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REGULATORY ACCOUNTABILITY ACT OF 2011 

HEARING 

BEFORE THE

COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 

ONE HUNDRED TWELFTH CONGRESS 

FIRST SESSION 

ON

H.R. 3010 

OCTOBER 25, 2011 

Serial No. 112–75 

Printed for the use of the Committee on the Judiciary 

( 

Available via the World Wide Web: http://judiciary.house.gov 

(II) 

COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY 

LAMAR SMITH, Texas, Chairman 

F. JAMES SENSENBRENNER, JR., 

Wisconsin 

HOWARD COBLE, North Carolina 

ELTON GALLEGLY, California 

BOB GOODLATTE, Virginia 

DANIEL E. LUNGREN, California 

STEVE CHABOT, Ohio 

DARRELL E. ISSA, California 

MIKE PENCE, Indiana 

J. RANDY FORBES, Virginia 

STEVE KING, Iowa 

TRENT FRANKS, Arizona 

LOUIE GOHMERT, Texas 

JIM JORDAN, Ohio 

TED POE, Texas 

JASON CHAFFETZ, Utah 

TIM GRIFFIN, Arkansas 

TOM MARINO, Pennsylvania 

TREY GOWDY, South Carolina 

DENNIS ROSS, Florida 

SANDY ADAMS, Florida 

BEN QUAYLE, Arizona 

MARK AMODEI, Nevada 

JOHN CONYERS, JR., Michigan 

HOWARD L. BERMAN, California 

JERROLD NADLER, New York 

ROBERT C. ‘‘BOBBY’’ SCOTT, Virginia 

MELVIN L. WATT, North Carolina 

ZOE LOFGREN, California 

SHEILA JACKSON LEE, Texas 

MAXINE WATERS, California 

STEVE COHEN, Tennessee 

HENRY C. ‘‘HANK’’ JOHNSON, JR., 

Georgia 

PEDRO R. PIERLUISI, Puerto Rico 

MIKE QUIGLEY, Illinois 

JUDY CHU, California 

TED DEUTCH, Florida 

LINDA T. SA ́ NCHEZ, California 

[Vacant] 

SEAN MCLAUGHLIN, Majority Chief of Staff and General Counsel 

PERRY APELBAUM, Minority Staff Director and Chief Counsel 

(III) 

C O N T E N T S 

OCTOBER 25, 2011 

Page 

THE BILL 

H.R. 3010, the ‘‘Regulatory Accountability Act of 2011’’ ...................................... 3 

OPENING STATEMENTS 

The Honorable Lamar Smith, a Representative in Congress from the State 

of Texas, and Chairman, Committee on the Judiciary ..................................... 1 

The Honorable John Conyers, Jr., a Representative in Congress from the 

State of Michigan, and Ranking Member, Committee on the Judiciary ......... 35 

The Honorable Howard Coble, a Representative in Congress from the State 

of North Carolina, and Member, Committee on the Judiciary ......................... 37 

WITNESSES 

C. Boyden Gray, Boyden Gray & Associates 

Oral Testimony ..................................................................................................... 40 

Prepared Statement ............................................................................................. 43 

Christopher DeMuth, American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research 

Oral Testimony ..................................................................................................... 52 

Prepared Statement ............................................................................................. 55 

Arnold B. Baker, Owner, Baker Ready-Mix and Building Materials 

Oral Testimony ..................................................................................................... 75 

Prepared Statement ............................................................................................. 77 

Sidney A. Shapiro, University Distinguished Chair in Law, Wake Forest 

University School of Law 

Oral Testimony ..................................................................................................... 86 

Prepared Statement ............................................................................................. 88 

LETTERS, STATEMENTS, ETC., SUBMITTED FOR THE HEARING 

Prepared Statement of the Honorable John Conyers, Jr., a Representative 

in Congress from the State of Michigan, and Ranking Member, Committee 

on the Judiciary ................................................................................................... 36 

Prepared Statement of the Honorable Steve Cohen, a Representative in Congress from the State of Tennessee, and Member, Committee on the Judiciary ......................................................................................................................... 38

APPENDIX 

Material Submitted for the Hearing Record .......................................................... 169 

(1) 

REGULATORY ACCOUNTABILITY ACT OF 2011 

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 25, 2011 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, 

COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY, 

Washington, DC. 

The Committee met, pursuant to call, at 10:24 a.m., in room 

2141, Rayburn Office Building, the Honorable Lamar Smith (Chairman of the Committee) presiding. 

Present: Representatives Smith, Sensenbrenner, Coble, Gallegly, 

Lungren, Chabot, Issa, Franks, Gohmert, Jordan, Poe, Griffin, 

Gowdy, Ross, Adams, Quayle, Conyers, Scott, Watt, Jackson Lee, 

Waters, Johnson, and Quigley. 

Mr. SMITH. The Judiciary Committee will come to order. 

Without objection, the Chair is authorized to declare recesses of 

the Committee at any time. 

We welcome everyone here, particularly our witnesses. 

I am going to recognize myself for an opening statement, then 

the Ranking Member, then the Chairman and Ranking Member of 

the relevant Subcommittee. 

The American people urgently need jobs that only economic 

growth can give. Standing in the way of growth and job creation 

is a wall of Federal regulation. As of 2008, Federal regulations 

costs our economy $1.75 trillion each year. 

The Obama administration seeks to add billions more with a host 

of new major regulations. Its 2011 regulatory agenda calls for over 

200 new major rules, each of which will affect the economy by $100 

million or more each year. And the Administration has proposed 

four times the number of major regulations than the previous Administration over a similar period of time. 

New regulatory burdens and uncertainty about the economy have 

helped to keep trillions of dollars of private sector capital on the 

sidelines. Companies cannot safely invest if they cannot tell whether tomorrow’s regulations will make their investments unprofitable. 

Without new investment, we cannot expect new jobs. 

The Administrative Procedure Act is out of date and encourages 

regulatory overreach and excessive regulatory cost. Enacted in 

1946, it places only a handful of light restrictions on the Federal 

rulemaking process. Congress wrote it long before anyone imagined 

the reach and expense of the modern regulatory state. 

The APA does not require agencies to identify the cost of their 

regulations before they impose them. It does not require agencies 

to consider reasonable, lower cost alternatives. The APA does not 

2 

even require agencies to rely on the best reasonably obtainable evidence. 

While the APA does require agencies to give notice of proposed 

rulemaking and receive public comment on its proposals, too often 

that is an after-the-fact exercise. Frequently agencies predetermine 

the outcome of rulemakings, and notice and comment serves only 

to paper over the record. 

The Regulatory Accountability Act fixes this problem by bringing 

the APA up-to-date. Under its provisions, agencies are required to 

assess the costs and benefits of regulatory alternatives. Unless interests of public health, safety, or welfare require otherwise, agencies must adopt the least costly alternative that achieves the regulatory objectives Congress has established. 

The Regulatory Accountability Act contains common sense reforms that have bipartisan support in both the House and the Senate. In large part, that is because so many of its provisions are 

modeled on the terms of executive orders that Presidents Reagan, 

Clinton, Bush, and Obama have issued to compensate for the APA’s 

weaknesses. Over the past 3 decades, these bipartisan executive orders have proved that the principles of the Regulatory Accountability Act work, but the executive orders are not permanent, are 

not judiciously enforceable, and do not bind independent agencies. 

Congress should pass the Regulatory Accountability Act to make 

cost justification and other common sense practices permanent and 

enforceable fixtures of the regulatory landscape. If America’s economy is to grow, produce jobs, and remain globally competitive, 

Washington must change. 

The Obama administration itself has made concessions to this 

view. Executive Order 13563 acknowledges that new regulations, 

quote, must taken into account benefits and costs. In September 

2011, the Administration said no to a new multibillion regulation, 

at least for now. That regulation was the Environmental Protection 

Agency’s new ozone national ambient air quality standards. 

Under the Regulatory Accountability Act, principles of Executive 

Order 13563 and its predecessors would, at last, become binding 

law. Sound decisions that meet statutory objectives, while they respect the economy’s needs, would be the order of the day, not the 

rare occurrence. American jobs, American growth, and American 

competitiveness would all be the better for it. 

That concludes my opening statement, and the gentleman from 

Michigan, the Ranking Member of the full Committee, Mr. Conyers, is recognized for his. 

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Mr. CONYERS. Thank you, Chairman Smith and Members of the 

Committee. 

I welcome all of the witnesses and look forward to what they say 

about this very important proposal. 

In numerous ways, if 3010 is to be taken seriously, it would effectively halt agency rulemaking, undermine critical public health 

and safety rules. Now, I want to say that again because I would 

invite discussion around from my colleagues. H.R. 3010 would 

amend the Administrative Procedure Act in ways that would effectively halt agency rulemaking, undermine critical public health and 

safety rules. And I would also invite all of the witnesses to comment on that statement as well. 

I am particularly concerned because the former chief of law enforcement of California, my good friend, Dan Lungren, has four law 

schools out of the 62 law professors that have sent a very thorough 

description of the problems that they see in this bill before us. And 

one of the professors at my law school in Detroit, whom I have not 

gotten in touch with yet or haven’t succeeded in getting in touch 

with her yet, is also a signatory. 

So let’s look at what the problem is. The bill would substitute, 

they say, for the current Administrative Procedure Act section 553 

a new version that is approximately 10 times longer. That is the 

first sentence. 

The second sentence says it would add over 60 new procedural 

and analytical requirements to the agency rulemaking process, 

many of which would apply to all nonexempt rulemaking however 

ordinary and however far removed from the major health, environmental, and safety regulations that we sense animate current concerns. 

In the second paragraph, we seriously doubt that agencies would 

be able to respond to delegations of rulemaking authority or to congressional mandates to issue rules if this bill were to be enacted. 

Instead, it would likely lead to rulemaking avoidance by agencies, 

increasing the use of underground rules, case-by-case adjudication, 

or even prosecutorial actions to achieve policies without having to 

surmount the additional hurdles presented by the new section 553. 

Executive officials would find it practically impossible to use rulemaking either to create new regulations or to undue old regulations. 

And so they conclude, we therefore oppose the bill in its current 

form and, more importantly, oppose its basic approach. While we 

share many of the views expressed in the comprehensive comments 

of the ABA Section on Administrative Law and Regulatory Practice, we wish here to emphasize our conviction that the positive aspects of the bill identified by the section are greatly outweighed by 

the damage this bill would cause to administrative agencies and 

the public welfare they promote if it were enacted. 

And so I am going to follow this discussion very carefully. It is 

extremely important, and I hope that all of my colleagues will as 

well. 

I conclude with this observation, Mr. Chairman. H.R. 3010 would 

require the agencies consider regulatory costs and benefits of proposed and final rules, quote, notwithstanding any other provision 

of law establishing a—again in quotations—super mandate. This 

36 

overrides provisions in certain laws such as the Clean Air Act that 

prohibit agencies from considering costs when issuing public health 

or safety rules. 

And so I will put the rest of my statement in the record and welcome the witnesses’ testimony. Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Conyers follows:] 

Prepared Statement of the Honorable John Conyers, Jr., a Representative 

in Congress from the State of Michigan, and Ranking Member, Committee on the Judiciary 

H.R. 3010, the ‘‘Regulatory Accountability Act,’’ would amend the Administrative 

Procedure Act in numerous ways that would effectively halt agency rulemaking, undermining critical public health and safety rules. 

For instance, H.R. 3010 codifies and expands cost-benefit analysis requirements 

and overrides current law that, in some cases, prohibits agencies from considering 

cost when public health and safety are at stake. 

Currently, under Executive Orders 12866 and 13563, every economically significant rule must undergo a cost-benefit analysis. While proponents of H.R. 3010 claim 

that it merely codifies the existing analytical requirements contained in those executive orders, H.R. 3010 in fact adds numerous additional analytical requirements to 

the already substantial analytical process, which threatens ‘‘paralysis by analysis.’’ 

