Separation of Powers Restoration Act of 2023

Mr. Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I call up House Resolution 495 and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. Speaker, for the purpose of debate only, I yield the customary 30 minutes to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. McGovern), 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 may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks.

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

House Resolution 495 provides for a structured rule for consideration of H.R. 277, the Regulations from the Executive in Need of Scrutiny Act of 2023 and provides 1 hour of debate equally divided and controlled by the chair and ranking member of the Committee on the Judiciary.

House Resolution 495 further provides for a structured rule for consideration of H.R. 288, the Separation of Powers Restoration Act of 2023. It also provides 1 hour of debate equally divided and controlled by the chair and ranking member of the Committee on the Judiciary.

House Resolution 495 further provides for a structured rule for the consideration of H.R. 1615, the Gas Stove Protection and Freedom Act, and provides 1 hour of debate equally divided and controlled by the chair and ranking member of the Committee on Energy and Commerce.

This resolution further provides for a structured rule for the consideration of H.R. 1640 and provides 1 hour of debate equally divided and controlled by the chair and ranking member of the Committee on Energy and Commerce.

Furthermore, House Resolution 495 provides for a closed rule for consideration of H.J. Res. 44 and provides 1 hour of debate equally divided and controlled by the chair and ranking member of the Committee on the Judiciary.

These are five bills that may seem unrelated, but they are very related, and they have to do with the power of Congress and the fact that our power has atrophied considerably since the beginning of this country. In fact, we are almost a vestigial organ of this Republic at this point, we have ceded so much power to the executive branch, and that is how all of these bills are related.

Three of the bills seek to repeal laws or regulations that the administrative branch is unconstitutionally, I would argue, promulgating.

Two of these bills get at the heart of the matter, the problem that we have. One of them specifically is the REINS Act, which is very important. This would rein in our power to legislate.

I don't think our Founders would recognize our form of government at this point. They never intended for the administrators to be the lawmakers; yet here we are.

The Regulations from the Executive in Need of Scrutiny Act would send every major regulation that is suggested--and I say suggested--by the administration back to Congress where there would have to be a positive vote of the House and the Senate in order for that to go to the President and then, with his signature, become law, as all laws should do.

The other bill in this package that seeks to address the sort of chronic problem that we have here in Congress is the Separation of Powers Restoration Act.

It is basically a repeal of a horrible Supreme Court precedent called the Chevron deference that says, basically, any way the administration wants to construe one of our laws, they can get away with it.

The Supreme Court will give deference to the interpretation, no matter how far afield from the original interpretation the law was given from Congress.

Finally, the three bills today that deal with individual regulations, two of them deal with gas stoves. This administration has a war on gas stoves, depending on which person from the administration you listen to, a rule that is being promulgated by the Consumer Product Safety Commission and also by the Department of Energy.

There are two rules here. They would ban between 50 to 95 percent of the gas stoves on the market for arbitrary reasons. It is not clear that there would be any consumer benefit from banning these. In fact, consumers would suffer from this ban.

These are the types of rules that we need the REINS Act for. They would have a significant impact on our economy, and that is why they should be here in front of Congress, and that is why we are seeking to countermand them here today.

Finally, I think this is the most important rule that we are countermanding in legislation this week, and that is the pistol brace rule from the ATF.

We are not talking about an interpretation of a law where the EPA says, we think we should allow this much sulfur dioxide instead of that amount of sulfur dioxide and create a civil infraction where corporations could be sued or punished. We are talking about criminal penalties.

The ATF has twisted the existing statute, a law that was passed by Congress in 1934, and has magically reinterpreted it to create tens of millions of felons beginning on June 1.

We have a bad situation in this country right now where millions of people have been turned into felons, law-abiding individuals who are following the rules that were set forth by the ATF. That is why urgent action is required on the pistol brace rule repeal here today, and that is H.J. Res. 44.

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

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

Mr. Speaker, I find it ironic that the gentleman on the other side of the aisle is demanding to know what the power-sharing structure is here in the House, when, in fact, he will spend the rest of his time arguing that we should give our power to the White House, that the administrative branch should be making law, in fact, major regulations that have more than $100 million of impact.

I would say to the gentleman on the other side of the aisle that if he is wondering about the power-sharing arrangement, then he should seek to put some power here in the House, restore the power that the Founders gave us in Article I of the Constitution.

With respect to the solution to the tragic school shootings, some States have taken it upon themselves to allow qualified teachers and staff to carry

firearms. Imagine that, the children are protected by firearms the same way we are protected here. Why do we sit here and say, oh, we have got to do something, when we sit behind protection and the children aren't?

I would encourage the other side of the aisle to cosponsor my bill to change the default setting here in this country. The default setting was set by the Gun-Free School Zone Act, which makes it illegal to even be near a school and have a firearm, which makes it harder for States to set policies that would save our children. All it does is make felons of law-abiding gun owners.

I would encourage them to look at a real solution. You can ban a pistol brace, but you are not going to stop a single mass public shooting. Most of these mass public shootings occur with a pistol, not a pistol with a brace on it or with a short-barreled rifle, as they would say, or with a rifle, an assault rifle they might call it.

They can start banning these pieces of plastic, like the Biden administration is doing, and then they can move on to banning magazines. As the ranking member of the Judiciary Committee admitted to me last night, he would like to ban all of the AR-15s. They could ban handguns. Then they will get down to shotguns. The reality is you can't stop these tragedies with a ban. You have to change the way we protect our children.

This pistol brace rule that has been promulgated by the administrative branch will cause--they just haven't been arrested--will cause and has already caused tens of millions of Americans to be felons. That happened on June 1. Time is up. You are done. You are now a felon if you own one of these braces on your firearm.

Whether you own one or not, most Americans understand what is happening here. Our system of lawmaking has been turned on its head. Even more fundamental than that, people were told it was legal by the ATF. The technical division of the ATF reviewed the prototypes of these pistol braces in 2012 when Obama was the President.

What did Obama's ATF say to Mr. Bosco, the inventor of the pistol brace? ``You are asking if the addition of this sample, a buffer tube forearm brace, would convert a firearm in a manner that would cause it to be classified as a `rifle' and thus a `firearm' regulated by the National Firearms Act. . . . `'

``Based on our evaluation,'' our technical department ``finds that the submitted forearm brace, when attached to a firearm, does not convert that weapon to be fired from the shoulder and would not alter the classification of a pistol or other firearm.'' ``. . . Such a firearm would not be subject to NFA controls.''

This is a letter on ATF letterhead, in fact, the Department of Justice letterhead, dated November 26, 2012, that millions of Americans relied on, that many entrepreneurs relied on.

Now what happens? The rug is getting pulled out from under them, but not by the legislative branch. By the way, we could have repealed this. The Democrats controlled both chambers. They could have passed a legislative ban on these braces. They didn't do it. Why didn't they do it? Maybe it is because they are accountable. They are accountable to the people, unlike these bureaucrats. Nobody is going to lose an election at the ATF for promulgating this rule.

The people here are scared. The people here in this Chamber are scared to do their jobs, and the people in the Senate are scared to do their jobs, so they would much prefer the administration do our jobs.

What have they done? What is the penalty for owning this piece of plastic on a firearm that is connected to a pistol? I asked the ranking member of Judiciary Committee last night in the Rules Committee meeting. He did not know. It turns out it is a quarter of a million dollars and 10 years in prison. Is that the appropriate sentence for somebody who followed the law for 10 years, followed ATF guidance that was given during the Obama administration and now doesn't even know they are violating the law? Is 10 years and a quarter million dollars appropriate? I don't think so. They relied on this letter.

Now, to another part of the pistol brace rule. The ranking member of the Judiciary Committee and the ATF Director Dettelbach have both testified incorrectly that you can comply with this pistol brace rule from the ATF by merely separating the firearm from the brace. That is wrong. That is not what the ATF rule says.

