GOOD Act

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to support H.R. 890, the Guidance Out Of Darkness Act, or the GOOD Act.

Regulatory guidance includes agency statements that, while not intended to have the force and effect of law, establish agency policies on statutory, regulatory, or technical issues. Since such guidance communicates how an agency will administer a law and its programs, it has a significant effect on regulated entities.

Regulated entities and the public should know what agency guidance says about the laws and programs that affect them. However, guidance documents are not easy to find. They are not consistently posted on agency websites.

This inconsistency burdens regulated entities. It especially burdens small businesses that often lack the resources to hire compliance experts. The problem is so bad that agency guidance documents are known as ``regulatory dark matter.''

For a brief time, the prior administration brought needed sunshine to this situation. Following the GOOD Act's passage by the House during the 115th Congress, the prior administration voluntarily adopted the bill's reforms through an October 2019 executive order after the Senate failed to act.

Under the executive order, guidance was required to become fully transparent online. Across the government, each agency was directed to make available on its website a single searchable, indexed database with links to all guidance documents in effect.

As a result, for the first time, members of the public could easily find whatever agency guidance they needed online in one central location. The order was in effect during 2019 and 2020 but has since been rescinded.

Ever since, agencies have been pulling down their guidance web pages, and guidance has once again fallen into darkness, increasing the potential for agency abuse.

This is why we need to once again pass the GOOD Act in the House and require agencies to publish their regulatory guidance in a single, easily accessible location. The American public deserves nothing less from their government.

I thank my committee colleague, Representative Ro Khanna, for cosponsoring my legislation. I especially thank the ranking member for working with my staff to strengthen the bill and helping us advance a bipartisan bill here today.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to support this simple and necessary transparency bill.

Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 890) to increase access to agency guidance documents, as amended.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on this measure.

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

Mr. Speaker, I call upon my colleagues to support H.R. 890, the Guidance Out Of Darkness Act, or the GOOD Act.

This bill ensures agency guidance is transparent by requiring agencies to publish legal and regulatory guidance documents online in a single location.

Under current law, agencies are required to proactively disclose statements of policy and interpretations, also commonly known as guidance documents, which have been adopted by the agency and are not published in the Federal Register. These regulatory guidance documents represent agency statements intended to inform the public of how an agency interprets laws and regulations.

Despite this existing publishing requirement, the law currently lacks guidelines for how agencies must publish guidance documents. Federal agencies have typically used a variety of methods to issue their guidance documents, including websites, email, social media, and newsletters. As you can imagine, tracking down guidance documents across these different areas of publication is a very real burden.

H.R. 890 solves this problem by ensuring the central publishing of all guidance documents. This will help the American public and regulated organizations, especially small entities, better understand agencies' views of their obligations under the law.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to support this commonsense, bipartisan legislation, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. Comer).

Mr. Speaker, I encourage my House colleagues to support this commonsense bill to make agency guidance documents more transparent to the American public, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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

Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of H.R. 890. I thank the gentlewoman for her leadership.

The bill is titled the Guidance Out Of Darkness Act, suggesting that agency guidance documents are currently secreted away behind closed doors, shrouded in mystery. This is a bit melodramatic, gothic, and not exactly the reality.

Federal agencies are presently required to disclose any statement of policy and interpretations that are not otherwise published in the Federal Register, but it is true that there are not standardized requirements now for how and where to publish these guidance documents.

The GOOD Act would establish such requirements, directing agencies to publish them on a dedicated website of the agency. It would also require the OMB Director to designate a single website where all such guidance could be found.

This step to make agency guidance documents more organized and accessible makes good sense.

I appreciate my colleagues for working to address a number of concerns raised about the bill as originally drafted. For example, the bill now includes an exception to publishing a guidance document if that document is exempt from disclosure under FOIA, ensuring that the bill does not result in sensitive information winding up in the hands of our adversaries.

However, some valid concerns remain outstanding--chiefly, that the bill's definition of ``guidance document'' may be overly broad to the extent that it undermines the transparency the bill is meant to advance.

I won't oppose this bill today because I appreciate its stated goal of promoting transparency. I do ask our GOP colleagues to continue working with us in good faith to thoroughly examine and address some lingering concerns before it moves any further through the legislative process.

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

Mr. Speaker, I am in favor of this legislation. I yield back the balance of my time.