Moreover, it appears to expand the cost-benefit analysis requirement to include 

all rules, not just those that are economically significant. Also, H.R. 3010 expands 

the cost-benefit analysis requirement to include ‘‘major guidance’’ documents. The 

bill also would require agencies to identify the costs and benefits of alternatives to 

rules that are ultimately proposed. 

Additionally, H.R. 3010 would force agencies to adopt the least costly rule absent 

a compelling need to protect public health and safety. Under EO 12866, in contrast, 

agencies must simply determine that the benefits of a proposed rule—including nonquantifiable benefits—justify their costs and that benefits are maximized. 

Also, there is concern with the very act of not only statutorily requiring cost-benefit analysis, but with specifying the factors to be considered in that analysis. 

Sally Katzen, a former Administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory 

Affairs during the Clinton Administration, testified before the Courts, Commercial 

and Administrative Law Subcommittee that, while both Democratic and Republican 

administrations have agreed on the basic principle that agencies should engage in 

cost-benefit analysis of proposed and final rules, codification is problematic because 

each administration has chosen to place different emphases and nuances into its 

cost-benefit analysis requirements. Codifying a single, stringent standard would 

deny such flexibility. 

Finally, H.R. 3010 requires that agencies consider regulatory costs and benefits 

of proposed and final rules ‘‘notwithstanding any other provision of law,’’ establishing a ‘‘supermandate.’’ This overrides provisions in certain statutes, such as the 

Clean Air Act, that prohibit agencies from considering costs when issuing public 

health or safety rules. 

And these are just three of many other concerns with H.R. 3010, including the 

expanded the use of formal rulemaking procedures, which will effectively prevent 

needed public health and safety rules from being promulgated by requiring them to 

undergo through a burdensome trial-like process. 

Also, H.R. 3010’s expanded use of judicial review and a less deferential judicial 

review standard risks undermining agency rulemaking and reducing political accountability for policy decisions without enhancing due process by allowing generalist judges to second guess agency experts. 

I hope that we can have a fulsome discussion about these concerns. 

Mr. SMITH. Thank you, Mr. Conyers. 

I am sure that some of our witnesses will be happy to respond 

to your question about whether this eliminates regulations or not, 

and we can get into that subject on our questions and answers. 

The Chairman of the Courts, Commercial and Administrative 

Law Subcommittee, the gentleman from North Carolina, Mr. Coble, 

is recognized for an opening statement. 

37 

Mr. COBLE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I thank you as well for 

scheduling today’s hearing. 

Mr. Chairman, often times when one endorses or supports deregulation, he is accused of being insensitive to safety. He is accused to be willing to compromise safety. This is unfortunate because it is inaccurate. 

As I meet with representatives from my district, both large and 

small industries, one message is eminently clear. Our regulatory 

process is out of control. There is enormous uncertainty about what 

actions agencies will take. There is uncertainty over which agencies 

have jurisdiction, and there is a very serious concern that many 

independent agencies are being politicized. It is important to notice 

that these perceptions are not part of a larger campaign to discredit the Republican or Democratic agendas. They highlight a 

growing perception that our Government is completely out of touch. 

The Courts, Commercial and Administrative Law Subcommittee 

conducted several oversight hearings earlier this year to examine 

the efficacy of the Administrative Procedures Act. The hearings 

were enlightening in many respects, and although the subject matter is complicated at times, it was clear to me that in most cases 

there are few options for stakeholders to partake in the regulatory 

process with any substantial consequence. The process is missing 

checks and balances which are the cornerstone of our democracy, 

while regulators have virtually limitless resources and powers. The 

result is it enables special interests to impose their will on certain 

areas of our regulatory system after clearing few hooks and low 

hurdles. This has undermined our national interest and compromises the Administrative Procedure Act in my opinion. 

Meanwhile, the combined budget of regulatory agencies has ballooned 16 percent since 2008, topping $54 billion. During the 

same time, our economy has grown 5 percent. Employment at the 

agencies has grown 13 percent, while the number of private sector 

jobs has shrunk by 5.6 percent. 

The costs of ineffective regulations are enormous. Some are 

enough to drive businesses to other countries. Others are passed on 

to consumers, employees, and affected communities. Some argue 

that regulations have created an overall savings, and in some instances, I agree, but where regulations do not serve a legitimate 

purpose or impose a requirement that is unnecessary, the cost is 

obvious and wasteful. Regulations of this sort are becoming far too 

prevalent. 

The solution is not more regulations. It is better and more effective regulation, which is exactly what H.R. 3010 is intended to create. When the APA was implemented, few imagined that our Government would issue a regulation that would threaten the viability 

of an entire industry. Today, unfortunately, many would say this 

has become routine practice. H.R. 3010 addresses the situation by 

implementing new requirements that will give stakeholders a legitimate opportunity to improve regulations as they are proposed, 

promulgated, and ultimately implemented. 

Furthermore, H.R. 3010, Mr. Chairman and colleagues, will not 

restrict the ability of any agency to issue regulations. In fact, most 

of the bill emulates the executive orders that were issued by Presidents Bush, Clinton, and Obama. 

38 

Finally, the bill will not change any existing regulatory standard 

or requirement. 

The overwhelming view from my congressional district is that 

Federal regulations are driving American ingenuity and opportunity to other countries. Improving our regulatory process may be 

one of the most significant legislative contributions that we can 

provide to help preserve our safety and provide economic opportunity for future generations. 

Mr. Chairman, as you and my colleagues know, we have an experienced and distinguished panel of witnesses before us today, and 

I appreciate their willingness to help us review and improve H.R. 

3010 and yield back the balance of my time. 

Mr. SMITH. Thank you, Mr. Coble. 

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, may I ask that the statement of 

Ranking Member Steve Cohen for this hearing be entered into the 

record at this time? 

Mr. SMITH. Without objection, the statement of Mr. Cohen will 

be made a part of the record. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Cohen follows:] 

Prepared Statement of the Honorable Steve Cohen, a Representative in 

Congress from the State of Tennessee, and Member, Committee on the 

Judiciary 

The Administrative Procedure Act has been described as an ‘‘administrative Constitution’’ that attempts to strike a balance between the need for due process and 

fairness, on the one hand, and the need for agencies to be able effectively to carry 

out their policymaking responsibilities, on the other. 

As with the Constitution itself, we must approach proposals that would make dramatic changes to the APA with caution, if not some considerable skepticism. 

The proponents of H.R. 3010, the ‘‘Regulatory Accountability Act,’’ have a high 

burden to meet in that regard. Based on what I have heard thus far in four hearings 

before the Subcommittee on Courts, Commercial and Administrative Law, I do not 

believe that they have done so. 

As an initial matter, whatever the merits of any of the individual proposals contained in H.R. 3010, I am concerned that the cumulative weight of all of these 

changes would simply serve to stifle agency rulemaking, threatening to hamper the 

promulgation important public health and safety rules. 

In addition, several provisions in particular raise concern. First, H.R. 3010’s expanded use of formal rulemaking procedures for major and ‘‘high-impact’’ rules 

strikes me as an unnecessary procedural expansion that would not serve to improve 

the quality of rulemaking while at the same time adding major costs to the process 

and would effectively grind agency rulemaking to a halt. 

Formal rulemaking largely fell out of favor more than a generation ago as its 

costs became more evident. A consensus developed that the notice-and-comment 

rulemaking procedures of Section 553 of the APA—which themselves are fairly 

heavily proceduralized, especially when combined with non-APA analytical requirements—struck a better balance between assuring a fair and accurate rulemaking 

process while maintaining agency effectiveness. 

H.R. 3010’s proponents offer no study or other data indicating that the use of 

cross-examination and other facets of the formal rulemaking process are the more 

effective tools for making scientific and policy judgments than the current process. 

If anything, history may suggest the opposite. In an infamous example, one formal 

rulemaking proceeding before the Food and Drug Administration took more than 10 

years to determine whether the FDA should require that peanut butter contain at 

least 90% peanuts as opposed to 87% peanuts. A government witness was examined 

and cross-examined for an entire day about a survey of cookbook and patented peanut butter formulas, missing recipes, and his personal preferences in peanut butter. 

While I make no judgments about personal preferences for how many peanuts 

should be in peanut butter, I do think that government could better spend its resources spending more than 10 years to decide that question. We ought to be wary 

of returning to those days. 

39 

Another concern with H.R. 3010 is its codification of some overly burdensome costbenefit analysis requirements. I do not oppose the use of cost-benefit analysis for 

economically significant rules. It can be a useful tool in helping agencies to do their 

jobs and in ensuring the best quality rules. Indeed, every Administration from Reagan’s to Obama’s has required through executive orders that agencies conduct costbenefit analysis. 

Nonetheless, the particular agency determinations required by H.R. 3010, and the 

requirement that all of these determinations be made for all rules, would cause unnecessary delay and cost tremendous taxpayer resources. I do not see the net benefit 

in expanding cost-benefit analysis requirements to non-major rules or to guidance 

documents, which do not have the force of law. Perhaps we should have a cost-benefit analysis done of H.R. 3010. 

There are other concerns that I will not get into in these brief remarks, including 

the expansion of judicial review under which judges would second-guess agencies’ 

cost-benefit analyses, the establishment of a less deferential judicial review standard, and expanded opportunities to challenge agency compliance with the Information Quality Act. 

I hope we can explore all of these concerns today. 

Mr. SMITH. Our first witness is C. Boyden Gray, former legal 

counsel to Vice President Bush and White House counsel for President George H.W. Bush. During the Reagan administration, Mr. 

Gray served as counsel to the Presidential Task Force on Regulatory Relief. More importantly, Mr. Gray served—excuse me. That 

is more recently, not more importantly. More recently Mr. Gray 

served as U.S. Ambassador to the European Union. Mr. Gray practiced law for many years as a partner at the Wilmer, Cutler, Pickering, Hale, and Dorr law firm in Washington, D.C. where he focused on regulatory matters related to environment, energy, antitrust, public health, and information technology. Currently he is a 

founding partner of the D.C.-based law firm, Boyden Gray & Associates. 

Mr. Gray graduated from Harvard University and the Law 

School of the University of North Carolina. Following his college 

graduation, Mr. Gray served in the U.S. Marine Corps. After law 

school, he clerked for Earl Warren, Chief Justice of the United 

States Supreme Court. 

Our second witness is Christopher DeMuth, Senior Fellow at the 

American Enterprise Institute (AEI). Mr. DeMuth served as president of AEI from 1986 to 2008. Before he joined AEI, Mr. DeMuth 

was the managing director of Lexicon, Inc.; administrator for the 

Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs in the Office of Management and Budget; and executive director of the Presidential 

Task Force on Regulatory Relief during the Reagan administration. 

Mr. DeMuth received his bachelor’s degree from Harvard University and his juris doctor from the University of Chicago. He is the 

former editor and publisher of ‘‘Regulation’’ magazine and the author of four books. 

Arnold Baker, our third witness, is founder and chief executive 

officer of Baker Ready-Mix and Building Materials in New Orleans, 

Louisiana. Mr. Baker has been honored by the National Black 

Chamber of Commerce as Entrepreneur of the Year. Mr. Baker also 

has been inducted into the Louisiana Business Hall of Fame. 

He currently serves as chairman of the National Black Chamber 

of Commerce, vice chairman of the New Orleans Business Council, 

and as a director on several local boards, including the New OrleVerDate Aug 31 2005 13:51 Feb 28, 2012 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00043 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 H:\WORK\FULL\102511\70911.000 HJUD1 PsN: DOUGA
40 

ans Board of Trade and the Greater New Orleans Construction 

Task Force. 

Mr. Baker is a former member of the mayor’s cabinet for the City 

of New Orleans and served as assistant to the mayor for policy, 

planning, and development. 

Mr. Baker is a graduate of Texas State University, which I used 

to represent. 

Our final witness is Sidney Shapiro. Professor Shapiro is the 

University Distinguished Chair in Law at Wake Forest University 

School of Law. He has written six books, contributed chapters to 

seven additional books, authored or co-authored over 50 articles, 

and is working on a book on administrative accountability. 

Mr. Shapiro is the vice president of the Center for Progressive 

regulation, a nonprofit research and educational organization of 

university-affiliated academics. 