Why did they say this in testimony? Why did the ranking member of the Judiciary Committee say this? Why did the ATF Director say this? Because they wanted to sound reasonable. That may seem like a reasonable solution, but it is not the solution that the ATF has put into law.

Again, this isn't a fine. This isn't like saying the EPA decided that we have too much sulfur dioxide in the atmosphere so we are going to reduce emissions and set the sulfur dioxide emissions at a different level and you can be fined if you don't comply and you are a corporation.

This is not a civil infraction. This is a criminal infraction that will put millions of Americans in jeopardy of going to jail. For what, a piece of plastic? Does it make the firearm more dangerous? No. Does it make the firearm more concealable? No. Does it make the firearm more deadly? No.

Then I hear from the other side of the aisle: Oh, well, we are not banning them. Oh, we wouldn't ban them. Really? You are telling people in the United States you have to register them as short-barreled rifles. Guess what? That is illegal in 13 States. Thirty-six percent of Americans live in those 13 States where you can't even comply. You cannot legally comply with the ATF directive to register that pistol with that brace on it as a short-barreled rifle. Compliance is impossible if you want to keep that accessory. It is a ban. It is a de facto ban, especially on people in those 13 States.

Here is what it is really about. They can't ban guns. They would love to, but they can't ban them. They can't do it legislatively. The President came into office and looked at all of the regulations and how could he ban some guns. Well, he found this one here. How can he get more guns registered.

By the way, it is illegal for the administrative branch to create a registry of firearms that are in common circulation here in the United States. That is illegal. They are not allowed to do it in the administrative branch. What have they done with this pistol brace rule over there that we seek to countermand? They are going to create a registry of millions of Americans who own pistols who happen to have this brace.

I would argue this wasn't just a way to ban guns with certain accessories. It was a way to do something else that is not legal, not authorized by Congress, and that is to require millions of Americans to register.

To close out this pistol brace rule, I thank Mr. Clyde for introducing this resolution. It is absolutely necessary. It is very timely. I wish we had gotten it done before June 1 because now we have got millions of felons in the United States just waiting to be arrested; don't even know they are not in compliance. This ATF rule will do nothing to increase safety.

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

Mr. Speaker, as a father and a grandfather, my heart breaks when I see the victims of these deranged killers at schools and elsewhere. We need serious solutions.

I think it is an insult to the victims and families that banning a piece of plastic is going to save a life--it won't--or telling them that putting up a sign that says gun-free zone will save a life. It won't. It will cost lives.

When one of my former staffers was married for less than a year, she and her husband had a karaoke business, and she had a stalker who followed them to each of their events. She got a concealed carry license in Tennessee and carried her gun to protect herself from the stalker. This was Nikki who worked for me.

One night, they set up their business in a bar, and the sign said ``No Guns Inside'' because they served alcohol. Nikki left her firearm to protect herself in the car, but her stalker did not leave his.

He came into the bar and shot her husband viciously in front of her. She has to live with that. That is why she wants serious solutions. She knows that gun-free zones are unserious. She knows that banning pieces of plastic is not serious. She knows that children deserve the protection that we have here.

We all know, if you are willing to look at the data, that in every school that has allowed qualified teachers and staff to carry a firearm, there has never been a school shooting. It is a fact.

We need to work on serious solutions, not unserious solutions like banning a piece of plastic.

Mr. Speaker, going to the stove ban, which is also unserious, it is going to cost consumers. It is going to make the products less safe, not more safe. It is going to make them less available. It is not about safety or efficiency or consumer benefit. It is about banning fossil fuels. That is why this administration has declared a war on gas stoves.

Two of the bills in this package would repeal those rules from this administration.

Natural gas, when it is used in appliances, is 3.4 times more affordable than electricity. Why is that? Let's think about where that electricity comes from. A natural gas plant can burn electricity, spin a turbine, create electricity at maybe 50 percent efficiency and then put it on wires that are hundreds of miles long to go to a household. Those wires may be 70 percent, 80 percent efficient.

When it gets to the household, what do you do with that energy that came from the natural gas that is now electricity? You turn it back into heat if you have an electric stove, which is how this administration would want you to live.

Guess what? That is less than half as efficient. It costs 3.4 times more to do it that way than to create electricity with natural gas and then use the electricity at your house than if you just brought the natural gas to the household. In fact, consumers who use natural gas in their house save over $1,000 a year.

This is a war on the middle class and the poor. The war on gas stoves is a war on affordable heating and cooking.

When the electricity goes out in natural disasters, whose stoves work? The ones who have gas stoves.

Who can boil water to drink when the water is unsafe because of a natural disaster? Those who have gas stoves.

This administration should quit gaslighting consumers by telling them they are acting in their best interest. The Federal Interagency Committee on Indoor Air Quality has never identified gas stoves as contributing to asthma or respiratory illness. The Consumer Product Safety Commission and the Environmental Protection Agency have never identified gas stoves as a significant contributor to adverse air quality or as a health hazard.

Why are they doing this? It is a war on gas stoves. These two bills would seek to reverse that. It is just common sense.

In fact, the other side of the aisle said these are messaging bills. Guess what? Some Democrats liked the message because they voted for these bills in the Energy and Commerce Committee. It must be a great message. It must be a message the American people want to hear. It must be a message that they like to hear because they know if we had the Senate and the White House, this kind of ridiculousness would not go on. That is why it is important to pass these two bills to protect our gas stoves.

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

Mr. Speaker, I wonder, since we are proposing that children would be saved by banning a piece of plastic, has anyone on the other side of the aisle proposed that Congressmen are safer now that this piece of plastic is banned?

I don't think so.

Has anyone proposed that gun-free zone signs would keep us safe?

I don't think so.

What I see surrounding me here and right outside the door are people with firearms protecting us. Our children deserve the same respect and the same serious solutions.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Roy), who is my good friend and colleague on the Rules Committee, to speak in favor of the rule as he did in the committee.

Mr. Speaker, may I inquire as to how much time each side has remaining.

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

Mr. Speaker, I thank the other side of the aisle for pointing out that all the ATF rule does is change the legal status, that you can still get the brace and you can still get the pistol.

The last thing that is on a criminally deranged person's mind is: What is the legal status of my firearm? Is this a pistol? Is this a rifle? Is it a short-barreled rifle? How much time will I get when I go on this suicide mission for doing this because of the legal status?

However, what changing legal status does is it creates millions of felons out of legal firearm owners who presumed they were operating legally.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 30 seconds to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Roy).

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

Mr. Speaker, 6,000 veterans signed a petition opposing the ATF rule, so I hope that is enough to convince the other side.

However, I now switch to two other bills that are in this rules package because this is Groundhog Day. We will be here again. The administration does something which has the effect of law, and then we are feckless to change it.

There have been over 90,000 rules promulgated since the Congressional Review Act was put into place. Only 20 rules have ever been countermanded because it is such a high bar to get a majority of the House and a majority of the Senate and the President to sign something to undo a law.

How did it become law? Just because the administrative branch willed it into existence.

Our Constitution says: ``All legislative powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and a House of Representatives.''

Does it say, and also an ATF or also an EPA? No, it does not. It says House and Senate.

Does it say, some legislative powers? No. It says, all legislative powers are vested in Congress.

The REINS Act would do quite a bit to restore our power. Not enough, though, because the Chevron deference still exists.

The other bill in this package is the Separation of Powers Restoration Act, which is a legislative repeal of the tragic Chevron deference that has plagued this country for so many years, where the Supreme Court gives full latitude, broad authority to the administrative branch to twist and contort the laws that we make in creating new laws.

I urge people to vote for this rule because it includes these two packages, which put our Republic back into a structure that our Founding Fathers envisioned, where the legislators make the laws, and the administration enforces the laws.

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

Mr. Speaker, I have no further speakers, and I am prepared to close.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to submit for the Record a letter to Speaker McCarthy, Ranking Member Hakeem Jeffries, and others signed by 11 veterans and military organizations in support of H.J. Res. 44.

