and nonprofits, are not considered to be general solicitations and would, instead, ensure that angel funding remains available to those businesses that seek investment capital. These are really educational opportunities.

Mr. Speaker, some of our colleagues on the other side of the aisle will claim that the HALOS Act guts critical investor protections and will subject honest, hardworking Americans to rampant fraud. We just had an example of college students being brought up. That is simply not true.

A company that offers securities to investors under these rules may only sell their securities to sophisticated or accredited investors. If these individuals do not meet the standards of an accredited investor, they are not then eligible or even allowed to invest in these types of startups that would participate in a demo day.

Instead, the HALOS Act is a simple, bipartisan, bicameral, and, I might add, short bill that will provide small innovative companies and startups the ability to interact with angels and other investors who can provide the capital that they need to succeed, grow, and create jobs.

Indeed, Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut said it best when he introduced the HALOS Act last Congress: ``I have heard from local entrepreneurs and interested backers alike that the most important thing we can do to help these businesses is to make it easier for angel investors to put capital behind them--and that is exactly what our bipartisan HALOS Act will do.''

Mr. Chair, that was Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut.

I commend the efforts of Representatives Chabot and Sinema for working together across the aisle on a bipartisan, positive solution.

Last Congress, the HALOS Act passed this very body with an overwhelming bipartisan vote of 325-89. I have high hopes that H.R. 79 will enjoy another strong, bipartisan vote.

I encourage all my colleagues to support its adoption.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Hultgren).

Mr. Chair, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Williams).

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Kustoff), a new member of the House Financial Services Committee.

Mr. Chair, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Schneider) for 2 minutes.

Mr. Chairman, may I inquire as to the balance of time remaining on both sides.

Mr. Chair, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Arizona (Ms. Sinema), the coauthor of this bill.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Florida (Mrs. Murphy) and welcome her as a new Member.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the balance of my time.

I have actually had the pleasure and the honor of sitting through a number of these demo days and seeing these pitches being made. People are coming in, and they are literally laying out their dreams, their hopes, and, frankly, their hard work because they wouldn't be there that day if it wasn't for their hard work. They are looking for a couple of things. As small businesses and entrepreneurs, they are looking for capital and credit. We use the word ``capital'' a lot around here, but think of it as cash and credit. They really are looking for someone who will buy into their dream, who will look at their hard work, and who will understand that their dreams can become a reality with hope. This bill is trying to do that.

Members are hearing a lot of doom and gloom on the other side. In fact, I think the phrase was just thrown out, financial doom for the retail investor. Let's talk about these retail investors.

For you to become an accredited investor, someone who would qualify to be able to invest in these startup companies, according to SEC rule 501, you need to be married, jointly; $300,000 in income; and $1 million of net worth, excluding your home. So you cannot include a million-dollar home. You have to have $1 million net worth outside of your home and have an income of $300,000. Earlier, college students were brought up. Not a whole lot of college students that I am aware of have $300,000 annual income or $1 million net worth.

These are people who are sophisticated, typically. They are high net worth, by definition. Interestingly enough, as Members of Congress, if we allowed some of these amendments to go through and these restrictions to go through, as Members of Congress, we would be excluded from the room. We would be excluded. We couldn't even go in there to educate ourselves about how this process works. That, ultimately, is what this is about.

Those pitch days are not just for those people who are going to invest. Those pitch days are not just for the people who are going to do the investing. Those pitch days are for others to learn, to have an understanding.

If you are a college student sitting in the back row, to understand what it looks like to become an entrepreneur, to really become a part of that engine of the American economy, you should be in the room. If you are someone who might be making a pitch later on and want to see how this happens and

works, you ought to be in the room. Let's not exclude those people.

Why would we have a government closed off, closed room, a government- sanctioned closed room that would keep people from understanding and achieving their hopes and dreams and success?

I am pleased to be up here and to talk about this issue because we know that for our standing in the world, we need to have a dynamic economy. Our dynamic economy starts with our entrepreneurs and the risk-takers who are willing to invest in those ideas.