Before he joined the Wake Forest faculty, Mr. Shapiro taught at 

the University of Kansas. Prior to teaching, Mr. Shapiro was a trial 

attorney at the Federal Trade Commission and deputy legal counsel of the Secretary’s Review Panel at the U.S. Department of 

Health, Education, and Welfare. 

We welcome you all, appreciate your time and your expertise and 

knowledge. And, Mr. Gray, may we start with you? 

Mr. COBLE. Mr. Chairman, may I ask a question of the Chair before Mr. Gray speaks? 

Mr. SMITH. The gentleman from North Carolina is recognized. 

Mr. COBLE. You justifiably gave a mention to Texas. I need to remind you that two of our four witnesses have definite North Carolina ties as well. Thank you, sir. 

Mr. SMITH. We should have known you weren’t going to overlook 

that, Mr. Coble. Thank you for those comments. 

Mr. Gray? 

TESTIMONY OF C. BOYDEN GRAY, 

BOYDEN GRAY & ASSOCIATES 

Mr. GRAY. Mr. Chairman, thank you very much for the opportunity to appear here and thank you for taking up this issue which 

I think all of us up here think is fairly important, very important 

given our job situation. 

I feel as though this is 1980 again when we had an overwhelming inundation of regulatory overkill and there were serious 

concerns about our job creation and economic difficulties in the 

early 1980’s. There is some question now, well, do regulations really hurt business development, job creation, or is it lack of demand? 

And all I can say is again it feels like the early 1980’s, and what 

Chris and I and others did we hope in the public interest to make 

more sense out of regulation in the early Reagan years I think 

helped stimulate one of the biggest growth periods in U.S. history. 

And I think the same thing can happen again. 

I want to focus on two areas where things have changed since 

the original system was set up to review regulations under White 

House review, which Chris led on in the early 1980’s. Two issues: 

independent agency coverage and judicial review of cost/benefit 

analysis. 

41 

We did not cover independent agencies with regulatory review in 

the beginning mostly for political reasons, but also because these 

agencies didn’t have that much impact over the general economy. 

Now, in the last 30 years, things have dramatically changed and 

you have to just look at Dodd-Frank or Sarbanes-Oxley or the 

Internet, high tech, the world of finance to understand that the 

CFTC and the FCC and the Fed and the SEC and the other independent agencies really do now maybe impact more of the economy 

than the so-called executive branch agencies. 

I want to give just a couple of examples. It is in my testimony. 

I do not want to belabor the point, but if you take a look just at 

banking, you take a look at the Commodities Future Trading Corporation, they are proposing to cover a thing called end-use derivatives, which will lock up a couple of trillion dollars in collateral for 

no good reason. There is no cost justification for this. The Inspector 

General has scored the CFTC for relying on its lawyers to do the 

cost/benefit analysis. I am a lawyer. I would not rely on myself to 

do it. That doesn’t mean I can’t question it, but I would really rather have an economist take the first crack at it. This is very badly 

needed to underscore that the costs and the business inhibition 

that will be posed by the CFTC regulations far outweigh any possible benefits. 

If you turn to the Federal Reserve Board, which has enormous 

regulatory powers preexisting Dodd-Frank but even more since, he 

was asked by the chairman of one of the big banks will Dodd-Frank 

do more harm than good, and Chairman Bernanke answered nobody has looked at it. Nobody knows, he said, quote/unquote. Nobody has looked at it at all in detail. And then he said only after 

imposing the new regulations would they, quote, be able to figure 

out where the costs exceed the benefits and make appropriate adjustments. Well, that is a little backwards. They should do this before they issue the regulations. 

Later he was asked, what is the cumulative effect on the availability of credit from Dodd-Frank? And Chairman Bernanke answered, quote, you know, it’s just too complicated. We don’t really 

have quantitative tools to do that. Close quote. Well, they should 

get the quantitative tools to do that because this is at the heart of 

our current economic difficulties in my opinion, but my opinion 

doesn’t count. Look at experts far better versed in this than I in 

terms of the economic fallout. 

If you look at telecom, the Internet, the net neutrality rules, 

which were hugely important, the FCC is badly split on whether 

costs exceed benefits. There shouldn’t be such a split on the commission. There should be a requirement that the FCC hew to the 

same rules that executive branch agencies have understood and 

learned over the last 2 or 3 decades. 

Take a look at energy. EPA and the Department of Energy are 

probably the two most important agencies that affect energy, which 

is a huge component or our economy, but they are followed pretty 

closely by FERC, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission; the 

Nuclear Regulatory Commission, NRC; and the CFTC, which I 

have said already will lock up hundreds of billions of dollars in collateral for just the utilities alone for doing ordinary, garden variety 

hedging that they have been doing for decades. 

42 

It is important that all these agencies operate off the same sheet 

of music in terms of how they assess costs and benefits, and there 

is no reason why one set of agencies should be exempt from all this 

positive analysis and another set subjected to it. It is really sort of, 

I think, unsustainable. 

There was a comment earlier about changing the rules of the 

Clean Air Act. I believe actually most of the Clean Air Act provisions, regulatory provisions, actually do have a cost/benefit requirement. It is only setting the national ambient air quality standards 

at the standard-setting stage where costs can’t be brought into the 

equation, but the Supreme Court made clear that when these 

standards are implemented at the State level, costs and benefits 

are highly relevant. 

I think this bill would do a great service with respect to the 

Clear Air Act, because it would regularize and systematize the cost/ 

benefit provisions that do exist and aren’t actually as consistent as 

they should be. 

On the question of judicial review, just two quick points. One just 

needs to read Judge Ginsburg’s opinion in Business Roundtable v. 

the SEC, recently decided, where he goes into the SEC’s failure to 

do cost/benefit analysis properly. It is something which judges are 

perfectly capable of doing. That is one of the great objections that 

judges can’t do this. Read the opinion. Decide for yourself, but I 

think it is pretty clear they can do it. 

And there isn’t going to be an overburden on the courts. The D.C. 

Circuit, which is expert at this, has probably the lowest caseload 

of any circuit in the country and can well adapt to whatever increase is required by your legislation. I think they would actually 

welcome the guidance on that circuit. It is well equipped to handle 

this bill, and it would welcome, I think, the opportunity to do so. 

Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Gray follows:] 

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Mr. SMITH. Thank you, Mr. Gray. 

Mr. DeMuth? 

TESTIMONY OF CHRISTOPHER DeMUTH, AMERICAN 

ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE FOR PUBLIC POLICY RESEARCH 

Mr. DEMUTH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Members of the Committee. Thank you for inviting me to testify. 

The nature and scope of Federal regulation has changed fundamentally in the two-thirds of a century since the Administrative 

Procedure Act first made law, especially since 1970. We have 

many, many more agencies. They operate primarily through rulemaking rather than adjudication. Their rules apply to very wide 

sectors of the economy. They cover society-wide issues. They result 

in costs and benefits often of very, very large proportion. And they 

operate under very broad grants of authority from the Congress 

that often amount to de facto lawmaking power. 

These developments set the stage for the regulatory controversies 

of the past 5 years where we have had an unusually large number 

of highly consequential, highly controversial policy proceedings 

going on in Washington, in all of which Members of Congress have 

been essentially bystanders. 

The Regulatory Accountability Act would bring the Administrative Procedure Act up to code. Most important, it would take the 

cost/benefit standard that has been the standard for rulemaking in 

the executive branch agencies from President Reagan through 

President Obama and make it a statutory standard subject to judicial review. This would be a big step forward for regulatory practice 

and policies. I would like to mention five. 

First, the cost/benefit standard is the regulatory equivalent to a 

budget constraint on spending programs. Single-purpose agencies, 

regulatory or spending, pursue their goals single-mindedly with too 

little regard for alternative worthy purposes of the resources that 

they command. There is nothing wrong with that at all. Congress 

expects single-purpose agencies to pursue their goals energetically, 

but in the case of regulation, it needs institutional adjustments. 

Spending agencies have a budget that they have to live within. 

Regulatory agencies command resources that are largely realized 

entirely in the private sector. They never go through any of the 

mechanisms of public finance, taxation, appropriation, authorization, budgeting, and so forth. We need some analog, and the cost/ 

benefit standard is the best analog we have come up with where 

for each policy, one does not have a budget constraint, but one has 

to impose costs with a view not toward that budget but toward the 

benefits that one is trying to produce. 

Secondly, the cost/benefit standard is an excellent standard of 

statutory construction, how regulators should apply very broad regulatory mandates in pursuing the goods that they are asked to pursue, that is, that they should attempt to achieve the maximum benefits for the minimum costs. How is the faithful regulator vested 

with wide lawmaking power to exercise his or her discretion consistent with our constitutional and democratic values? You can’t 

ask an individual legislator. Some will want more aggressive, some 

will want less aggressive pursuit of one purpose or the other. But 

if you ask how should representative politicians in the House and 

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Senate as a whole want all regulatory statutes to be enforced, the 

best answer you can come up with is that each agency should pursue their statutory goals as cost-effectively as possible. 

Third, the cost/benefit standard promotes transparency and accountability. Regulation is a stream of narrow, complex issues often 

comprehensible only to insiders. Cost/benefit analysis is not a prescription for rule by economists and technocrats. It is just the opposite. It is the best procedure anyone has come up with for summarizing, systematizing the myriad details of any regulatory controversy and making the rule, the issues accessible to outsiders, to 

the White House, to the Congress, to the courts, to journalists, editorial writers, and to the general public. 

The cost/benefit analysis is not turning a crank. There are many 

uncertainties. There are many lively arguments in the estimation 

of benefits and costs in any rulemaking. The point is that those are 

the serious debates. Those are the debates where we should be focusing our attention. The debates should be known to much wider 

parts of the public and to Washington than just the rulemaking insiders. 

Fourth, as has been noted previously, the cost/benefit standard 

builds on 30 years of agency practice under Presidents of both parties. That we have had such constancy in regulatory policy across 

Administrations of widely differing political philosophies shows 

that the cost/benefit standard is not anti-regulation. Instead, it is 

a reasonable response to the institutional problems of regulation 

that I have mentioned. After 30 years, the cost/benefit standard is 

sufficiently established in agency practice to merit statutory codification. 

Fifth and finally, there are many flaws in the executive order 

programs across the last 30 years. There is much too much variation in the quality and seriousness of cost/benefit analyses from 

agency to agency, within agencies. OIRA sometimes gives very 

sloppy cost/benefit standards a pass. Sometimes it sends pretty 

good ones back to the agencies for review. These difficulties are all 

the result of the standards being internal, private, and voluntary. 

By making the standards subject to judicial review, the Regulatory 

Accountability Act would transform incentives and behavior within 

Administrations fundamentally. It would change the dynamics. 

People would be much more serious. There would be fewer attempts to game the system. Everybody would know that the final 

decision they made was going to be subject to a second, independent look by courts operating under conventional standards of 

deference. 

The court decisions would produce over time a common law such 

as we have under the Administrative Procedure Act today, but it 

would be more pointed, empirical, factual. It would lead to criticism 

in law reviews and newspaper editorials. It would result in a much 

greater degree of professionalism in regulatory policymaking in the 

Administration. 

One last point on the criticism that the act would undermine regulatory protections and lead to delays and the scuttling of many 

important rules. 

The criticism is a difficult one to get very far with because the 

act essentially takes what is going on today and what has been 

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going on for 30 years and simply adds the important discipline that 

the final rule’s costs and benefits be subject to independent, that 

is, to judicial review. 

The history of our regulatory—— 

Mr. SMITH. Mr. DeMuth, I am afraid we need to call time. 

Mr. DEMUTH. Okay. 

Mr. SMITH. You have gotten through your five points, and I especially appreciated the latter point you made as well. 

Mr. DEMUTH. Thank you, sir. 

Mr. SMITH. Thank you. 

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Mr. SMITH. Mr. Baker? 

TESTIMONY OF ARNOLD B. BAKER, OWNER, 

BAKER READY-MIX AND BUILDING MATERIALS 

Mr. BAKER. Chairman Smith, Ranking Member Conyers, and distinguished Members of the Committee, good morning and thank 

you for giving me the opportunity to come before you and to participate in this important meeting. 

