Congress Working To Unravel Obama’s Legislation
WASHINGTON At least since Feb. 1, Congress has been more in the business of undoing rules than creating them.
Empowered by a Republican presidency, Congress has been a steady machine of regulations rollbacks, chipping away at regulations on everything from education the environment to gun control.
Republicans say such a move is overdue: House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy said that during Obama's final year in office, the Federal Register hit 97,100 pages - longer by nearly 18,000 pages than in 2008.
Since Feb. 1, the House has voted to undo eight Obama-era rules. Two of those eight have passed the Senate.
Their signature by the president would signal a remarkable shift: Since 1996, Congress has only once repealed a regulation under the Congressional Review Act, a law that allows Congress to do presidential regulations within 60 legislative days of them being instituted. The time limit means that controversial regulations on clean power plants and clean water can't be addressed.
Rep. Bill Johnson, R-Marietta, said there's a time and place for regulations, but the government has too often opted to weigh in when it should not have.
"The federal government should be involved and issue regulations to protect national security, to protect public safety and to protect public health," he said. "And they should be scientifically based, based on fact, not on political ideology."
Among the most rules in the cross-hairs so far this year:
Gun rights
The House voted Feb. 2 to repeal an Obama regulation that would require the Social Security Administration to report those who receive Social Security disability or Supplementary Security income benefits who are unable to manage their finances because of a documented mental illness to the FBI for inclusion in a database used for background checks for gun purchases. Gun control groups had lauded the rule as a necessary protection to keep guns out of the hands of the mentally ill.
The environment
Both the House and Senate this month voted to undo a regulation aimed at keeping mining waste out of nearby waterways. Obama signed the regulation shortly before leaving office, so few will have benefitted from the new regulation, said Becky Hammer, staff attorney on water issues for the National Resources Defense Council.
She said without the rule, people aren't as well protected from arsenic, mercury and selenium - three elements that "can cause really severe mental deficits in kids, and growth problems."
"Putting this in people's drinking water supplies is obviously a very bad thing to do," she said.
But Johnson, who sponsored the disapproval measure in the House, said the rule was '"absolutely, totally unnecessary."
"There have been laws in place for years both on the federal level and state level to prevent mining operators from dumping mine waste into streams," he said. "The rule had one purpose and one purpose only - to put a death knell into the coffin of the coal industry."
He said Ohio alone has 33,000 jobs dependent on underground coal mining.
Financial advisers
In some cases, it's not Congress repealing the rules. On Feb. 3, Trump signed an executive order directing a review of the "fiduciary rule," a rule slated to go into effect in April that requires financial advisers to put their clients' interests ahead of their own. While Trump's executive order does not repeal the rule, it will, at the very least, delay its implementation.
Among those who have weighed in against the rule is the Insured Retirement Institute, a trade association for the retirement income industry, which worries that the rule is so cumbersome that it will make it more difficult for savers to plan for retirement. "We continue to have significant concerns about the rule and its harmful impact on retirement savers," said Cathy Weatherford, the group's president and CEO, who applauded the executive order. Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, was also among those who opposed the rule.
But the review has Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, the leading Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee, outraged. He said Trump's review of the rule will lead to unnecessary uncertainty by those who follow the rule who will worry that they are putting themselves at a competitive disadvantage to "fly-by-night" advisers.
Repeal of the rule, he said, would mean that people with modest retirements will "see more of their retirement savings eaten up by fees."
"This is a disclosure requirement that says that investment advisors have to do what's best for their clients and not for themselves," he said. "It's pretty amazing that you need a law to say you have to do what's best for your client and not for yourself."
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