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

The REINS Act, which I would argue is the most important part of these five bills, is here, and we are debating it today because my constituent, Lloyd Rogers--who grew up in an orphanage in Kentucky, where he met his future wife in that same orphanage--sent this idea for this bill to his Congressman who preceded me.

Lloyd Rogers served in the Army during the Korean war. Then he came home, and he served as a county judge executive. He was shocked when he was trying to serve the people in his community at how many of the rules and regulations that tied his hands were never passed by Congress. He wrote this bill, and he sent it to his Congressman.

By the way, he and his wife were married for 65 years, and Lloyd turned 90 on Saturday. He is watching this debate.

This is how our Republic is supposed to work. Laws aren't supposed to come from unelected bureaucrats with no accountability. They are supposed to be ideas that people in our communities have that would make their lives better, and then we are accountable to them, so when they talk to us, we have to listen. They can throw us out every 2 years. Maybe they should throw more of us out every 2 years.

Lloyd came to his Congressman and said, please, put this bill on the floor. It went to legislative counsel. The Congressman introduced this bill, and it has been very popular. It is one of the most popular bills among the American people because they know the structure of our government intended by our Founding Fathers was for us to write the laws and for the administrative branch to execute the laws, not to write them themselves.

Mr. Speaker, I urge adoption of this rule, which contains five bills that I urge the passage of.

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

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

Mr. Speaker, it is great to see you again. How are you? It has been a while. You look terrific.

We haven't had votes in what, 5 legislative days, all because some Republican Members decided to throw a temper tantrum last week on the House floor, wanting to rehash legislation that was passed the week before.

What we saw was essentially a fight between the rightwing and the extreme

rightwing. I mean, what the hell is going on here?

With each passing week, it becomes more and more obvious that the Republican Party is completely out of touch with what everyday people care about in this country.

We are bringing a new rule to the floor that incorporates the bills that we were supposed to do last week and adds an additional bill to make it easier to kill people.

I am told that the Republicans now have the votes to pass this rule. The question is: What was the deal? Better yet, what was the secret deal to convince the Republicans who were problematic last week to go along to get along this week?

Reading the press, we see that members of the Freedom Caucus are saying they have this deal on power sharing.

I am not quite sure what that means. Power sharing with the Speaker and the extreme rightwing; is that the deal?

We hear from the Speaker that there is no deal on anything. I don't know what the truth is. Maybe my friend can enlighten us at some point about what the truth is.

My Republican friends like to say that this place should be run like a business. Well, if they really believe that, then this place should be out of business because this is not the way Congress should be run. This is not the way you run a democracy. This is ridiculous.

Democrats have worked tirelessly to try to lower costs for people, bring jobs back from China, rebuild our country, fight pollution, and keep our communities safe.

Republicans? What do they stand for? Well, forgive me if I say I am not entirely sure because right now, the only thing I have seen so far since they took over is dysfunction and disarray.

Republicans began this Congress by wasting a week fighting with each other about who would be Speaker. Now we are 5 months in, and they have enacted five laws.

One a month. Boy, what an achievement. Even Democrats and President Trump were able to enact 21 laws at this point.

The far right fringe of the Republican Party, the same fringe that demanded Speaker McCarthy give them all of his power, has succeeded in even dictating to him what bills he can and can't bring to the House floor.

This is important. I want the American people to understand who is in charge here right now. It is not the Speaker of the House. It is not Kevin McCarthy. It is the far right of the far right.

We have sitting members of the Republican Conference right now openly advocating for civil war. These are the people calling the shots. Are you kidding me?

In what world should the 11 most extreme people in the Republican Party get to dictate the entire agenda of a legislative body that represents 332 million people? What are we doing here, Mr. Speaker?

We have smoke from wildfires clogging up our air. Scientists are telling us we need to do more on climate change, yet we are passing messaging bills about gas stoves.

By the way, that is not even me calling them messaging bills. It is the Republicans saying that. This is a Republican: We do not need to leave D.C. early because messaging bills are not coming to the House floor. That was Congresswoman Boebert last week.

How about this one: When we pass things around here that are messaging bills that don't do anything, is it really a loss that we aren't passing anything?

I mean, their own Members are saying that the bills they are passing do nothing. Essentially, they are just playing a messaging game. Is this really the best we can do with all of the challenges that we face in this country and around the world?

Meanwhile, our constituents are begging us and they are pleading with us to do something about gun violence in this country. What do Republicans do? How do they respond? By bringing to the floor a bill that makes it easier for the next mass shooter to kill more people. It is sick.

Mr. Speaker, killed were: 9 people outside a bar in Dayton in 2019; 10 people, including a police officer, at a grocery store in Boulder in 2021; 5 people in an LGBTQ nightclub in Colorado Springs in 2022; and 6 people, including children, at a school in Nashville just a few months ago. What do they all have in common? They were all killed by mass shooters who used stabilizing braces.

By the way, the ATF rule that the Republicans are trying to overturn, contrary to what they say, doesn't even make stabilizing braces illegal. It doesn't ban them. All it does is it says that you need to register braces because they are used in a lot of mass shootings.

But for Republicans, any amount of commonsense gun safety regulation is too much. Why? Because the NRA says so.

Our kids are being slaughtered, for God's sake. Does anyone care? Do my Republican colleagues care at all that America's parents stay up wondering whether their kids will be the next one shot at school or at a mall or at a movie theater or at their own graduation?

People come up to me all the time and they ask me: Why can't Democrats and Republicans just work together? I tell them I wish we could. There was a time when we did.

I say to them: Go online and Google the bills that Republicans are bringing to the floor. Ask yourself why Republicans oppose background checks on a gun accessory that mass shooters use to kill people. Ask yourself if it is right that this bill was introduced by a Republican Member of Congress--and you are going to love this--who owns a gun store and makes millions of dollars by selling guns and these types of gun accessories that mass shooters use to kill people. Ask yourself if it makes sense that the only reason this bill is even on the floor is because Speaker McCarthy isn't even in charge of the House schedule anymore; the far, far, far right is.

The craziest thing is this rule was inspired by guidance published under the Trump administration. Let me repeat that. Even the Trump administration thought it was necessary to further regulate stabilizing braces. I can't believe I am about to say this, but I agree.

If you want to know why we can't have real action when it comes to gun safety, follow the money. In the last decade, the NRA has spent more than $100 million to help elect Republicans who will support their extreme agenda. Follow the money. It is no surprise that the far right is demanding this bill, but it is a shame.

How many more mass shootings need to happen? How many more kids need to die before my Republican colleagues pull their heads out of the sand and say the NRA's blood money is not worth the damage that is being done to our country?

I wish I was wrong, Mr. Speaker, but sadly the cowardice and moral bankruptcy on the other side of the aisle seems to know no bounds.

Between the new concept of power sharing in the House, which really just means that the Speaker is going to have to keep a tiny minority of extremist Members happy for the House to be able to function, and the fact that their party's frontrunner for the 2024 Presidential election is being indicted with very serious charges for the second time this afternoon, I am sorry to say the Republican Party is a train wreck, and it doesn't bode well for what is to come.

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

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

Mr. Speaker, let me say a couple of things. First of all, nobody is talking about banning anything here. What we are saying is that an accessory that has been used in a number of mass shootings be registered. That is it.

By the way, the gentleman said the administration should not be making laws. The administration is not making laws. They are administrating and enforcing the laws that we have passed, and they do that through regulation and rulemaking. I am not sure what the gentleman is talking about.

Let me also say that he keeps on saying that this bill will turn gun owners into automatic felons, that by owning or buying one of these stabilizing braces, American gun owners will become felons. That is just not true.