My name is Arnold Baker. I am chairman of the National Black 

Chamber of Commerce, but more importantly, I am CEO of Baker 

Ready-Mix and Building Materials. Although Baker Ready-Mix is 

a small business, we have supplied a good deal of concrete used in 

the rebuilding of New Orleans in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Since we were the first concrete plant to reopen in 

the City of New Orleans, it well positioned us for growth during 

the rebuild. We have continually reinvested all of our profits into 

our company, allowing us to grow from a 10-person operation to a 

60-person operation since Hurricane Katrina. 

Unfortunately, a new swarm of regulations coming out of Washington are actually threatening our survival and threatening our 

ability to be competitive. These new regulations are going to make 

it more difficult for us to sell concrete, more difficult for us to create jobs, more difficult for us to stay competitive. 

I am extremely non-partisan. I am just a business owner who 

over the past few years, as I have grown, I have had to endure a 

continuum of regulatory changes that have impacted my daily business operations. Most are excellent, but some have greatly impeded 

my ability to grow even more. So even though I may use a rule as 

an example, I am really not here about any particular rule or agency because most of the rules and most of the agencies’ work is good 

stuff and good for society. But sometimes we all know that that is 

not always the case. 

This process should be improved to better ensure that the rules 

are needed and relevant, especially during these tough economic 

times. We just cannot afford job-costing mistakes. Federal agencies 

need to do a better job of understanding the impact that their regulations will have on businesses and jobs before they impose the 

new rules. Companies like mine, who have already had to fight to 

stay on top, fight to get back in business, and try to learn all the 

existing regulations, need to have certainty that the new rules are 

well conceived and supported by adequate data. 

H.R. 3010, the Regulatory Accountability Act of 2011, will meet 

these needs by requiring agencies to show that new rules are necessary and present the data that supports the regulatory action. 

Let me give some examples of ways that H.R. 3010 would benefit 

businesses like mine. 

Cement is a critical ingredient in the concrete that I sell. It is 

the glue that holds concrete together. In 2010, EPA issued the Cement MACT rule that imposes extremely stringent new emissions 

standards on cement plants. This caused a ripple throughout the 

industry. All concrete plants received notifications that your cement is going to increase anywhere from 15 to 30 percent. Our 

main ingredient, our livelihood. This rule is also expected to cost 

$3.4 billion and shut down at least 18 U.S. cement plants. On top 

76 

of this, EPA plans to make fly ash, our second most critical ingredient, a hazardous material. They have also imposed new permitting requirements for greenhouse gases, has restricted the material 

that can be burned in cement kilns. Together, these rules are expected to add $20 to $36 to the cost of every ton of cement that 

my company buys. This represents a 33 percent increase in costs 

for one of my company’s most critical ingredients. 

Because I am a small business, I certainly can’t absorb this cost 

like larger businesses do. I can’t spread this over several States or 

more trucks or more plants. I have to pass this cost directly to my 

consumer which is either a private sector business owner, the guy 

doing driveways, or the City of New Orleans or the State of Louisiana. This is a direct pass-through to them. 

On the other side of this is that as a small business owner, I lose 

contracts every day by $1 per yard. Someone will come in and bid 

$94, and I will bid $95. One dollar per yard makes a huge difference in my industry. So now my main ingredient is increasing 

the price by 33 percent. This has a significant impact on my business operations. If all this comes to fruition—we are going through 

a very difficult assessment process as to what the future looks like 

for us if these regulatory actions come to fruition because our margins are tight already. 

If H.R. 3010 had been law, EPA would have had to have held an 

on-the-record hearing to show that the data relied on is accurate 

and reliable. It would also have had to consider the cumulative and 

indirect effects of the rule, including industries such as mine that 

depend on cement. And the agency would have had to provide a detailed justification for the approach they took in that regulation. A 

better regulatory outcome would have probably resulted, one that 

is more balanced. We are not saying that the rules are wrong or 

rules are bad, but all the factors are not being considered. My business was not being considered when these rules were being brought 

to fruition. 

Poorly conceived and poorly supported rules create uncertainty 

and reluctance to make future investments, including the hiring of 

additional employees at a time when we need more jobs. H.R. 3010 

will lead to better regulatory outcomes and a greater certainty 

about future investments and hiring. Again, this is not about a rule 

or any agency. this is merely about a more informed, more inclusive and more effective process. 

Thank you for allowing me this time, and I will be happy to answer any questions you might have. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Baker follows:] 

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Mr. SMITH. Thank you, Mr. Baker. 

Mr. Shapiro? 

TESTIMONY OF SIDNEY A. SHAPIRO, UNIVERSITY DISTINGUISHED CHAIR IN LAW, WAKE FOREST UNIVERSITY 

SCHOOL OF LAW 

Mr. SHAPIRO. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate the invitation to be here today to share with you my views on the Regulatory 

Accountability Act of 2011. 

In the United States, administrative law is guided by three often 

competing principles that must be properly balanced: accountability, fairness, and efficient implementation. Efforts to achieve 

accountability and fairness must be balanced with ensuring that 

agencies can efficiently implement their statutory missions. I, 

therefore, have a number of concerns about H.R. 3010. 

First of all, we already have sufficient procedures to ensure accountability and fairness. It is beyond contention that business interests have an ample opportunity to file comments and to meet 

with agency and OIRA officials often multiple times. If anything, 

the system has too many procedures. The rulemaking process is 

now inordinately complex, time-consuming, and resource-intensive. 

As a result, it now takes 4 to 8 years for an agency to promulgate 

and enforce most significant rules. The proposed procedures would 

likely add another 2 to 4 years to the process. Under H.R. 3010, 

the longest rulemakings could take more than 12 years to complete 

which means that rulemaking could potentially span four different 

presidential Administrations. 

Second, because of the current ossification, the real threat to our 

society is one of under-regulation, not of over-regulation. The long 

history of regulation demonstrates that when agencies fulfill their 

legislative mandates, it saves lives, prevents serious injuries, and 

protects the economic livelihood of millions of Americans. And all 

of this has been done at a reasonable cost. By comparison, when 

agencies fail to fulfill these mandates, immense harm can result. 

The financial collapse, the BP oil spill, and the West Virginia mine 

disaster are but a few examples. 

Third, the arguments offered for 3010 are rebutted in academic 

literature. Claims of excessive regulatory costs of $1.75 trillion 

have been discredited. The evidence also shows that regulation is 

not a drag on employment. Regulation stimulates the creation of as 

many jobs, new jobs, as are lost, and job gains exceed job losses for 

some regulations. 

In addition, the evidence contradicts the claim that regulatory 

uncertainty is deterring business investment. In any case, the proposed legislation would increase regulatory uncertainty, not decrease it by delaying regulatory initiatives by several years. 

Delaying or stopping new regulations does not avoid economic 

costs. When the Government fails to regulate cement or anything 

else, we reallocate who pays the costs. When a regulation is delayed or blocked, the costs to industry of that regulation do not 

vanish into thin air. Instead those costs continue to be imposed on 

the general public in terms of lives lost, preventable cancers, and 

lost work days, among other harms. 

87 

Fourth, the bill would overrule more than 25 environmental, 

health, and safety statutes by replacing current requirements of 

justifying a regulation. These are substantive changes. The bill 

does not simply continue the existing executive orders. The current 

executive orders call for analysis before a regulation is completed. 

The bill would make a cost/benefit standard the decisional rule for 

promulgating a standard, which would be an enormous change in 

the way that we do business. 

Finally, the legislation would add over 60 new procedural and 

analytical requirements to the agency rulemaking process. As I discuss in my testimony, there is no support in the academic literature for most of these procedures—most of these changes. Moreover, the Committee has received a letter from the Administrative 

Law Section of the ABA opposing most of the proposed procedures. 

The lack of support recognizes that the proposed procedures would, 

at best, lead to marginal improvements in accountability and fairness. At the same time, they would slow down an already slow regulatory process. Without new funding for agencies to do this 

work—and that is not expected—the reality would be agencies further bog down, blocked from their work of protecting the public. 

It is simply not the case that we are stuck with a 1947 version 

of administrative process. Although the bill itself hasn’t been substantially changed, there is a slew of executive orders which have 

changed administrative procedure, and Congress has legislated on 

several occasions to add administrative procedures such as the 

Regulatory Flexibility Act. So in other words, we have evolved the 

procedures as we have gone. We don’t simply have a 1947 version 

of the act. 

I think the most important point here is we need to achieve a 

reasonable balance between promoting accountability and fairness 

and ensuring that agencies can actually protect the American public. The system is now out of balance, imposing costs on millions 

of Americans who not receive the regulatory protection that Congress has specified in our health, safety, and environmental statutes. 

Thank you and I will be happy to answer questions. 

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Mr. SMITH. Thank you, Mr. Shapiro. 

We will now begin our questioning, and I will recognize myself. 

Mr. Gray, would you agree that the bill does not block regulations, it just requires us to go with the least costly alternative that 

achieves the intended goals? 

Mr. GRAY. That is correct, Mr. Chairman. It does not block regulations, and for the executive branch agencies that are now subject 

to the various executive orders over the years, this is what they are 

supposed be doing anyway. So what you are doing is systematizing 

it, regularizing it, and making it the same across the board, which 

is an improvement, not an inhibition. 

Mr. SMITH. Thank you, Mr. Gray. 

Mr. DeMuth, you mentioned five reasons why it would be a good 

idea to require a cost/benefit analysis. Your third reason was transparency and accountability. Would you give us maybe examples of 

the practical and beneficial consequences of the transparency and 

accountability argument that you made? 

Mr. DEMUTH. I think that several examples are to be seen in the 

Congress at sessions like this and several other oversight sessions 

of the past year. The Environmental Protection Agency, other regulatory agencies, have come up with numbers suggesting what the 

benefits and the costs of their rules are. Academics, people from 

regulated businesses have come up with their estimates. They have 

argued over them. These arguments are focusing on what are going 

to be the costs and what are we going to get for the costs. That 

is how we should be addressing these issues. And the data exists 

because of the executive orders that have gotten the agencies to 

prepare assessments, to publish studies, and make their assumptions open to the public for general criticism. 

Mr. SMITH. Thank you, Mr. DeMuth. 

Mr. Baker, you are a businessman and a successful one. Could 

you run your business if you did not take into consideration the 

cost and benefits of alternatives that you might consider? 

Mr. BAKER. Well, in fact, it is a pretty standard banking process. 

When we go for financing, they want to make sure that as we are 

expanding, that we actually look at all the options that are available to us. 

Mr. SMITH. Mr. Baker, do you think the Government should operate the same way? 

Mr. BAKER. Well, I would hope that the same attention that this 

legislation is receiving now, that we would give this same attention 

to the rules that impact my business directly. So the answer is yes. 

I would hope for more attention and more input. 

Mr. SMITH. Thank you, Mr. Baker. 

Mr. Shapiro, do you feel that our regulatory system must identify 

and use the best, most innovative, and least burdensome tools for 

achieving regulatory ends? 

Mr. SHAPIRO. Yes, and I believe the system does that now. 

Mr. SMITH. That was a good answer inasmuch as that is the 

exact wording of President Obama’s executive order on the subject. 

So you passed a trick question. Thank you, Mr. Shapiro. 

That ends my questions, and the gentleman from Michigan, Mr. 

Conyers, is recognized. 

Mr. CONYERS. Thank you, Chairman Smith. 

106 

And I want to thank all the witnesses. 

Now, there is a big question overhanging this discussion. One of 

the witnesses says that H.R. 3010 doesn’t block regulations and 

that it would operate smoothly, and another witness says or implies it will create far more regulations. Could we settle this this 

morning, if we do not do anything else? 

What do you think, Mr. DeMuth? You are the former head of a 

think tank that I used to argue with pretty regularly. What is your 

idea? Is there some middle ground? Is this going to make it 

smoother for the regulatory process or more complicated in your 

view? 