I just want to commend the gentlewoman from Arizona (Ms. Sinema) and the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Chabot) for working in a bipartisan manner. I expect we are going to see a massively bipartisan vote for this bill, and I eagerly await that. I ask my colleagues to support

Mr. Chairman, I claim the time in opposition to this amendment.

Mr. Chairman, so here is the alternate reality you are expected to believe in this scenario that has been created. You are going to have somebody wander off the street with their checkbook in their pocket, listen to a 3- to 5-minute pitch on an idea that is going to change the world, and then they are going to sign away their financial future and life savings. That is the scenario that is being painted for you out there today by the opponents of this commonsense legislation.

Again, to be an investor, you must be an accredited investor, according to the SEC rules, Rule 501, that says you have $300,000 of income annually and a net worth of $1 million outside of your home. Owning your house doesn't count towards that.

I have been to these pitch days. You know what you are walking into. You don't just stumble on it and go: Wow, what's going on here?

I have never thought about this. Tell you what, I am going to write a five- or six- or seven-figure check today and put myself into financial ruin. That is not how these things work.

Mr. Chairman, at the end of the day, I think it is important to just review a little bit of the history here.

First of all, this amendment isn't necessary. It would create yet another SEC-required disclosure and further burden the ability for startups to present their ideas to demo days.

I would note that this amendment could have been offered last March, either in committee or while we here in the House had consideration last April 2016. However, in both cases that didn't occur.

Let's remember why we are here today, Mr. Chairman. When the SEC promulgated the rules to implement Title II of the JOBS Act, the agency made something that was legal prior to April 5 of 2012 suddenly illegal. The SEC decided that demo days that bring together those entrepreneurs and those companies suddenly became a general solicitation.

That isn't the case, and this amendment would require the SEC to prescribe a disclosure that ``describes the nature of the event and the risks of investing in securities being advertised.''

There is no sale that day, Mr. Chairman. No sale at all is going to happen. There is no exchange that happens at that event.

This amendment is unnecessary, overly broad, and would delay the return to the certainty that the pre-JOBS Act had brought.

Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I have no further speakers on this amendment.

Mr. Chairman, you just heard the author of the amendment make the case that this is a complicated process in general that an unaccredited person is not going to be allowed to invest in. So it requires the event sponsor to provide attendees with a written disclosure outlining the nature of the event and the risks of investing in the securities for sale. It is not an offering that is happening at those demo days. I would ask my colleagues to oppose this amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, once again, we are seeing an unnecessary, duplicative amendment here. The amendment, as it is laid out, creates a new definition of an issuer. The Securities Exchange Act already defines an issuer, and Ms. Waters' definition is vague, confusing and, frankly, unnecessary.

Demo days are opportunities for startup companies to present their ideas to potential investors that are accredited. Again, accredited. At this point, all of America is shouting back at C-SPAN, saying, $300,000 in income

per year with $1 million net worth, excluding their home. We get this out there. This is not a solicitation or offering a security.

So what I am, quite honestly, concerned about and maybe a little confused about is the point of the HALOS Act trying to fix a problem. It is trying to fix a problem.

Remember, we want to expose entrepreneurs and their ideas to the broadest pool of potential investors that includes angel investment community, again, of accredited investors. This requirement raises serious compliance concerns for angel investors. It would require entrepreneurs and startups to perform a compliance function that they may not have the physical or financial means to do so. Again, it is just an additional burden and barrier to entry for entrepreneurs.

Again, these are--the entrepreneurs typically aren't the ones that have $300,000 of annual income or $1 million net worth because, frankly, then they wouldn't have to be at the pitch. They could fund it themselves.

The idea is to make sure that those ideas, those people who are looking for an opportunity are given the broadest opportunity possible. And I think what we are seeing here is a reaction to the notion that, you know what? Maybe people can handle this on their own instead of the government needing to step in and be so overly prescriptive and control every decision that they are making.