By the way, I should tell the gentleman, someone has to be convicted of a crime in a court to become a felon. Let me give him an example, one that he might be able to relate to. Despite being charged with 37 counts for mishandling classified documents, former President Trump is not a felon. He only becomes a felon if he is found guilty of the crimes that he was charged with and is sentenced to a year or more in prison, which may very likely happen.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to include in the Record an article from the Washington Post titled: ``Here are the 37 charges against Trump and what they mean.''

Mr. Speaker, before I yield to my next speaker, I have to say, we heard a lot of words from the gentleman and from other Republicans who speak on these issues. Do you know what we don't hear? We don't hear any empathy for the families who have lost loved ones to gun violence.

I began my opening remarks by citing examples of how this accessory was used in mass shootings. Children, mothers, fathers, grandmothers, and grandfathers lost their lives. They were murdered. Police were murdered. There is not even any empathy. There is no acknowledgment that this is a terrible tragedy.

All we hear about is: Don't take away my toys. Don't interfere with my hobby. You can't register any of these things.

I think people are so sick and tired of where our priorities are. People are sick and tired of having the National Rifle Association and all of their money dictate what our policies should be on guns. They don't care about all the people who have died and have been murdered in this country.

By the way, other countries have similar challenges and problems that we do, but they don't have the level of gun violence. They don't have massacres on a regular basis. This is what we get. Enough.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Georgia (Mrs. McBath).

Mr. Speaker, I yield an additional 30 seconds to the gentlewoman from Georgia.

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

Mr. Speaker, we didn't call them messaging bills. Members of the Republican Conference called them messaging bills, I would remind the gentleman.

The gentleman says that we need serious solutions to gun violence in this country. I think I heard the gentleman correctly, that he is suggesting it is okay for people to carry guns into bars when they are drunk. I don't think that is very serious.

The idea that we can shoot our way into gun safety is insane. We already have more guns than people in this country. We are the only country in the world that has massacres that occur on a regular basis.

The gentleman is saying that people should be able to carry guns into bars when they are drunk, that we ought to give teachers more guns, and that everybody ought to have more guns and everybody will be safe. This is insane. It doesn't make any sense.

At some point, people are going to have to have the courage to stand up to the gun lobby and say no to the NRA's money and actually do what is in the best interest of the American people, do what will protect the people of this country. To hear this nonsense--this place is crazier than usual.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Doggett).

Mr. Speaker, I yield an additional 30 seconds to the gentleman from Texas.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. This is strange what we hear on the House floor today. My friends keep on talking about veterans and people with disabilities, but I don't see any major veterans organization or disability organization that has endorsed this bill. The gentleman talks about the fact that we have security here. Yes, the Capitol Police who protect us all have had background checks and have all had training.

It is interesting that we have a rule when my friends are in charge where you can't bring weapons on the House floor. I feel good about that after I have listened to some of my colleagues here today.

I also remind the gentleman that there were police officers at Uvalde. We hear from police officers and organizations all across the country all the time how they don't want to have to get into situations where they are battling with somebody who has an AR-15.

People are dying in this country on a regular basis. Massacres are happening on a regular basis, and we are on the floor to basically make it easier for people to have access to an accessory that can make a gun more deadly and more accurate that can kill more people. I mean, it doesn't make any sense. All I can think of is the fact that some of my friends are afraid to take on the gun lobby. They are afraid to lose their money. $100 million in NRA money went into campaigns in the last 10 years--$100 million. We have to get our priorities straight here in this Congress. We have to put people ahead of guns. Mr. Speaker, I am going to urge that we defeat the previous question, and if we do, then I will offer an amendment to the rule to provide for consideration of a resolution which states that it is the House's duty to protect and preserve Social Security

and Medicare for our future generations and reject any cuts to these essential programs.

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Casar), to discuss our proposal.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson Lee).

Mr. Speaker, I won't hold my breath waiting for the other names.

It is astounding to me that my friends on the other side of the aisle don't want any gun laws. Basically, they lack empathy for the murders and deaths in this country that happen on a regular basis. I mean, at some point, we have to say enough is enough. They have to put people ahead of the gun lobby, and my friends are incapable of doing that.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from New Mexico (Ms. Leger Fernandez), who is a distinguished member of the Rules Committee.

Mr. Speaker, may I inquire of the gentleman how many additional speakers he has?

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

Mr. Speaker, we have real problems in this country. I mean, the Northern Hemisphere was on fire. You couldn't walk outside last week without a mask in Washington, D.C., New York City, or a number of major cities and communities all across the Northeast. Our

planet has a fever. I mean, we have a real issue here with climate change, but we don't talk about those things.

There are a zillion issues that we need to deal with, but instead we come to the floor with--this is what the Republicans have said-- messaging bills. Those are their words, not mine. These messaging bills promote their culture war against gas stoves, and these messaging bills, I guess, make the NRA even happier.

The gentleman talks about veterans who want this. There are 16 million veterans in this country. If this were a priority of our veterans, these major organizations would be supporting this bill, but they are not.

The bottom line is, we are here talking about stuff that will not help anybody. In fact, this gun bill just makes it easier for people to kill people.

Why are we doing this? This makes absolutely no sense.

Last week, my Republican friends fought with each other, and nothing got done. This week, we are bringing bills to the floor that Republican Members are calling nothing more than messaging bills.

Congress was created to help solve problems, to help people. My Republican friends think that that is a foreign idea. This is helping nobody. It is a joke that we are here today bringing this horrific bill to the floor basically so that the NRA can be happy and justify another $100 million into their campaigns.

People are dying every single day in this country, and we hardly hear a word about it from the other side of the aisle. In fact, during this debate, very little was even acknowledged in terms of the people who are dying in this country. We can do so much better.

I used to have a history teacher who used to say the world will not get better on its own. I didn't really know what he was talking about when I took the course, but I do now. Nothing good happens unless good people come together and make change.

There have to be some reasonable people on the Republican side who understand that gun violence is out of control. We have more guns in this country than people. We can't shoot our way out of this problem, and yet that is what my Republican friends are suggesting.

Enough is enough. We need to get back to doing the people's business.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' on the previous question, vote ``no'' on the rule, and vote ``no'' on all this garbage messaging legislation that will follow. We are here to solve problems, to make people's lives better. Let's do something that actually makes the American people proud of this Congress. This is embarrassing.

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.

Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume, and I thank the gentleman from Kentucky for yielding me the customary 30 minutes.

With all the very real issues facing our great Nation, it is really disappointing that once again the House majority has decided to waste valuable time and resources to promote a bunch of half-baked legislative ideas and stir the culture wars pot with MAGA conspiracy theories.

The bills that we started considering yesterday in the Rules Committee and will debate and vote upon in the next couple days, consuming an entire week of scarce legislative time, will do nothing to address the most pressing issues our constituents are begging us to address: gun violence, affordable health and childcare, the growing impact of climate change, Social Security solvency, immigration, and national security.

Worse, the antigovernment philosophy inspiring these bills will ultimately harm Americans by creating dangerous bottlenecks in critical government functions, misrepresenting the role and actions of the Federal Government, and disrupting the government's ability to protect Americans from harm.

Let's get some facts straight. While our colleagues across the aisle have framed their argument as necessary to ensure that Congress exercises its legislative function, they completely ignore the fact that the Federal agencies and rulemaking processes they are attacking have been established by Congress to undertake specific functions. That includes rulemaking, which is delegated to the agencies by Congress and ensures that they implement policies using the best and most recent expertise available, for the benefit of the American people.

By enlisting the assistance of Federal agencies to administer the laws that it passes, Congress fulfills its constitutional mandate, the mandate for our entire government to establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to our colleagues.

In other words, working together with the other branches, our government is charged with accomplishing certain basic goals for the American people. The regulatory process that our colleagues seek to frame as a battle against a vast bureaucratic conspiracy is actually an essential part of ensuring that we all have clean air and water to breathe and drink; healthy food to eat; safe planes, trains, and automobiles to travel in.