Mr. DEMUTH. I think it is difficult to predict the future. My 

hunch is that it will actually make the rulemaking process smoother and more effective, and that is because currently we have a cost/ 

benefit standard that is informal and voluntary. If you are inside 

an Administration, there is a lot of gaming the system and forum 

shopping and so forth. If everybody inside the executive branch 

from the person three layers down at EPA to the people at the top 

of the White House understood that when you make a major regulatory decision, you have got to show that the benefits are worth 

the costs. And there is a good chance that a judge is going to look 

at that and decide whether you have done a good job. 

Mr. CONYERS. But Mr. Shapiro says it is going to take longer, not 

just a little bit longer or just as long, but months and maybe years. 

Mr. DEMUTH. I don’t know where the estimate of 2 and a half 

years comes from. The procedures look to me very similar to what 

is actually happening on the ground right now. 

Mr. CONYERS. But there are 10 times more rules in the bill already. That comes from the law school professors that wrote us this 

letter. And by the way, I am going to get that letter to all of you 

because the one thing I am asking that you do after the hearing 

is write me about what you thought of the letter. 

Mr. DEMUTH. Sir, if I can make two brief points. 

Mr. CONYERS. Well, no, hold it. You make them after Shapiro because we are running out of time. 

Look, you got a Committee on the Judiciary. They called distinguished witnesses, and at the very initial basic point of discussion, 

we are told that this isn’t going to make regulations any more complex. On the other hand, the same morning at the same time at the 

same place, we are told that this is going to screw up the process 

beyond anything you have ever imagined. Could you help us out 

here? 

Mr. SHAPIRO. Well, as Mr. DeMuth pointed out, we are going to 

get these arguments about how to calculate these things, and the 

problem is there is no good way to resolve those arguments because 

many of these benefits are simply not quantifiable in any realistic 

sense. 

For example, right now, EPA currently values the loss of each 

child’s IQ point at $8,800 per IQ point. But Mr. Lutter of the AEI 

argues that an IQ point is only worth $1,000 to $1,900 per IQ 

point. And I don’t understand how that argument is going to improve the administrative process, and moreover, I think the American people would be appalled to think that our decisions about 

107 

whether to protect children come down to whether it is worth 

$8,800 or $1,100. 

Mr. CONYERS. Could I get 30 seconds more? I see my time is 

about to run out. 

I wanted to let Mr. Baker know that as one who supported small 

business past and present, the whole idea of the regulation that 

you didn’t like was to prevent tens of thousands of premature 

deaths, tens of thousands of cases of respiratory and cardiovascular 

problems, including heart attacks and acute bronchitis and over 

100,000 asthma attacks. So the point I am getting at, Brother 

Baker, is if we don’t pay this little bit more that you don’t want 

to pay—and I can understand it is going to be hard on you—we are 

going to pay lots of money coming from the citizenry in terms of 

all these health costs if we don’t clean up this cement thing. So you 

see the problem that we are in? 

Mr. BAKER. Oh, I think we are on the same wavelength actually 

in that what the agencies are doing, as far as the laws or the rules 

themselves, that is not what this is about. I agree with you that 

without rules society becomes chaotic, and we don’t protect the citizenry. 

This is all about the process, though. I would like more input. I 

would like the impact that it has on my business—just as the other 

impacts are being considered, I would like that to also be a consideration. And so this is not—— 

Mr. CONYERS. Let’s assume they took into consideration the impact and said that this minor cost is going to have to be borne because it will save lots and lots of lives. 

Mr. BAKER. The process that I understand was taken did not consider our industry. But the rule itself I am not contesting. I am not 

saying these aren’t good things to do. I am just saying let’s go 

about—— 

Mr. CONYERS. We want to get you to the Small Business Administration for a loan to cover these costs that this imposes on you. 

Mr. BAKER. I am sorry, sir? I couldn’t—— 

Mr. CONYERS. SBA. That is where I am going to send you after 

this hearing to get some money. [Laughter.] 

Mr. BAKER. I appreciate that. I will definitely take you up on 

that. 

Mr. SMITH. Thank you, Mr. Conyers. 

The gentleman from North Carolina, Mr. Coble, is recognized. 

Mr. COBLE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Gentlemen, good to have you all with us this morning. 

Mr. DeMuth, is it not true that for decades agencies have been 

able to promulgate sound regulations to protect public health, safety, and welfare using cost/benefit criteria? Is that not an accurate 

statement? 

Mr. DEMUTH. Yes, sir. In the 3 years I oversaw the process, 

EPA, NHTSA, the FDA issued many, many regulations that passed 

the cost/benefit test with flying colors. 

Mr. COBLE. Well, would the Regulatory Accountability Act have 

prevented the promulgation of these regulations? 

Mr. DEMUTH. No, sir. 

Mr. COBLE. Mr. Gray, how easy would it be for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to promulgate economically damaging 

108 

regulations under the existing APA act especially since the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is not bound by the President’s 

cost/benefit executive orders? 

Mr. GRAY. There are no constraints on what that agency will be 

able to do. There are no congressional restraints because you don’t 

provide the budget. There are no White House constraints because 

the White House is walled off, as is the Fed. The judicial system 

is basically required to defer to whatever it decides, and OMB cannot review the rules for any kind of cost/benefit equation at all. So 

there really are no requirements for accountability and no ability 

for any of the three branches to review it. 

Mr. COBLE. I thank you, sir. 

Mr. Baker, I am going to quote from President Obama a statement with which I am in agreement, and I want to see whether 

you agree with it or not. He said where relevant, feasible, and consistent with regulatory objectives and to the extent permitted by 

law, each agency should identify and consider regulatory approaches that reduce burdens and maintain flexibility and freedom 

of choice for the public. Do you agree with that, Mr. Baker? 

Mr. BAKER. You know, I couldn’t hear very well, but if your 

statement was regarding ensuring that businesses like mine have 

input into the consideration process, then I do agree. 

Mr. COBLE. I think the quote that I gave is pretty consistent with 

what your testimony indicated as well, and I concur with that as 

well. 

Mr. Shapiro, let me ask you whether you disagree or agree with 

a statement—statements—actually I will use the plural—from 

President Clinton and President Obama that an agency must tailor 

regulations to impose the least burden on society, consistent with 

obtaining regulatory objectives. Do you concur with that? 

Mr. SHAPIRO. I do but it is important to understand how the current system does that. While agencies now, although not independent agencies it is true, have to undertake a cost/benefit analysis, they don’t have to prove at the end of the day that regulatory 

benefits exceed regulatory costs because of the difficulty of doing 

that with some great level of certainty. Instead, what Congress has 

done in all these various statutes is say where these estimates of 

benefits don’t agree, you should favor protection of the American 

people as long as it doesn’t impose unreasonable costs. This bill 

would change that substantive mandate. 

Mr. COBLE. Well, I think, Mr. Chairman, it has been a good hearing, and I am not disappointed in any sense that there have been 

disagreements. I mean, these hearings oftentimes result in disagreements on the part of the witnesses that appear. This is the 

nature of the beast. So I think it has been a good hearing. 

And, Mr. Chairman, I am going to yield back before my red light 

illuminates. Thank you, sir. 

Mr. SMITH. Thank you, Mr. Coble. 

The gentleman from Virginia, Mr. Scott, is recognized. 

Mr. SCOTT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. Gray, the bill requires us to calculate for a major rule $100 

million worth of, I think it says, annual cost on the economy and 

for a high-impact rule, $1 billion. How do you calculate those costs? 

109 

Mr. GRAY. Basically by trying to answer the question what will 

it cost the community that has to comply, and if it is an EPA rule 

that requires a certain installation of equipment, you find out how 

much the equipment costs and what it costs to install it. It is much 

more difficult, I will grant, when you get into a financial rule of 

the kind that Dodd-Frank requires or Sarbanes-Oxley. 

But these are not meant to be precise, absolutely down to the 

last dollar and cent. They are meant to be approximations that 

allow a relative weighing of relative numbers. They are not meant 

to be absolutely concrete, not to—so I don’t think it is difficult to 

do, and agencies have been doing it in the executive branch since 

1981. 

Mr. SCOTT. What are some of the benefits that you look to to 

compare to the costs? 

Mr. GRAY. Well, again, when you are dealing with health and 

safety, perhaps it is easier. You look and see, all right, what health 

effects are eliminated, what harms are alleviated. When we phased 

out lead, it was pretty clear that lead was doing huge damage to 

childhood development. They didn’t have to actually figure out 

what the costs were or what the benefits were. You knew that was 

huge, and it was fairly straightforward. 

Again, I think it is more difficult for a credit regulation, CFTC, 

but it can be done. And if you look at, again, a case that I cited, 

the Business Roundtable v. the SEC, you can see a court grappling 

with these issues with great facility and understanding that anybody in this room can read and process. 

Mr. SCOTT. Is there an effort to quantify, to the extent that Mr. 

Shapiro indicated, the damage, for example, for lead, or we just 

know it causes such damage that we are not going to try to quantify it, we are trying to end it? 

Mr. GRAY. Well, if I understand your question—you know, Chris 

maybe ought to speak up—but we knew what we were dealing 

with, and I think we understood what the equations were. There 

was a mistake made back in those days because there was a question that we didn’t know to ask that we know now to ask, which 

is, all right, so you take out lead. What is the substitution? What 

is going to be the substitute? And what is, something now understood, the so-called substitution risk? I think if we had asked that 

question, we would have had a better regime after lead had been 

phased out, but now we know to ask that question and this legislation would make sure that that question is asked across the board 

in a way that is understandable by the public and, equally importantly, processable by the D.C. Circuit and the courts. 

Mr. SCOTT. Thank you. 

Mr. Shapiro, Mr. Gray has indicated the subjective nature of 

these calculations. How does that translate into litigation? 

Mr. SHAPIRO. Cass Sunstein once wrote an article called ‘‘The 

Arithmetic of Arsenic’’ where he counseled regulatory lawyers 

about the many ways that they could challenge any cost/benefit decision. So no matter what the agency comes up with, there is going 

to be an argument over benefits, which is going to lead to more litigation, which is going to, under this bill, put some Federal judge 

in charge of deciding what the right number is. And all that assumes there would be some way to determine this, but there simVerDate Aug 31 2005 13:51 Feb 28, 2012 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00113 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 H:\WORK\FULL\102511\70911.000 HJUD1 PsN: DOUGA
110 

ply isn’t. As you heard, these are at best approximations. There are 

competing approximations, and there is really no way to resolve 

those. That is like Congress said when there are doubts about the 

regulatory benefits, then the agency should do the best it can to 

protect the public and stop at the point where it is going to impose 

unreasonable costs on industry. 

Mr. SCOTT. What is the standard that the regulation is judged 

by? 

Mr. SHAPIRO. Well, it varies, but the most common one is called 

‘‘technology-based regulation.’’ And what that asks an agency to do 

is go out in the marketplace and find the most protective technology which is currently available on the market and because that 

technology is being sold and used by industry, the general assumption is that it is an affordable one, and the agency will peg the level 

of regulation at the level of best available technology. That is a nice 

objective standard. That is something we can determine objectively. 

Mr. SCOTT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. SMITH. Thank you, Mr. Scott. 

The gentleman from California, Mr. Lungren. 

Mr. LUNGREN. Thank you much, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. GRAY AND MR. DeMuth, I have read Mr. Shapiro’s testimony 

here, and it appears to be two points I would like you to respond 

to. One is we don’t need this because it is unnecessary because we 

have the proper scheme right now in terms of the regulatory burden with these regulating agencies. This is unnecessary. They take 

into consideration what needs to be considered. And then on the 

other hand, if we pass this law, he says this will add to a longer 

period of non-decision and will add to the burden. 

Now, I wish you would respond to both of those in terms of the 

frailties or infallibility—or fallibility of this particular recommended change in law that we are talking about here. Mr. 

Gray? 

Mr. GRAY. As we have said, most of the cost/benefit requirement 

in this legislation is supposed to be done today by executive branch 

agencies. The real benefit of this legislation is twofold: to make it 

consistent across the executive branch where you have multiple 

agencies always involved in the same subject matter; and secondly, 

to make it enforceable in the courts by primarily the D.C. Circuit 

which is really quite capable of dealing with this. 

