WASHINGTON — Republicans in Congress aim to revamp an anti-regulatory law from the Newt Gingrich era in an effort to paralyze new financial, environmental and labor rules with a never-ending string of court challenges.
Next week, the House will consider a bill to amend the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act of 1995, which then-Speaker Gingrich (R-Ga.) shepherded through Congress. The 20-year-old law imposed a host of cost-benefit standards on federal regulators, including a requirement that they consider the costs that new rules might impose on state and local governments. But in order to garner Democratic votes and protect against a presidential veto, Gingrich made a significant concession: The regulators’ calculations could not be challenged in court.
That would change under a new bill from Reps. Virginia Foxx (R-Va.) and Loretta Sanchez (D-Calif.), which would open up every aspect of these complex analyses to judicial review — leading to an inevitable barrage of lawsuits from those affected by the pending rules.
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The U.S. Chamber of Commerce raised the law’s restrictions in its formal criticism of the Volcker Rule, a central tenet of Dodd-Frank. The corporate lobbying group denounced regulators at the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency for concluding that the Volcker Rule would not have a significant economic impact and thus did not require a detailed cost-benefit analysis. Other regulators did perform extensive economic impact analyses in crafting the rule, and eventually so did the OCC.
The Volcker Rule ultimately survived without a serious challenge in court. But given the new bill’s potential to boost corporate lawsuits against regulation, it’s not surprising that the Chamber of Commerce supports it.