In reality, regulations mean that when a senior goes to the pharmacy to pick up their prescriptions, the lifesaving medication that they will take is both safe and effective.

When you boil it down, rules and regulations are extremely tangible ways that the Federal Government protects people's health and safety and helps create a fairer economy where everyone has a chance to succeed.

Subject matter experts at agencies craft these regulations, many based on highly complex and technical data. Once a rule is proposed, it undergoes an often years-long rigorous review in which comments are solicited from the public, business interests, and other agencies.

Of course, these rules and regs are issued in response to congressional directives. They are an important step towards implementing laws that Members of this body have passed while representing the people back home who elect them to come here.

We can see examples of successful rulemaking all the time across the country. Before the Clean Water Act, the Delaware River, which runs alongside my district, was so polluted that it stripped the paint off passing ships. These days, you can safely kayak on the river thanks to regulations developed by agencies to carry out that law.

While the regulatory process can always be improved upon, the proposals we are considering today are not good-faith improvements or efforts to provide checks on the regulatory process.

The first of these bills is H.R. 277, the REINS Act, which would turn the administrative rulemaking process on its head, requiring every major rule--of which there are dozens and sometimes hundreds every year--to be passed again by both houses of Congress and signed by the President.

Remember, these rules have been developed in the first instance as a result of congressional action.

What the REINS Act is really doing is creating a process that will cause

gridlock that then Republicans, or other political operatives, can take advantage of to stop rules they don't like.

The burdensome requirements of H.R. 277 are simply not needed because Congress already has multiple opportunities to shape or rescind major rules if it disapproves of them.

We can hold hearings and offer public comment. We can disapprove major regulations before they take effect, or we can rescind those regulations under the Congressional Review Act.

On that last point in particular, I will note that this majority has moved these types of measures through this Chamber already many times this Congress.

In addition, we can also pass legislation to change laws or regulations, if we so please. Of course, we are considering bills today to do just that.

I know my colleagues on the other side of the aisle are aware of the avenues through which Congress can review and reverse rules. I know it because they use them, or try to use them, week in and week out.

For them to paint a bill like the REINS Act as a noble effort to empower Congress is disingenuous, and, ultimately, it diverts attention from the disastrous consequences this legislation would actually create.

Effectively, the REINS Act nullifies all new rulemaking by any administration, whether Republican or Democrat, and it would bring government operations to a standstill. Any new regulation would have to be passed by Congress in order to take effect.

So let's think about what that would really mean. A Congress, with a House majority that would rather bring the country to the brink of default instead of paying bills that Congress has already approved, would have to vote on every new major regulation from every Federal agency.

If that doesn't scare you, the Senate, hardly a model of expeditious legislation, would need to do the same.

In addition, the bill might actually be unconstitutional because it creates a mechanism in which one House of Congress can effectively veto an agency's rule by simply not acting on it within a 70-day legislative time frame.

This, in effect, is indistinguishable from the one-House legislative veto that the Supreme Court held to be unconstitutional in Immigration and Naturalization Service v. Chadha.

The unfortunate truth is, Congress struggles every day to meet the most pressing needs of the American people. There aren't enough hours in the day, year, or congressional term for us to weigh in on all the regulations that we would need to implement the laws that we are passing.

Under this policy, crucial regulations would be left to languish unacted upon, and the health, safety, and welfare of the people we are supposed to serve would be in jeopardy.

In addition to the REINS Act, there are three other bills that my colleagues are pushing through today which would also undermine the regulatory process and threaten public welfare and safety.

H.R. 288, the SOPRA Act, eliminates the decades-long standard for judicial review of agency decisions. That is a precedent that rests, in part, on the understanding that Congress delegates to agencies certain authorities to carry out the laws that it passes.

It is clear that all the talk on the other side of the aisle about this being to restore power to Congress is empty words because this bill actually incentivizes unelected judges, not Congress, to make and enact policy from the bench. Ultimately, it would slow the rulemaking process and skew it toward more powerful, well-funded, and often corporate litigants, which may be the point.

Finally, the two gas stove bills that our colleagues are pushing this week actually demonstrate some of the flaws in the REINS Act; chief among them, the ready availability of alternatives to the REINS Act proposal and the dangers of politicizing the rulemaking process.

H.R. 1615 and 1640 are fearmongering attempts to prevent the enactment of standards to make gas stoves more safe and efficient and would hinder agencies' abilities to address potentially dangerous consumer products.

The majority's trumped-up battle to defend gas stoves from the Federal Government is nothing more than a conspiracy theory cooked up to embroil Congress in culture wars that shed more heat than light on the issues facing our Nation and are likely done so with a healthy helping of fossil fuel lobbying dollars.

Contrary to the heated rhetoric from our colleagues across the aisle, the Federal Government has not proposed to remove appliances from Americans' homes. That persuasive falsehood has been repeated for months by partisan hacks like Tucker Carlson to stoke grievances and cause chaos.

H.R. 1640, the Save Our Gas Stoves Act, nullifies new, congressionally mandated energy efficiency standards for gas stoves, for new gas stoves only, that would save consumers up to $1.7 billion in energy bills and cut down on emissions that are being shown to be particularly dangerous to children's health.

Most of us are familiar with these energy efficiency standards, and we rely upon them when we purchase new appliances like stoves and freezers and furnaces. I know that I do because it is the responsible thing to do as a consumer from both an environmental and an economic perspective.

Contrary to my colleagues' assertions, half of the gas stoves on the market today would meet the standard, and the remainder would have 3 years to make the necessary and already available adjustments to bring their new stoves into compliance.

H.R. 1615, the Gas Stove Protection and Freedom Act, is even worse because it threatens the government's ability to identify and regulate unsafe gas stoves, including those with design defects that could cause injury or death to American consumers.

Just last year, the Consumer Product Safety Commission recalled a gas stove that had sent multiple people to the hospital and placed many more at serious risk of injury or death from carbon monoxide poisoning.

This bill would have prevented the recall of that dangerous appliance and would prevent the Consumer Product Safety Commission from addressing other dangerous appliances in the future. It is simply irresponsible to jeopardize the health and safety of Americans in order to promote conspiracy theories for the far right.

Overall today, my Republican colleagues take a misguided approach to the issues facing rulemaking and Federal regulations. It is clear they don't want to make the government work better. They want to break it.

They would rather allow polluters and corporations to wreak havoc on our environment, children's health, and working people's livelihoods. They would prefer to decimate a regulatory process that improves the lives of Americans every single day.

The Federal Government has long played an important role in promoting the health, safety, and welfare of the American people, and we need to ensure that it can continue playing that role.

Madam Speaker, I strongly oppose these bills, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Doggett).

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

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to include in the Record a Politico article titled: ``What the right's gas stove freak- out was really about.'' That is dated January 14. The first line is: ``No, President Joe Biden isn't coming for your gas stove.''

I also note that, in that article, it talks about the multiple studies now that are investigating the impact of gas stoves on asthma, including by the American Lung Association.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson Lee).

Mr. Speaker, I yield an additional 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Texas.

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

My esteemed colleague from Kentucky talked about the popularity of the REINS Act, but I suggest that that popularity is overstated. The REINS Act has been introduced by its extremist advocates for more than a decade without ever being enacted into law, even when Republicans held both Houses and the White House. I would suggest that it is because saner heads have prevailed and understood that enactment of the REINS Act is bad for America.

Mr. Speaker, if we defeat the previous question, I will offer an amendment to the rule to provide for consideration of a resolution which states that it is the House's responsibility to protect and preserve Social Security and Medicaid for our future generations and reject any cuts to these essential programs.

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

Mr. Speaker, Social Security and Medicare are vital to many of our constituents' economic and health security, yet many of my friends across the aisle have called for major cuts to these critical programs.

In fact, just last week, Speaker McCarthy announced he was forming a bipartisan commission tasked with looking at budget cuts and suggested that Social Security and Medicare could be on the chopping block, saying: ``We have to look at the entire budget. . . . The majority driver of the budget is mandatory spending. It's Medicare, Social Security, interest on the debt.''