Mr. LUNGREN. Well, that goes to one of the points Mr. Shapiro 

makes. Why would a Federal judge or Federal court be superior to 

the decision-makers that we have set up in the regulatory agencies 

right now? 

Mr. GRAY. Well, under the rules of judicial review, the courts are 

not supposed to sit there and decide that the decision, a reasoned 

decision, made by an agency about the costs and benefits of a particular rule were wrong and come up with a different calculation. 

What the courts do and what the court did in the SEC case was 

to say did they actually analyze it, did they ask the right questions, 

and did they have a reasoned response. The judges are not going 

to sit there and recalculate it. They are just going to make sure 

that the calculation was made in good faith on the best available 

information and that is all. They are playing sort of a—I hate to 

go back to Justice Roberts, Chief Justice, but they are playing a 

111 

role of sort of traffic cop to make sure that all the questions are 

answered and all the T’s are crossed and the I’s dotted, but they 

are not going to sit there and recalculate it. They haven’t got the 

capacity to do that. They don’t have economists on the staff. All 

they can do is look at the reasoning, and that is what they will do 

and they will do it very, very well. There has been no harm with 

judicial review basically, and adding cost/benefit to it is only going 

to make it more understandable and more consistent. 

Mr. LUNGREN. Mr. DeMuth, as one of the people who is somewhat concerned about courts trespassing on the rights of the other 

branches, how do you answer that concern? 

Mr. DEMUTH. I think that the standard rules of deference are appropriate. We are not asking generalist judges to become economists. We are asking them to review, as judges usually do, the 

work of the administrative agencies. 

If I can, if I could quote two sentences from the SEC decision on 

its proxy access rules. The D.C. Circuit was not doing a cost/benefit 

analysis of its own. It was looking at what the SEC had done, and 

this is what it said. The commission inconsistently and 

opportunistically framed the costs and benefits of the rule, failed 

adequately to quantify certain costs or to explain why they could 

not be quantified, neglected to support its predictive judgments, 

contradicted itself, and failed to respond to substantial problems 

raised by commentators. That is what a court does. 

Mr. LUNGREN. Thank you. 

Mr. Baker, one of Mr. Shapiro’s lines here underscored is regulatory uncertainty is not an obstacle to economic growth. Regulatory uncertainty. That is the uncertainty imposed by you as a 

businessman by virtue of the fact you are not sure what the regulation is going to be. Is that a benefit to you or is that a problem 

with being able to do your business? 

Mr. BAKER. It is extremely problematic especially as we look at 

expanding beyond our—— 

Mr. LUNGREN. So uncertainty doesn’t help you. 

Mr. BAKER. No, no. 

Mr. LUNGREN. As I understand simple economics, uncertainty is 

an additional burden on someone who is involved in an economic 

decision or certainly someone trying to create a business or maintain a business. Don’t you find that in terms of the way you operate? 

Mr. BAKER. Well, let me give you one example, the latest fly ash 

regulation. We do not know if we are going to be able to get the 

fly ash even though the mix designs for some of our projects require fly ash because the fly ash distributors are trying to assess 

whether they want to transport it or not. And so it is impacting our 

ability to even bid on work. And so from across the board, from 

new equipment to processes and operations, the regulatory environment is critically impacting to our business. 

Mr. SMITH. Thank you, Mr. Lungren. 

The gentleman from North Carolina, Mr. Watt, is recognized. 

Mr. WATT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I thank Mr. Lungren 

actually for setting the table on two real concerns that I have about 

the legislation. 

112 

I started on page 4 of this bill, rulemaking considerations under 

rulemaking. An agency shall make all preliminary and final determinations based on evidence and consider, in addition to other applicable considerations, the following. That is on page 4. And then 

there are one, two, three, four, five, six considerations, and we get 

all the way over to page 6 and 7 of the bill, we are still taking into 

account considerations that are going to be taken into account. And 

then we get to this phrase, ‘‘notwithstanding any other provision 

of law,’’ they are going to take into account the potential cost and 

benefits associated with potential alternative rules and other responses, cumulative costs and benefits, and estimated impacts on 

jobs, economic growth, innovation, and economic competitiveness, 

means to increase the cost-effectiveness of any Federal response, 

and incentives for innovation, consistency, predictability, lower cost 

of enforcement and compliance to Government entities, regulated 

entities and the public and flexibility. 

And we are going to at some point tell a court that you are going 

to be the arbiter of this where now, if somebody screws this process 

up, it is Congress that really makes that final determination. We 

are putting all of that authority in a court under this process and 

protracting litigation for 3 and 4 years. And the exact points that 

Mr. Lungren raised—we may come out on different sides of this— 

will lead to absolute uncertainty for 6 to 8 to 10 years as we litigate any rule. And still, the court is the final arbiter rather than 

Congress. I don’t understand how this is supposed to be consistent 

with what my colleagues say they want to have happen. 

Number one, the biggest complaint I hear—and I sit on Financial 

Services. We did Dodd-Frank—is that we cannot get to a final rule 

now quick enough to relieve the regulatory uncertainty because we 

don’t know what the rules are. Tell us what the rule is and we can 

then adjust and get on with our lives. 

So how is this going to speed up the process of getting to a final 

determination so that people like Mr. Baker can know what rules 

he is operating under and get on with his life and the adjustments 

to it? And everybody else in his industry is going to have to make 

the same adjustments to it because they got to live under the same 

rules. But now they don’t have a clue what the rule is because we 

are going through all of this litigation, all of this economic analysis 

that is adding more employees to the Federal Government, economists, innovation therapists, psychologists. All of these people have 

got to be taken into account. And you are telling me this is going 

to speed up the process. I don’t understand that. 

Mr. Gray, Mr. DeMuth, Mr. Shapiro, please explain that to me. 

I can’t understand how this is going to speed up the process of getting to any rule. 

Mr. GRAY. Well, let me just quickly say, Congressman, that if 

you take a look at the so-called Volcker Rule—it is in the media 

now. The agencies have come out with a rulemaking which is, I 

think, a proposal 300 pages long, 300 questions. They don’t know 

what they are doing. 

Mr. WATT. And a judge is supposed to know what he is doing 

after they don’t know what they are doing? Tell me how some Federal judge is going to make that determination. 

113 

Mr. GRAY. Well, I would just proffer that if this legislation were 

in place, a lot of these questions would have answers. There would 

be guidance for the agency to say—— 

Mr. WATT. Who is going to give the answers? Some economist? 

Mr. GRAY. Well, no, the agency. 

Mr. WATT. Some innovation therapist or some psychologist? I 

mean, where are we getting these answers from all of a sudden 

that is going to expedite this process? 

Mr. Shapiro, give me a shot at this. Tell me this is not going to 

prolong the regulatory process ad infinitum and increase the uncertainty that is out there in the economic workplace. 

Mr. SHAPIRO. It is hard to see how it would not. Mark Seidenfeld, 

who is a law professor at Florida State about 10 years ago, counted 

up all the steps that are now required, assuming all the analytical 

requirements applied, and of course, they don’t apply in every rulemaking. But if you just assume for a second they all applied, 10 

years ago Mark found over 120 different steps or requirements of 

analysis. And then, as you were pointing out, this bill, of course, 

adds many more things that an agency has to consider. 

If I might, I would also like to say that Mr. DeMuth and Mr. 

Gray have told you that the standard rules of judicial deference are 

appropriate, but the difficulty is the bill itself changes those rules. 

And if a judge decides that an agency has not done its cost/benefit 

analysis according to the mandate or way that OIRA says it is to 

be done, then all rules of deference are off, and the judge him or 

herself is, therefore, charged with deciding if this was correctly 

done. So the bill itself gets rid of the judicial deference which has 

been so common in our system. 

Mr. COBLE [presiding]. The gentleman’s time has expired. 

The gentleman from Arizona is recognized for 5 minutes. 

Mr. FRANKS. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

I will direct this question, if I could, to you, Professor Shapiro. 

President Obama said in his Executive Order 13563, section 2 that 

our regulatory system must, quote, take into account benefits and 

costs both quantitative and qualitative. Now, do you disagree or 

agree with that? 

Mr. SHAPIRO. I agree with it. May I point out, though, the bill 

does not allow an agency to take into account qualitative costs. The 

bill itself restricts the calculation of benefits to quantitative costs. 

Mr. FRANKS. All right. Well, then would you disagree with both 

President Obama and Mr. Clinton’s perspective that agencies must, 

quote, propose or adopt a regulation only upon a reasonable determination that its benefits justify its costs? 

Mr. SHAPIRO. Again, these are management tools used by the 

President, but to that extent, I agree. 

Mr. FRANKS. But not in legislation. You agree that the President 

should put it in an executive order but that it shouldn’t be in legislation. 

Mr. SHAPIRO. Congress certainly could codify the current executive orders, but as I have tried to explain, I believe this legislation 

goes way beyond codifying the current executive orders. 

There are some disadvantages to codifying the executive orders. 

It is now a flexible management tool that can be adjusted from 

114 

agency to agency, and this would apply a kind of one-size-fits-all 

rubric for all agencies. 

Mr. FRANKS. Well, given the nature of the executive orders—I am 

just trying to be consistent with the approach of those executive orders—how could it be unreasonable to require agencies to always 

consider costs and to generally achieve their statutory objectives 

using the lowest cost alternative? How is that unreasonable? 

Mr. SHAPIRO. Where I get off the train is this switch between 

using regulatory analysis as a way of thinking about advantages 

and disadvantages of a rule as you are considering it and using a 

cost/benefit standard as the decision standard for whether or not 

an agency can promulgate a regulation at all. And the difficulty I 

have with making it a decision rule is that the methodology itself 

is so imprecise that it doesn’t end up being a very good decision 

rule, whatever its merits might be, limiting its use to mere analysis. 

Mr. FRANKS. Well, again, in all due deference, it sounds like your 

disagreement is much with the Administration here as it is with 

the legislation. 

But let me shift gears on you here. Do you disagree with President Obama that our regulatory system, quote, must be based on 

the best available science? 

Mr. SHAPIRO. No. 

Mr. FRANKS. We are making progress. So consistent with that 

approach, how can it be unreasonable to allow those affected by billion dollar regulations or more to at least be able to subject the 

agency’s evidence to cross examination? 

Mr. SHAPIRO. The trouble I have—and this is supported both in 

the ABA letter to you and the letter from the administrative law 

professors—is the assumption that cross examination is going to be 

useful in the determination of scientific facts. In fact, the scholarly 

community believes that it is not useful for that purpose, and 

therefore you are adding way more procedural time and burdens 

than would be worth the benefits of the amount of additional information it would yield. 

Mr. FRANKS. Well, again, with all due deference, you know when 

people put forth a maximum, whether it is based on scientific perspective or otherwise, it seems like the one way to try to examine 

that is with some sort of adversarial cross examination. That is 

just my perspective as a lawyer. I think some people would probably agree with that. That has worked pretty well in our judicial 

system. 

But, Mr. Gray, if I could ask you, sir, just in general—and it is 

a very general question—what do you think the most important effect of this legislation will be in terms of impacting the general productivity of the Nation? 

Mr. GRAY. I think it is the coverage of the independent agencies 

putting them under the same regime as executive branch agencies 

have been operating. I think that is the most important thing that 

will come out of this. The new worlds of finance, of high tech, of 

the Internet—that should be subject to the same rules because of 

the overlap with what the executive branch does, and so I think 

that would be the best benefit. 

115 

Mr. FRANKS. Well, Mr. Chairman, I am going to yield back my 

time but just suggest to you that as someone coming from a business background, so oftentimes the realities that we face on the 

ground are so different than what the regulators’ analysis really is. 

They just have a different idea sometimes. They may be very sincere. But unless we have some type of adversarial or some type of 

check and balance here, these agencies are unfortunately from the 

position of making regulations oftentimes completely out of balance 

with the realities on the ground. And that is one of the big challenges I think for productivity in the country. And so with that, I 

yield back. 

Mr. COBLE. I thank the gentleman. The gentleman’s time has expired. 