You are seeing a reaction on the other side to that, to that notion of freedom, that idea of an entrepreneurial spirit; this idea that we all need to be wrapped in bubble wrap as we go out into the world. That is not government's role or job.

Outside of those prescriptions that are already in place, again, we are talking about a narrow group of investors with $300,000 of net income annually, and $1 million net worth who would even qualify to invest in those.

Why we would wall this off from others seeking to learn and to see an opportunity, I just simply don't understand.

Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, in closing, I cannot support an amendment that makes it more difficult for startups to receive the crucial funding that they need to grow and create new jobs. Again, these are people pursuing their dreams, their hopes. They need capital and credit. They need cash and credit to go fulfill those.

Mr. Chairman, I actually believe in the SEC. I believe that the rules that they operate under are sufficient. I believe in the JOBS Act. I believe in the HALO Act that will provide the proper protections to investors, again, qualified investors with a $300,000 income and a $1 million net worth.

There are proper protections in place. This amendment does nothing but add additional burden to those seeking the investment and those seeking to invest. I request opposition from my colleagues.

Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I move that the Committee do now rise.

Mr. Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I call up House Resolution 33 and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. Speaker, for the purpose of debate only, I yield the customary 30 minutes to the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Polis), pending which I yield myself such time as I may consume. During consideration of this resolution, all time yielded is for the purpose of debate only.

General Leave

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks and to include extraneous material on H. Res. 33, currently under consideration.

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to bring forward this rule on behalf of the Rules Committee. The rule provides for the consideration of H.R. 5, the Regulatory Accountability Act, and H.R. 79, the Helping Angels Lead Our Startups, or HALOS, Act.

The rule provides for 1 hour of debate for each bill, equally divided between the majority leader and the minority leader and the chairman and the ranking member of the Financial Services Committee, respectively. The rule also provides for a motion to recommit for both pieces of underlying legislation.

Yesterday, the Rules Committee had the opportunity to hear from Congressman Tom Marino and Congressman Hank Johnson, on behalf of the Judiciary Committee, and from Congressman Huizenga, on behalf of the Financial Services Committee. We also heard from several Members on both sides of the aisle who testified on their amendments. The Rules Committee made in order both amendments submitted for the HALOS Act and 16 amendments from Members on both sides of the aisle for the Regulatory Accountability Act.

Mr. Speaker, I spoke from this podium last week about the positive, pro-growth agenda we in the majority are advancing. The bills before us today are additional pieces of that puzzle, and they help us to return to commonsense governance that fosters economic success.

H.R. 79, the HALOS Act, was introduced by my friend from Ohio, the chairman of the Small Business Committee, Mr. Steve Chabot. Last Congress, very similar legislation passed the House with my support and by an overwhelming bipartisan majority. The HALOS Act ensures that so- called angel investors, who serve as the largest funding source for startups in the United States, are able to effectively hold educational economic development events, like ``demo days.'' The bill also helps to ensure that startups can connect with angel investors who can serve as funding sources, mentors, or outside directors.

In plain English, the HALOS Act helps to ensure that small, innovative companies and startups have access to the necessary capital. This, in turn, enables these companies to expand and generate jobs that put Americans back to work while fueling our economy as a global hub of innovation.

Mr. Speaker, in order to keep America's market competitive, we must relieve American job creators and employees from suffocating regulations. We can move toward this by helping government function as our Founders intended. Our Constitution lays out a system of three coequal branches of government, which is meant to fulfill unique roles and to provide checks and balances for one another.

Over time, we have allowed cracks to form in that system, and we have gradually seen executive agencies usurp power from the elected officials of the legislative branch--to the detriment of hardworking Americans and the separation of powers. We, too often, see unelected bureaucrats handing down regulations that have enormous impacts on small businesses, family farmers, individuals, and families. In an unfortunate irony, these bureaucrats are isolated from the very entities they are trying to regulate.