It wasn't too long ago that I remember some of my Republican friends calling the President a liar during the State of the Union when he suggested that Republicans were willing to put Social Security benefits on the chopping block.

Now, instead of debating gas stoves and the finer points of administrative law, I am giving my friends on the other side of the aisle a chance to reassure the American public and unequivocally state these programs won't be cut, not just with rhetoric but also with their votes.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Missouri (Ms. Bush), to discuss our proposal.

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

Once again, my colleagues on the right are reverting to their favorite tactic when confronted with real problems in the real world: distraction to conceal that they are doing nothing.

They propose to grind the gears of government to a halt to impose an extreme ideology that Americans as a whole do not support, just as they threatened to tank our entire economy to impose other extreme cuts that even their own party members couldn't support.

They want to ensure that we can do nothing with these bills, that we can do nothing to protect kids from pollutants and dangerous products, to keep businesses from scamming working families out of money, or to ensure that the food people eat every day is safe.

Imagine an FDA that can't issue new food safety and drug regulations, or an EPA that can't keep our drinking water clean, or a VA that can't properly serve our veterans, or a Department of Transportation that can't enforce safety standards for cars, trains, or airplanes. This is what the majority is proposing, and it is a very dangerous vision for America.

The people who elect us to Congress depend on us to make their and their children's lives better, and doing nothing will not accomplish that goal. If anything, we need to make our government more responsive to the needs of the people. We need to do better, not nothing at all.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to oppose the previous question and the rule, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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

Madam Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I call up House Resolution 463 and ask for its immediate consideration.

Madam Speaker, for the purpose of debate only, I yield the customary 30 minutes to the gentlewoman from Pennsylvania (Ms. Scanlon), 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

Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks.

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

Last night, the Rules Committee met and reported House Resolution 463, providing for the consideration of four measures: H.R. 277, H.R. 288, H.R. 1615, and H.R. 1640.

The rule provides for H.R. 277, the Regulations from the Executive in Need of Scrutiny Act, also known as the REINS Act, to be considered under a structured rule, and provides for 1 hour of general debate equally divided and controlled by the chair and ranking minority member of the Committee on the Judiciary or their respective designees. The rule makes 15 amendments in order.

The rule provides further for H.R. 288, the Separation of Powers Restoration Act, to be considered under a structured rule, and provides for 1 hour of general debate equally divided and controlled by the chair and ranking minority member of the Committee on the Judiciary or their respective designees. The rule makes one amendment in order.

Additionally, the rule provides for H.R. 1615, the Gas Stove Protection and Freedom Act, to be considered under a structured rule and provides for 1 hour of general debate equally divided and controlled by the chair and ranking minority member of the Committee on Energy and Commerce or their respective designees. The rule makes two amendments in order.

Finally, the rule provides for H.R. 1640, the Save Our Gas Stoves Act, to be considered under a structured rule and provides for 1 hour of general debate equally divided and controlled by the chair and ranking minority member of the Committee on Energy and Commerce or their respective designees. The rule makes three amendments in order.

Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

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

Our constituents didn't elect us to come here and eat fancy dinners and go from one fundraiser to the next, take lavish trips, and rub elbows with important and famous people. They sent us here for one job: Pass laws or, in some cases, repeal laws. Set the rules under which they will live under; and then we are accountable every 2 years.

The Founders were very wise. Some people complain, but every 2 years our constituents have a chance to replace us if the rules we have set aren't in their favor. They have no such choice with bureaucrats.

Our Founders didn't set this system up for bureaucrats to make the laws. Excessive regulation stifles economic growth, hurts small businesses, and raises consumer prices.

In fact, much of the inflation that we see in the sectors of food and energy is due to overregulation. It is vital that Congress act to reduce our regulatory burden now, which raises consumer prices, reduces wages, and costs jobs.

I think the American people watching this debate are somewhat vexed that the other side of the aisle says we need to give up more power to the executive branch when they sent us here to do something, and they wonder why we are so feckless so often.

They are probably shaking their heads. What are these other people talking about that somebody else should make the rules that we live under?

The REINS Act would require congressional approval for regulations that have a major impact on our economy of more than $100 million, or lead to a raise in consumer prices, or adversely affect employment.

If the REINS Act becomes law, every major regulation promulgated by the administration will come back to Congress for our approval. These regulations, they are not just regulations, these have the force of law. You can go to prison for 10 years, as we have seen with the regulation on pistol braces, just because some bureaucrat decided they wanted to pass a regulation.

In fact, the jobs-crushing OSHA vaccine mandate was one of the things that we should have voted on. If you are going to do that to your constituents, vote on it. But we didn't. We let the executive branch do it.

The idea behind the REINS Act isn't novel. It is enshrined in the Constitution. Article I, Section 1 of the U.S. Constitution says: ``All legislative powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives.''

Does it say and a bureaucracy? No, it doesn't. Does is it say some legislative powers herein granted? No, it says all legislative powers herein granted are given to the Congress of the United States.

Congress has delegated its authority to unaccountable Federal agencies over the past decades, and our constituents are feeling that burden. Unelected bureaucrats do not have the constitutional authority to write laws, nor are they accountable to the people. They are career bureaucrats.

Our Congress has this power, and ceding it to the Federal agencies undermines our representative form of government.

Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. McCormick), my good friend.

Mr. Speaker, one of the arguments made from the other side of the aisle that I find absolutely laughable is this notion that the REINS Act might be unconstitutional, might have some constitutional infirmity because it requires Congress to pass the laws instead of the executive branch.

They reference a Supreme Court decision, INS v. Chadha, that doesn't even read on this bill. The REINS Act does not violate the Presentment Clause because it requires passage in the House, passage in the Senate, and a signature of the President. It doesn't even apply to the Supreme Court decision that was referenced.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Roy), my good friend.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to include in the Record a document titled: ``Gas stove use and respiratory health among adults with asthma in NHANES III,'' the conclusion of which is: ``Among adults with asthma, there was no apparent impact of gas stove use on pulmonary function or respiratory symptoms.''

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

Mr. Speaker, I would like to tell the story of how the REINS Act originated. It is one of the most popular bills in Congress. It is the one bill that would do the most to restore the constitutional balance of government.

It was an idea from Lloyd Rogers. Lloyd is a constituent of mine. He grew up in an orphanage where he met the girl who would later become his wife. They were married for 65 years.

Lloyd served during the Korean war. Lloyd came home and ran for county judge executive, where he served the people of Kentucky once again. Time after time, when he was trying to do the right thing for the people in Kentucky, he was frustrated by laws, but he dug into them. They weren't laws. They were rules, and he couldn't talk to his Congressman to get these things fixed so that he could govern locally.

He came up with the idea of the REINS Act, gave it to the Congressman who represented the district before me, and then that Congressman brought it here to Congress. That is the way laws are supposed to happen, not by some bureaucrat.

Mr. Speaker, I want to move on to the gas stove act here. Despite media gaslighting to the contrary, the Biden administration has effectively declared war on gas stoves using varying rationales.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Langworthy), my good friend.

Mr. Speaker, the other side of the aisle has said that nobody's gas stove is going to be banned. Let me read you a statement from Jeremy Ortiz, a spokesperson for the Department of Energy: Our ``analysis is constructed so that the proposed standard would ensure that products with at least one HIR burner and continuous grates can continue to be available on the market.'' Here is the punch line: ``We did go out of our way to make sure that these two features would remain on the market in creating our analysis. Over half the market would remain if this standard is finalized as proposed.''

Wow. They went out of their way. They bent over backward to make sure they were only going to ban half of the gas stoves on the market for now.

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentlewoman from Florida (Mrs. Cammack).

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Make no mistake: This administration wants to ban gas stoves. They have said it out loud.