The gentlelady from California, Ms. Waters, is recognized for 5 

minutes. 

Ms. WATERS. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I am very 

pleased that you are holding this hearing. This discussion about 

regulations has moved to the top of my friends’ agenda on the opposite side of the aisle. And I am very concerned about whether or 

not H.R. 3010 would rewrite the Administrative Procedure Act and 

change the way that all United States agency rulemaking is conducted for the sole purpose of making it nearly impossible for any 

agency to pass any regulation. And of course, I believe—and I think 

we all believe—that it is extremely important for us to have regulations that will protect the safety and security of our citizens and 

our communities. 

Professor Shapiro, can you elaborate on the impact aggressive 

lobbying already has had on the regulatory process, and how would 

H.R. 3010 further diminish agency rulemaking? 

Mr. SHAPIRO. Well, under the current process, any interested citizen is free to file comments and to meet with the agency. And 

there have been some empirical studies actually about who the 

agency ends up meeting with, and what we have found from those 

empirical studies is business groups and business interests basically dominate that process. Often there are 5 to 10 to 20 more 

times comments filed by business groups and business groups meet 

with the agency on average about 8 to 10 times more than any 

public interest group. And there are many, many hearings where 

there are no public interest groups present at all. Whole 

rulemakings go forward with no public interest representation. So 

I am very sympathetic to Mr. Baker’s concern about the small business community being represented, but it is also the case that the 

American public often goes unrepresented right now in these proceedings. 

Ms. WATERS. My colleagues on the other side of the aisle have 

spent the entire year bringing bills to the floor intended to repeal 

regulations they believe will kill jobs and impede investment. Can 

you elaborate on how regulation can actually create jobs? Can you 

also explain why regulations have not deterred business investment? 

Mr. SHAPIRO. Well, when a company like Mr. Baker’s or anyone 

else is asked to pay some regulatory costs, they are going to spend 

money. They are going to spend money buying equipment. They are 

going to spend money buying whatever is necessary to allow them 

116 

to comply with the regulation. And as a result of this spending, we 

generate economic activity. So when people have gone to study 

what the overall impact is of important regulations, they have 

found generally it is a wash, that the jobs created by this new regulatory spending offsets the loss of jobs created when Mr. Baker 

has to raise his prices somewhat and that might cut back slightly 

on demand. 

Of course, it is important to remember, as was pointed out, that 

everyone in an industry is subject to the same level of regulation. 

So everyone has to comply and that does make it easier for the industry to pass on their costs a bit, but not completely perhaps. 

Ms. WATERS. Thank you very much. I think it is important to put 

on the record that I think Members on both sides of the aisle are 

supportive of small business, and you will hear that time and time 

again. And you will see efforts in this Congress and in previous 

Congresses to give support to small businesses. 

At the same time, I think it is important that we never forget 

that prior to regulations, we had people who lost limbs in the workplace. We had child labor. We had dirty water. We had all kinds 

of health and safety hazards in our society. We have cleaned a lot 

of that up, and still yet every few months or so, we will find that 

it is cantaloupes or spinach or something that is contaminated. We 

need regulation in order to provide safety and take care of the 

health concerns of our society. So I think that even our small business people will agree with that. 

And so what we need to do is move toward making sure that 

there are not unreasonable requirements on small business and not 

try and kill regulation and at the same time have regulation that 

makes good sense. This bill goes too far. It goes in the wrong direction. And I think it would be wise for us not to end up simply supporting a one-size-fits-all kind of a regulatory effort through this 

legislation and get down to the business of doing what makes good 

sense both for small business and for our society. 

I yield back the balance of my time. 

Mr. COBLE. I thank the gentlelady from California. 

The distinguished gentleman from South Carolina is recognized 

for 5 minutes. 

Mr. GOWDY. I thank the gentleman from North Carolina. 

Professor Shapiro, I may very well have misunderstood you. You 

are not suggesting that cross examination works for everything except science, are you? 

Mr. SHAPIRO. The understanding in the administrative law literature is that administrative procedures may add some accuracy 

but we have to measure how much accuracy they add. And so when 

we are dealing with what we call adjudicative facts, who, what, 

when, where, or why, what color was the stoplight when you ran 

through the intersection, facts that are in someone’s possession because they are in their head—they deal with perception—cross examination is very useful as is demeanor evidence. As we get into 

the interpretation of scientific studies—— 

Mr. GOWDY. Well, let me stop you there. So in a criminal context, 

we should no longer have cross examination of DNA experts? What 

about fingerprint experts? 

Mr. SHAPIRO. Right. 

117 

Mr. GOWDY. What about ballistics? 

Mr. SHAPIRO. In most adjudications, we are dealing with adjudicative facts; in most rulemakings, we are not. 

Mr. GOWDY. What about ballistics experts? Should we no longer 

have cross examination of them in a criminal context? 

Mr. SHAPIRO. Well, again, we need a balance here. 

Mr. GOWDY. Well, let’s switch balance. Let’s switch to the civil 

side. What about medical malpractice cases? Should we no longer 

have cross examination of experts in medical malpractice cases because biology is a science? 

Mr. SHAPIRO. We set the balance different because it is a different system. 

Mr. GOWDY. Well, it may be a different system, but your testimony suggested to me that you don’t think cross examination matters in matters of science, and whether it is medical malpractice 

cases, products liability cases, or at least a half dozen examples in 

a criminal context, we use it every single day. It is the best tool 

in our arsenal for getting at the truth. 

Mr. SHAPIRO. Again, we need to achieve a balance here and 

spending days and days in a legislative hearing dealing in rulemaking allowing unlimited cross examination ends up, based on 

our experience, in not making us that much smarter. 

Mr. GOWDY. Well, nobody is advocating for unlimited cross examination. Judges can control the scope and sphere of cross examination. They do it every day. 

I was just struck—and again, I may have misunderstood your 

testimony. I was struck by the notion that cross examination works 

for everything other than science. 

Mr. SHAPIRO. The difference, as I understand it, sir, is that when 

we are dealing with objective facts—is the light red—it is important. We want to set the balance in getting it right. When we are 

dealing with criminal rights, we want to get the balance right. 

When we are dealing with tort, we want to get the balance right. 

We also want to get the balance right in science but doing that 

through written procedures and letting people file rulemaking comments we have decided is sufficient. 

Mr. GOWDY. Well, I want to get at another balance. I want to 

read a quote from you and you tell me why he is wrong. There are 

some rules and regulations that do put an unnecessary burden on 

businesses at a time when they can least afford it. Do you know 

who said that? 

Mr. SHAPIRO. No. 

Mr. GOWDY. President Obama. 

Mr. SHAPIRO. Okay. 

Mr. GOWDY. Why is he wrong? Because your theory is that increased regulations actually create jobs, and when he was laying 

out his jobs speech, he cited excessive regulations as an example 

of something we need to turn back so we can create jobs. So are 

you right or is the President right? 

Mr. SHAPIRO. What I am saying is that—I agree with the President—these are considerations to be taken into account, but I believe the existing system does that. 

Mr. GOWDY. He came up with 500 regulations that should be repealed or unpromulgated. How many can you come up with? 

118 

Mr. SHAPIRO. Well, what we did in the look-back—and I am not 

against look-backs—is look for additional savings in the way we 

regulate. But what is interesting about the look-back is in none of 

those cases, as I am aware, did we decide the fundamental rule 

was wrong, that it was unnecessary to protect the American public 

using that particular rule. What the Administration did find, because some of the rules are so old and we have new technologies, 

that it would be possible to do it in a more cost-effective manner, 

for example, switching from paper reports to reporting on the 

Internet. 

Mr. GOWDY. Do you agree with the President that we should 

have no more regulations than necessary for the health, safety, and 

security of the public? 

Mr. SHAPIRO. Yes. 

Mr. GOWDY. So would you analyze NLRB requiring posters to be 

posted in the workplace by that same standard? 

Mr. SHAPIRO. I would submit it to the normal rulemaking process 

and—— 

Mr. GOWDY. Health, safety—— 

Mr. SHAPIRO [continuing]. That will develop your information pro 

and con. 

Mr. GOWDY. Health, safety, and security? 

Mr. SHAPIRO. I am sorry, sir? 

Mr. GOWDY. Health, safety, and security. Those three. 

Mr. SHAPIRO. I am sorry. I don’t understand the question. 

Mr. GOWDY. All right. Well, my time is up, Mr. Chairman. I had 

one more question but the light is red. 

Mr. COBLE. You may have one more question. 

Mr. GOWDY. Thank you. It may be a three-part question. [Laughter.] 

Would you agree with me that rules and regulations are sometimes evidence of negligence in a civil case? 

Mr. SHAPIRO. Yes. 

Mr. GOWDY. In fact, they are evidence of negligence per se in 

some civil contexts. 

Mr. SHAPIRO. Yes. 

Mr. GOWDY. So there was a quote from an Administration official 

that a proposed rule or regulation was going to be a plaintiff’s attorney’s dream. What do you think that Administration official 

meant by that? 

Mr. SHAPIRO. I don’t know, sir. 

Mr. GOWDY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. COBLE. Thank you. 

The gentlelady from Texas is recognized for 5 minutes. 

Ms. JACKSON LEE. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. 

Let me thank all of the witnesses for being here. I am going to 

have some very cryptic questions. 

But I do want to acknowledge Mr. Boyden Gray for his service 

to this country. We overlapped. My husband, Dr. Elwyn Lee, was 

at Wilmer, Cutler, and Pickering when you were and certainly your 

work with President Bush. We thank you again for your service 

and your service in the United States Marines. 

Let me just pose a question. I am going to follow a line of reasoning. I would ask Dr. Shapiro if he has the bill in front of him, 

119 

if he would be prepared for some questions starting at page 4. And 

if he does not, if a clerk could provide him with the legislation. Do 

we have a bill that we can provide him with? 

Mr. SHAPIRO. I apologize. I do not have a copy of the bill. 

Ms. JACKSON LEE. I have an extra copy. Thank you so very 

much. 

But let me just indicate—this is from the CRS, which is our congressional research. It is an independent research that is used by 

all parties. But this sentence says the public policy goals and benefits of regulations include, among other things, ensuring that workplaces, air travel, foods, and drugs are safe and that the Nation’s 

air, water, and land are not polluted and that the appropriate 

amount of taxes is collected. 

Mr. Gray, do you adhere to that simple sentence? Did I read it 

clear enough for you, sir? 

Mr. GRAY. Yes. 

Ms. JACKSON LEE. Mr. DeMuth, do you adhere to that simple 

sentence? 

Mr. DEMUTH. Yes. 

Ms. JACKSON LEE. Mr. Baker? 

Mr. BAKER. Yes, ma’am. 

Ms. JACKSON LEE. All right. I would like to read a sentence from 

the American Bar Association. I ask unanimous consent to submit 

this letter into the record that was sent October 24 to Mr. Lamar 

Smith and Mr. John Conyers. I am not sure if it is in the record, 

but I want to have it in the record. 

The sentence says, as they have indicated their support for this 

ambitious proposal, at the same time, certain provisions would 

harm the administrative process in unjustifiable ways. In particular, many of the new steps the bill would require for rulemaking, though wholly appropriate in some rulemakings, would, if 

imposed automatically and across the board, further ossify the 

rulemaking process with little offsetting benefits in the form of better rules. I would like this letter to be put into the record. 

Mr. COBLE. Without objection. 

[The information referred to follows:] 

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Ms. JACKSON LEE. Thank you. 

To the gentlemen quickly, do you accept this legislation, H.R. 

3010, without amendment? Mr. Gray? 

Mr. GRAY. Yes, ma’am. 

Ms. JACKSON LEE. Mr. DeMuth? 

Mr. DEMUTH. Yes, ma’am. 

Ms. JACKSON LEE. Mr. Baker? 

Mr. BAKER. I have not had a chance to fully review all aspects, 

but I will certainly get back to you. 

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And let me just say that I truly believe your concern should be 

addressed, and I am a strong supporter making sure that you hire 

people, that your doors stay open, and that you grow to be even a 

bigger business. I have no quarrel with you and I understand how 

regulations need to be overseen. 

