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Showing Original Post only (View all)REINS Act - The Most Dangerous Bill You've Never Heard of Just Passed the House [View all]
http://www.truth-out.org/buzzflash/commentary/the-most-dangerous-bill-you-ve-never-heard-of-just-passed-the-houseLast, week, under the cover of a media bliss-out except among Koch funded right-wing channels, the House of Representatives passed a bill which would effectively repeal future standard setting under every important environmental, public health, consumer protection, labor standards, occupational safety and civil rights law on the books.
The bill, called the REINS Act, requires that any future major regulation adopted by an Executive Agencysay a new toxic chemical standard required by the recently enacted Chemical Safety Act, or a new consumer protection rule about some innovative but untested kind of food additivemust be approved by a specific resolution in each House of Congress within 70 days to take effect.
As one example, the REINS Act would totally neuter the new Chemical Safety Act, just passed by the Republican Congress last year. The act requires U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to review and set standards for 10 widely abused chemicals in the next six months alone. The act passed only because in exchange, states gave up much of their power to protect their citizens from toxic chemicals; without that incentive, the Tea Party will certainly act to prevent EPA from restricting the use of these chemicals. But the states only agreed to give up in exchange for the promise that EPA would act. But the REINS act neuters this promise. Even if the House Republican caucus was willing in theory to consider such rules, there is simply no way Congress could add 10-40 new pieces of legislation to its work load in the chemical safety area alone. In fact, the House also just passed legislation to allow it to REPEAL all of President Obama's regulatory acts in the last eight months of his term in office with one vote. Why? Because House members said there was not time for individual votes on each ruleexactly the requirement they just established for new rules.
Worse, Congress totally lacks the technical competence to review these kinds of complex rules. Do we really want members of Congress deciding whether a chemical can safely be used in food packaging? Or the proper procedures for approving new drugs as safe and effective? Or setting the allowable safety standard for heavy metals in drinking water?
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REINS Act - The Most Dangerous Bill You've Never Heard of Just Passed the House [View all]
Jimbo101
Jan 2017
OP
This should pretty easy to Filibuster in the Senate. Waaay too extreme
Proud Liberal Dem
Jan 2017
#20
I would think all of this would be an unconstitutional power grab by Congress
stopwastingmymoney
Jan 2017
#19
The question is where does the line between enforcement end and reinvention begin?
Amishman
Jan 2017
#24
Delaying by 70 days is easy. Sounds like a reasonable amount of time, but
lindysalsagal
Jan 2017
#21