Mr. Speaker, 38 to 40 percent of Americans use gas stoves. I asked the ranking member of the committee of jurisdiction for these bills to save our gas stoves if he owns a gas stove. In fact, he does. I asked him: Does it meet the new standards? Would he be able to buy one in the market? He has no idea. He was offended that I would ask such a question.

We have two bills here to protect your gas stoves: The Gas Stove Protection and Freedom Act and the Save Our Gas Stoves Act.

The Federal Interagency Committee on Indoor Air Quality has never identified gas cooking stoves as contributing to asthma or respiratory illness, nor has the Consumer Product Safety Commission nor the EPA ever identified gas stoves as a significant contributor to adverse air quality or as a health hazard.

The other side of the aisle just doesn't like gas stoves. They are reaching for any reason to ban these things. They shouldn't. It is shortsighted.

Number one, what if everybody had an electric stove, how would they get the energy? Well, you would burn natural gas, as many States do-- most States do--in a turbine; you would generate electricity in a process that is hardly 50 percent efficient; then you would transmit it over power lines to the household, which could be hundreds of miles, at an efficiency of maybe 70 percent by the time it goes through all of the transformers, gets to the house, and then heats up the pot.

Why not take the natural gas to the house and burn it there directly?

Many consumers have identified that this is a lot more efficient, and that is what they do and that is why they have gas stoves. They are 3.4 times more affordable than electric stoves. Those who use gas for heating, cooking, and clothes drying on average save over $1,000 a year in their household. When the electricity goes out, when you have natural disasters, natural gas is there and usually available to offer lifesaving heat and to boil water.

I spent about 3 hours yesterday delving into the Department of Energy's regulations and their scientific basis for what they are doing because I wanted to know: How can one appliance that burns gas be more efficient than another appliance that burns gas?

If you expose CH4 in the presence of oxygen, you get a certain amount of Btus. Unless you have got some science project with a catalyst, you are going to get the same number of Btus from both stoves.

When I dug into it, here is what they want to do. They measured efficiency by heating up a pot of water, and they found that stoves with heavy grates or continuous grates that allow for more safety, they said those are less efficient because the grate heats up and less of your energy goes into your water.

Mr. Speaker, people aren't cooking water. They are cooking food. Those grates provide more heat as the food sits there on the stove. The continuous grates provide safety for somebody who is not strong enough to pick up a pan, yet they are saying those are less efficient.

Then in their studies, if you dig deep enough, they admit that a dogged pursuit of efficiency will result in stoves that are less healthy, because to make it more efficient, you shorten the grates and get the pan closer to the flame.

When the flame impinges on the pan, the gas doesn't combust efficiently, and you get carbon monoxide. If all you care about is efficiency, you get more carbon monoxide.

What are they doing? They are going after the high-end stoves. That is where they are going first, the ones with the heavy grates, the ones with the thick walls in the ovens that make it easier to cook good food. They are saying they are less efficient, but they are heating up water. They are not cooking food. They are making assumptions about customer preferences.

In the realm of electric stoves, they say: Induction stoves are more efficient. So we will just make everybody buy new pans because all of your pans don't work on induction stoves. So what, says the Department of Energy.

This is a war on stoves, and the war will be undone or stopped, halted, by the Gas Stove Protection and Freedom Act and the Save Our Gas Stoves Act.

I want to finish by talking about another bill in this rule, which is to restore the separation of powers. It is pretty simple. This bill is two pages long, and it is basically a legislative repeal of Chevron deference.

Chevron deference may go away soon anyway because it is based on a Supreme Court decision that said: Do you know what? If a regulatory agency does their best and makes a good guess about what they think the law is, then the court shouldn't second-guess the regulatory agency.

That is not the court's job. The court's job is to look at the law as written by Congress, not to say: Stretch it as far as you want, administrative branch.

The Separation of Powers Restoration Act would require the courts to look at all questions of law de novo, including interpretation of constitutional and statutory provisions.

Mr. Speaker, this is a wise bill. It should pass, and the rule for this should pass.

I also want to note, just in closing, that the American people don't understand why my colleagues want to give up power to the executive branch. They elected us to come up here and represent them, to live by the laws that we write, but also to be responsible for those laws when our constituents have to live under them.

It sounds absurd to the American people that we would want to give up that power that those people have entrusted to us.

Whether laws or the structure of government, if my colleagues just follow common sense, they know banning gas stoves isn't going to save the planet. It is going to increase prices. It is going to make it harder for low-income and middle-income families to get by if they have to buy more expensive appliances or if they have to cook their food longer. That is the result of these regulations.

All of that could be reined in with the REINS Act. That is what we need to do. We need to pass this resolution today and get these four bills on the floor. We have allowed amendments, and everybody under this rule has had 72 hours to read the bill. What a concept. Give the American people the time to read the bill, as well. We have read it. We know what these bills do. Put them on the floor.

Mr. Speaker, I urge a ``yes'' vote on all four bills and, most explicitly, a ``yes'' vote on this resolution.

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

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

Madam Speaker, the so-called Separation of Powers Restoration Act would completely upend the administrative process by eliminating judicial deference to agencies and by requiring Federal courts to review all agency rulemakings and interpretations of statutes on a de novo basis.

More than 30 years ago, the Supreme Court held in Chevron USA v. Natural Resources Defense Council, that courts must give ``considerable weight'' to an agency's construction of a statute it administers. This makes sense, because while Congress sets broad policies, we delegate authority to executive agencies because we do not have the expertise to craft technical regulations ourselves, and we rely on these agencies to carry out the policies we enact.

Under the Chevron doctrine, courts respect the careful process undertaken by the dedicated professionals at our Federal agencies, many of whom who have decades of experience and vast technical expertise.

Courts give deference to an agency's interpretation of its statutory authority if the interpretation is determined to be reasonable. The Chevron doctrine has been the ruling precedent for judicial review of agency decisions for decades. But this legislation would do away with this longstanding precedent--a move that would throw uncertainty into the entire rulemaking process.

It would also empower judges to completely override the determination of agency experts, substituting their own judgment regardless of their comparative lack of technical knowledge and understanding of the underlying subject matter for the carefully crafted and scientifically based decisions made by agencies.

It is the height of hypocrisy for the party that rails against what it calls judicial activism to support legislation that is the very embodiment of the judicial activism.

This legislation would also make the Federal rulemaking process even more time consuming and costly than it already is, forcing agencies to adopt even more detailed factual records and explanations in order to withstand judicial scrutiny, which would further delay the finalization of critical lifesaving regulations.

These are regulations that protect the quality of the air we breathe, the water we drink, the food we consume, and the safety of the products we use. But this legislation is just the latest step in the Republican's decades-long assault on the regulatory process, trying to add hurdle after hurdle on the

ability to issue regulations that protect public health and safety, regulations whose benefits consistently outweigh their cost, often by many multiples.

Slowing down the rulemaking process for these vital health and safety protections would put the lives of Americans at greater risk. By eliminating judicial deference to agencies, this bill would empower the courts to make public policy from the bench, ignoring the careful consideration and technical expertise of executive agencies.

Madam Speaker, I include in the Record two letters: The first from the Coalition for Sensible Safeguards, which includes more than 160 diverse labor, consumer, public health, food safety, financial reform, faith, environmental, and scientific integrity groups; and another letter from the Earthjustice organization.

Coalition for

Sensible Safeguards,

June 5, 2023.

Dear Representative: The Coalition for Sensible Safeguards

(CSS), which includes more than 160 diverse labor, consumer,

public health, food safety, financial reform, faith,

environmental, and scientific integrity groups representing

millions of Americans, strongly opposes the Separation of

Powers Restoration Act, H.R. 288.

Congress should be looking for ways to strengthen our

country's regulatory system by identifying gaps and

instituting new safeguards for the public. Unfortunately,

this legislation does the opposite by placing even more

obstacles before agencies as they work to provide new public

health, safety, and financial security protections for the

public.