Congress must stop ceding authority to the executive and reassert the power of the legislative branch to write law. The Regulatory Accountability Act helps us do just that. It helps us to ensure that burdensome rules that handcuff American business with red tape aren't crushing our economy, our competitiveness, or our future. It also restores common sense to the rulemaking process.

H.R. 5, the Regulatory Accountability Act, combines six bills that have previously passed the House. I am a proud cosponsor of this legislation.

I thank Chairman Chabot, Chairman Goodlatte, and Chairman Marino for their thoughtful and diligent work on this legislation. Additionally, Congressman Ratcliffe and Congressman Luetkemeyer contributed important provisions to this package.

The bill reforms the process by which Federal agencies analyze and formulate new regulations and guidance documents, clarifies the nature of judicial review of agency interpretation, and calls for more complete analysis of the potential impact of rules on small entities.

H.R. 5 includes the text of the Separation of Powers Act, which amends the Administrative Procedures Act to overturn two doctrines that call for judicial deference to agency interpretations of statutory and regulatory provisions: the Chevron and Auer doctrines.

In plain English, the Separation of Powers Restoration Act prevents Federal bureaucrats from interpreting the legality of their own regulations at the expense of hardworking Americans and the constitutional separation of powers.

Title I of the Regulatory Accountability Act requires agencies, when establishing new rules, to consider the lowest cost option that meets statutory requirements. The bill also provides for more public input in the rulemaking process. Title IV of the bill, the Providing Accountability through Transparency Act, requires agencies to publish plain-language summaries of new proposed rules online. These proposals are not farfetched. Instead, they provide more information and a voice to the American people while reining in agencies that have gotten drunk on their rulemaking power.

Mr. Speaker, our current administration issued over 600 major regulations with an economic impact of over $740 billion. These numbers show the staggering number of rules put forth by the executive branch, but nowhere are the true costs of regulations highlighted better than in the stories that I hear from my constituents. I know other Members hear similar stories, and all across the Nation, we are seeing the toll that overregulation has taken on growth and competitiveness.

Back home in northeast Georgia, Elbert County is known as the granite

capital of the world, but a rule put forth by OSHA that is related to silica levels threatens to jeopardize that industry; and, of course, there is the waters of the United States rule, which could negatively impact everyone from farmers to ranchers to Realtors. The menu labeling rule is yet another example of a misguided regulation that the administration has put forth without impunity. That rule would raise costs for businesses, from restaurants to convenience stores, leading to higher costs for consumers--in actuality, hurting the very ones that it proclaims to help.

This is the irony of many of these regulations. Sadly, they are borne out in the costs to the American people.

Last year, the EPA finalized a rule that established Federal standards for residential wood heaters. In rural districts like mine, many individuals may count on wood heaters to keep their families warm. This EPA rule will raise costs for consumers and undermine families' decisions about what type of heater may work the best for them.

Mr. Speaker, is this really where we want to go, having the Federal Government decide things like this, away from the scrutiny of the elected body? I think not.

The examples from this administration are numerous, but, importantly, this problem of overregulation is not unique to this administration. This is not a Republican or a Democratic problem. This is a balance of power problem; this is a problem between branches not doing what they are supposed to be doing and staying within that.

The Regulatory Accountability Act helps ensure that this administration and future administrations do not ignore Congress by writing law through regulation. It returns transparency to the process. It restores Congress' rightful place as the legislative branch and reins in the unelected fourth branch that regulators have become.

Mr. Speaker, many of the bills in this package have previously passed with bipartisan support. I hope my colleagues can continue to agree that Congress should make the laws and that we should do so in such a way that encourages growth, innovation, and American ingenuity.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I think there is no better way to start this Congress fresh but with some understanding. It is very clear, and it has become obvious to Members here on the floor, that there is a discussion going on. And, Mr. Speaker, if Members would like to see the difference that is being portrayed here on the floor today, it is very obvious. There is one party that is really concerned about tying the hands of bureaucrats; and there is one party, the majority, that is looking to untie the hands of the American people. I think I will side on the side of the American people and job creators and job promoters, and those who go out every day and earn a living.