The legislation will make our system of regulatory

safeguards weaker by enabling judicial policymaking at the

expense of agency expertise and congressional authority,

thereby resulting in unpredictable outcomes and regulatory

uncertainty for all stakeholders. If passed, H.R. 288 would

prevent many critical updates to public protections,

especially those that ensure clean air and water, safe food

and consumer products, safe workplaces, and a stable,

prosperous economy.

This problematic legislation attempts to reverse a

fundamental and well-settled legal principle that has long

effectively guided our regulatory system and provided a vital

check on judicial overreach. It strives to abolish judicial

deference to agencies' statutory interpretations in

rulemaking by requiring a court to decide all relevant

questions of law de nova, including all questions concerning

the interpretation of constitutional, statutory, and

regulatory provisions of final agency actions. Such deference

was established as bedrock administrative law by the Supreme

Court in the 1984 case Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense

Council and came to be referred to as Chevron deference.

Chevron deference has been upheld by hundreds of federal

courts since and has been endorsed by both conservative and

liberal Supreme Court justices and federal court judges.

In practice, abolishing Chevron deference will make the

current problems in our country's regulatory process much

worse in several ways. H.R. 288 will lead to even more

regulatory burdens and delays, particularly for those

``economically significant'' or ``major'' new rules that

provide the greatest benefits to the public's health, safety,

and financial security.

There is substantial academic literature and expert

consensus that intrusive judicial scrutiny of agency

rulemaking is one of the main drivers of regulatory

paralysis. Thus, increasing litigation risk for agency rules,

which is exactly what this bill would accomplish by spawning

hundreds of new lawsuits per year, will mean many more missed

congressional deadlines and a regulatory process that fails

to efficiently and effectively protect the public as Congress

requires. This further ``chilling'' of rulemaking will

certainly benefit special interests who will further pressure

regulators to carve out loopholes, weaken safety standards,

or otherwise obstruct new rulemakings with the greatly

enhanced threat of a lawsuit waiting in the wings.

Of even greater concern, eliminating judicial deference to

agency rulemaking would empower reviewing courts to

substitute their policy preferences for those of the agency.

One of the primary policy rationales for Chevron deference is

that agencies have considerable and superior expertise in the

regulatory sectors they oversee as compared to generalist

judges with far less expertise. Thus, H.R. 288 aims to make

it easier for the courts to overturn an agency's highly

technical, resource-intensive, and science-based rulemaking

without the expertise needed to make such determinations.

Further, abolishing Chevron review would actually undermine

congressional authority, an irony given the name of the bill.

De novo review of the scope and nature of congressional

grants of authority to agencies invites courts to create law,

ignore congressional intent, or both. In particular, it

defeats a deliberate choice by Congress to confer on agencies

the authority to resolve complex policy questions based on

their expertise and the public input they receive during the

rulemaking process.

Perhaps the most telling critique of attempts to replace

Chevron deference with de novo review comes from former

Justice Antonin Scalia, a vocal supporter of Chevron

deference during his career and an indication of just how

broad the support is for maintaining such deference. Writing

for the majority in City of Arlington v. F.C.C., Justice

Scalia argued that requiring that ``every agency rule must be

subjected to a de novo judicial determination'' without any

standards to guide this review would result in an ``open-

ended hunt for congressional intent,'' rendering ``the

binding effect of agency rules unpredictable and destroy the

whole stabilizing purpose of Chevron. The excessive agency

power that the dissent fears would be replaced by chaos.''

[City of Arlington, Tex. v. F.C.C., 133 S. Ct. 1863, 1874

(2013).]

H.R. 288 aims to achieve an unprecedented and dangerous

move away from traditional judicial deference towards a

system of enhanced powers for Big Business lobbyists and

weakened protections for consumers and working families. We

strongly urge opposition to the Separation of Powers

Restoration Act, H.R. 288.

Sincerely,

Coalition for Sensible Safeguards.

Madam Speaker, I urge my colleagues to oppose this dangerously flawed legislation, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I yield such time as she may consume to the distinguished gentlewoman from Pennsylvania (Ms. Dean).

Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I continue to reserve the balance of my time.

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

This legislation would allow judges to undermine and second-guess the carefully crafted and scientifically based regulations issued by our expert administrative agencies. It would upset decades of Supreme Court precedent just to further the extreme antiregulatory agenda of the Republican majority, which puts the health and safety of all Americans at risk.

Madam Speaker, I urge my colleagues to oppose this dangerous legislation, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I claim the time in opposition.

Madam Speaker, as agency heads have stated time and time again, guidance documents, general statements of policy, and other agency guidance do not have the force and effect of law, and the agencies do not take enforcement actions based on supervisory guidance.

This amendment would unnecessarily require judicial review, de novo or otherwise, of guidance documents that have not been interpreted by courts to be given the force of law.

Before I discuss how guidance documents and rules differ, let's take a minute to consider the pure breadth of materials this amendment would cover: interagency statements, bulletins, policy statements, questions and answers, frequently asked questions, statements of policy, and advisories.

Rules and guidance from agencies are not only given different weight in court, but they also are developed through entirely different processes. Rules are made under the Administrative Procedures Act and, thus, follow a structured process for soliciting public comments, the review of those comments, and the release of any final rule. Agency guidance documents, by contrast, are not made under the APA process. Guidance documents are not subject to public review and comment. When you consider the range of materials that falls under the category ``guidance,'' this, naturally, makes sense.

A frequently asked questions page on an agency website cannot and should not be placed in the same category as rules that undergo months and years of review and development. Not only is it wrong as a matter of law to conflate these two classes of documents, but it would also signal to the judiciary that Congress sees them on equal footing; that is, rules and guidance on equal footing, which would muddy the judicial review of agency action.

I imagine the amendment sponsor did not intend for her amendment to accidentally expand what kinds of instruction from agencies should be given the force of law by expanding the Separation of Powers Restoration Act in this fashion, but in any case, that is what this amendment would do.

If agency guidance were treated the same as a rule, as wrong as that might be, agencies would be chilled and warned against providing much- needed information to the individuals and businesses who seek more feedback on an agency's point of view. They would be very hesitant to answer questions on question lines.

Finally, as I noted in response to a similar amendment to the REINS Act yesterday, by requiring agency guidance documents to receive the same review as rules, this amendment would create confusion among businesses subject to oversight from our executive branch agencies as to how much weight they should give agency guidance.

Expanding this bill to also require any guidance the agency gives to businesses about how the rules will be enforced is a drastic expansion of the Separation of Powers Restoration Act and would ensure that agencies provide less guidance for businesses, thus creating more uncertainty for businesses.

This amendment is an overstep that would further stifle the work of our agencies. I, therefore, oppose this amendment and urge my colleagues to do the same.

Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, judging from what the gentlewoman just said, the gentlewoman does not understand the process at all.

Courts do not enforce guidance, so we are not prohibiting them here from doing what they do not do to start with. Courts do not enforce guidance. Guidance simply tells people how the courts will enforce the rules promulgated by the agencies.

So to say that you can't have guidance is to say that people must act in ignorance and bet their businesses on what the agency will do without knowing it because the agency can't tell them. That is absurd.

Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, the gentlewoman is accurate as to what SOPRA would do, and for all the reasons I stated before, it is a terrible bill, as terrible as REINS is. I am not going to repeat those arguments.

As to this amendment, I don't have to have practiced law recently. I know how to read a bill. There are lawyers on my staff who know how to read a bill and we know, as I said before, that courts don't enforce guidance. There is no such thing.

Guidance issued by agencies tells the courts how to interpret the rules promulgated by those agencies. That is a simple fact. It is not debatable.

Similarly, to have an amendment that says there shall be no guidance is to have an amendment that says businesses should operate in the dark and bet their businesses on what an agency might do. That is ridiculous and harmful to business, and I urge my colleagues to oppose this amendment as I urge them to oppose the bill.

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