We worked on this last Congress, and I will talk about it again here. Let's not start the strongman that Republicans are wanting to do away with all regulations. We do not. We want government to operate in the most efficient manner possible and do what it needs to do, but also get out of the way.

The problem with government, many times the government has overstepped where it needs to be, and it needs to be out of the way to start with.

Also, I would like to at least clear the record and make something understood. At the beginning of the year, we are bringing a rule. We had a full Rules Committee hearing yesterday, and Members were able to offer amendments. Not all amendments were made in order. Sixteen amendments were made in order on both sides of the aisle. I would like to remind Members, Mr. Speaker, as we go back in history, we are promoting discussion here in the Rules Committee and bringing to the floor and allowing Members to talk about amendments and give them the opportunity.

I will just remind Members, Mr. Speaker, in the 111th Congress, which was controlled by my friends on the other side of the aisle, in the very first rule bill they brought, the rules for the House, they put two major bills in the rules package that did not even get a rules hearing, that did not get anything except just pushed to the floor. I think we will stand firm that we are pushing to the floor stuff that Americans care about, and also doing it in a way that Members can participate.

Speaking of that, the American people, especially the good folks of Nebraska, have sent to us a new Member, and I have gotten the chance to know him.

Mr. Speaker, it is a privilege to yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Nebraska (Mr. Bacon), and I welcome him to the floor.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, are there any more speakers the gentleman from Colorado has?

I am prepared for the gentleman to close. I reserve the balance of time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

I serve a wonderful part of the world. With all due respect to all the other Members of Congress, I do believe it is one of the fairest in the country.

As I go around and travel, one of the things I have not heard, Mr. Speaker--and I am not sure if you have or other Members sitting here--I have never been hit, when I run into something saying the fact that government is efficient, and I am really wanting it to be efficient in a sense that it is working for me.

It is a very obvious statement here, and what we see time after time after time after time is rules and regulations that most of the American folks are saying: Government, do what you are supposed to be doing. Get us back on a fiscal financial path that is solid, that balances, that gets us back in understanding that we can't spend more than what we make or bring in, and that we have to have a strong national defense. Let's get back to the things that make America the shining light all around the world.

One of the things I do not hear them asking me to do, Mr. Speaker, is make it easier on bureaucrats in Washington. I have not had them beg and bring petitions to my table and say: Please make it easier on bureaucrats to run our lives.

That is not what we do. What we are trying to do is simply say: Let's get up, go out to work, do the regulations that matter. Make sure that government does what it is supposed to do. Make sure that the balance of power is honored and not looked upon with disgrace. It is looked upon as something that should be taken care of. Let the legislative body be the legislative body. Let the executive be the executive, and let the judicial be the judicial.

I have no problem putting before the American people the choice: Do you want a party that will defend a bureaucracy that stifles them? Or a party of the majority, like we are, that are putting forward regulation reform that says, We want to help you; we are concerned about you?

Obvious choice, Mr. Speaker. Today we have two opportunities to this rule. They both look at our economic engines in the country and reviving it again.

The HALOS Act helps us ensure that small businesses have access to the capital necessary to grow and succeed. Small business is the backbone of our economy, and it makes sense to enact policies that promote the viability and growth.

The Regulatory Accountability Act restores simple checks and balances so that Congress, once again, makes laws so they work better for those who elected us.

It is time we demand the voice of the American people be heard rather than letting the others up here, separated in cubicles, decide what is best. When we look at that, the obvious choice is clear. You pass this rule, you vote ``yes'' on these bills, and you say to the American people: I agree with the majority.

We are looking after those that get up every day and have the American Dream in front of them and get up and say: I want to be better and I want my government to be out of the way.

When we understand that, Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to support this rule and the underlying bill.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time and I move the previous question on the resolution.