So let me go to Mr. Shapiro. Do you have page 4, Mr. Shapiro? 

Mr. SHAPIRO. Yes, ma’am. 

Ms. JACKSON LEE. All right. And I want to make note of the fact 

that section 3 in this bill, Rulemaking, goes from page 4, page 5, 

page 6, and finishes on page 7. And the headline of this one is 

‘‘Rulemaking.’’ So I assume what this means, Mr. Shapiro, is this 

is what has to be taken into account in regulatory agencies in order 

to get a rule in place. Is that correct? 

Mr. SHAPIRO. Yes. 

Ms. JACKSON LEE. All right. Before I question you, let me also 

submit into the record an article entitled ‘‘CDC: Cantaloupe Listeria Outbreak Deadliest in a Decade.’’ This was dated September 

28, 2011 by Christina Caron. I ask unanimous consent for this article to be put in the record. 

Mr. COBLE. Without objection. 

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Ms. JACKSON LEE. I don’t know if this number is accurate. I 

thought the number had gone up to 28, but it says in this article 

so far 13 people have died, 72 people have been infected in 18 

States. 

Mr. Shapiro, this cantaloupe outbreak from your understanding 

or at least you know that there are regulations that deal with food. 

Is that correct? 

Mr. SHAPIRO. Yes. 

Ms. JACKSON LEE. And the cantaloupe is a food product. 


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Mr. SHAPIRO. Yes. 

Ms. JACKSON LEE. And we have seen the most deadliest outbreak 

that we have seen in life. 

Let us go to section 3 and B, subsection 3. I can barely understand it. The ABA has indicated there are some major problems 

with this legislation. I assume that you do not take this legislation 

on face value, meaning that you don’t believe it should be passed 

immediately as it is written. 

Mr. SHAPIRO. That is correct. 

Ms. JACKSON LEE. And do you read and see what I see in section 

3 that says the specific nature and significance of the problem the 

agency may address with a rule, then in paren, including the degree and nature of risks the problem poses and the priority of addressing those risks compared to other matters or activities within 

the agency’s jurisdiction? Professor Shapiro, do you see a group of 

people sitting in a room coming to this parenthesis and attempting 

to say what is going on in the third floor or the fourth floor in 

terms of what the agency’s priorities on that task that they were 

given? 

Mr. Chairman, I would like for Mr. Shapiro to be able to answer 

how much of an obstruction just this provision would be alone in 

the contemplative, thoughtful thinking and writing of regulations 

that might save lives and avoid the deaths that we had in listeria. 

Could you respond to just that provision alone? 

Mr. SHAPIRO. Well, I appreciate the intent to tell agencies that 

they need to think clearly about their regulations before they are 

enacted. It is really hard to argue with that sentiment. But what 

we have done over the years is try to help them along by having 

a list of things they have to take into account. And as I said earlier, that list now has gotten very long and probably already involves 130-140 different things they are supposed to at least look 

at and see whether or not they are impacted by the bill. And then 

as you have pointed out, this bill alone would add numerous other 

very detailed, think-before-you-leap requirements. 

Ms. JACKSON LEE. Mr. Chairman, could I just get a quick followup question? May I have a quick follow-up question to Professor 

Shapiro please? 

Mr. COBLE. Very briefly. Your time has expired, but go ahead 

with one more question. 

Ms. JACKSON LEE. All right. Mr. Shapiro, I do want to focus you 

more clearly on section 3. I appreciate the broad answer, but you 

listed that we have many other reviews that an agency does. In the 

paren, they are asking them to stop and say do I want do this over 

other priorities. And agency has many different subsets, and I 

would imagine that they have many different groups dealing with 

their priorities. And so you add to rulemaking a question of whether or not I have to address whether I need to deal with cantaloupes 

and food security or food regulation juxtaposed against worrying 

about—not worrying about but maybe talking about apple regulation. The point I am making is—— 

Mr. ISSA. Mr. Chairman, is there a question? 

Ms. JACKSON LEE. Yes, there is. Is this not a redundancy and an 

act that is already taking place? 

161 

Mr. SHAPIRO. As I said in my opening statement, it is important 

to balance—— 

Mr. COBLE. Professor Shapiro, our time has expired. If you could 

be very brief. 

Mr. SHAPIRO. Sure. I was just saying it is important to have a 

balance here, and I think you can always add procedures in an attempt to be more accurate, but at the end of the day, it is also important to protect the American people. 

Mr. COBLE. The time of the gentlelady has expired.y 

The distinguished gentleman from California, Mr. Issa, is recognized for 5 minutes. 

Mr. ISSA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. As we both know, ‘‘distinguished’’ around here generally means old. And since I see our 

panel is plus or minus a few years, some of you my age, let me go 

through a line of questions that follows up the gentlelady from 

Texas. 

There is a point that this legislation piles on to lots of other legislation, each intended to stop legislation by rulemaking from, if 

you will, jamming up people like Mr. Baker. Mr. Baker, you are a 

few years younger than me and you only started your business in 

2003, but it wasn’t your first time on the merry-go-round. In 1990, 

were you also in a similar business? 

Mr. BAKER. No. In 1990, I was redeveloping malls. 

Mr. ISSA. So at that time you were watching cement operations. 

You were watching construction and so on? 

Mr. BAKER. Correct. 

Mr. ISSA. Would it surprise you that there are more than twice 

as many regulations that people building shopping malls today 

have to abide by as there were in 1990, some 20 years ago? 

Mr. BAKER. It would not. I am not surprised by that. As I was 

researching, I found 4,000 new rules on industry just this year 

alone, which is what in the small business community we are becoming more and more reliant on trade industries because we just 

can’t follow them. 

Mr. ISSA. So there are so many new laws that Congress has nothing directly to do with that you have to hire, if you will, teams of 

people through trade associations just to keep up with the ever-new 

regulations. 

So in your opinion, would you say it is way too easy to pass regulations after all of what Mr. Shapiro called these layers of delay? 

Mr. BAKER. Well, I probably wouldn’t use the word ‘‘easy,’’ but 

I would say it is not—— 

Mr. ISSA. I mean, it is not easy on you once they pass them. 

Mr. BAKER. I would state that there are many examples of where 

litigation could have been avoided had there been more input on 

the front end, where conflicting regulations could have been made 

more effective had there been more input on the front end. And so 

that is really my objective for being here today is to—— 

Mr. ISSA. And we appreciate a real live American job creator 

being here. We don’t see enough of you. 

Professor Shapiro, I am going to consider you an expert on regulations, but how are you on shopping malls? Have you been to 

some? 

Mr. SHAPIRO. I try not to, but yes, I have been to some. 

162 

Mr. ISSA. So would be afraid to go to a shopping mall that was 

created in 1990? 

Mr. SHAPIRO. No. 

Mr. ISSA. So would you be afraid to have a piece of cantaloupe 

if the regulations around cantaloupe production were 1990 regulations? 

Mr. SHAPIRO. The food safety system is something we have been 

unable to get up to adequate protection levels on. 

Mr. ISSA. So, in other words, when the gentlelady from Texas 

talked about cantaloupe and the worst in a decade, we have piled 

on hundreds or thousands of new regulations but we haven’t made 

food safer. Isn’t that true? 

Mr. SHAPIRO. The numbers for total number of regulations are a 

little misleading in the following sense, that many of these are 

technical amendments—— 

Mr. ISSA. Wait a second. When every single pesticide and every 

single chemical used in agriculture is required to go through—even 

if it has been on the market for decades, required to go through an 

all new, ground-up evaluation by this Administration, you are 

going to say it is small and technical? Is it small and technical? Is 

that what you call small and technical if you are a farmer and you 

find out that nothing you have used for decades in some cases can 

be used without a huge price increase because it is going through 

a set of evaluations even though it has been used for decades? 

Mr. SHAPIRO. These are things of great concern to business, but 

they are also of great concern to consumers and we have to get an 

appropriate balance. 

Mr. ISSA. Mr. Gray, you like me have been around a couple of 

days and you have been around in Washington a couple days 

longer than I have. Is this really just Washington talk, that we 

think we make everything safer by piling on regulations? And 

aren’t we here today looking at a way to slow down the ease with 

which unelected, unappointed career people often are able to create 

laws without a cost-effective analysis, without a question of dire 

need, but rather 4,000 new laws a year in the name of regulations? 

Isn’t that really just Washington talk for let’s go ahead, it is easy 

for us to do, and it makes us seem important? 

Mr. GRAY. Oh, gosh. I think the regulatory process, the administrative process does provide a lot of public goods and I think if you 

look past back to—I mean, maybe when I first went into the Government, you know, what President Reagan did didn’t stop one of 

the greatest booms in American history. But I think we are at a 

stage now where things have gotten out of hand again. 

Mr. ISSA. And as a follow-up, would you say Boiler MACT is an 

example of that where even the EPA knows that their standard 

isn’t ready and yet they can’t seem to figure out how to stop something they did without a real cost/benefit analysis? 

Mr. GRAY. One of my problems with the Boiler MACT case is 

that for what it is supposed to do, which is to deal with air toxics, 

EPA provides no benefit analysis at all. The benefits that they 

claim to the rule are all from different regimes within EPA which 

are being handled under separate—so I have a problem. I wish 

EPA would calculate the actual benefits of what the rule is aimed 

163 

at, but they don’t do it and the statute doesn’t require it. This statute would, and I think we would all be better off if that happened. 

Mr. ISSA. Thank you. 

And Mr. Chairman, I would only note that I would never say 

that some bill is perfect, but this bill is absolutely needed, and I 

appreciate the Chairman of the full Committee bringing it to us 

and yield back. 

Mr. COBLE. I thank the gentleman. The gentleman’s time has expired. 

The distinguished gentleman from Georgia is recognized for 5 

minutes. 

Mr. JOHNSON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. C. Boyden Gray, you are a former official of the George Herbert Walker Bush administration. Correct? 

Mr. GRAY. Yes. 

Mr. JOHNSON. And Mr. DeMuth, you are a former high-level 

Reagan administration appointee. Is that correct? 

Mr. DEMUTH. I was in the Administration. Whether the level 

was high or not, I—— 

Mr. JOHNSON. Well, as former administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs of the Office of Management and 

Budget, it is a pretty highly responsible position, wouldn’t you 

admit? 

Mr. DEMUTH. Yes, sir. 

Mr. JOHNSON. And Mr. Baker, with the Black Chamber of Commerce, that is an organization that takes subsidies from the U.S. 

Chamber of Commerce, isn’t it? 

Mr. BAKER. I’m not aware of any firsthand. 

Mr. JOHNSON. You wouldn’t be surprised, though, with the close 

working relationship that the Black Chamber of Commerce, the 

National Black Chamber of Commerce, has with the U.S. Chamber 

of Commerce. 

Mr. BAKER. That and the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce 

and many other organizations. Yes, we do try to collaborate. 

Mr. JOHNSON. Well, let me say this now. And right now, Mr. 

DeMuth, you are a high-level official with the American Enterprise 

Institute. 

Mr. DEMUTH. I am a fellow at the institute. 

Mr. JOHNSON. Now, the institute is what is known as a conservative or neo-conservative think tank. Correct? 

Mr. DEMUTH. It is a think tank, a public policy research institute. 

Mr. JOHNSON. Of conservative and neo-conservative leanings, if 

you will. 

Mr. DEMUTH. Leanings, yes. 

Mr. JOHNSON. Yes. I mean, Dick Cheney is on your board. Right? 

Mr. DEMUTH. Yes, sir. 

Mr. JOHNSON. And a number of others. In fact, your board—you 

used to have Mr. David Frum as one of your resident fellows. Correct? 

Mr. DEMUTH. Yes. 

Mr. JOHNSON. And Mr. Frum was terminated from the organization back in 2010 after he wrote an editorial entitled ‘‘Waterloo’’ in 

which he criticized the Republican Party’s unwillingness to bargain 

164 

with Democrats on the health care legislation. Is that correct? He 

was terminated for writing that editorial. 

Mr. DEMUTH. No, sir. 

Mr. JOHNSON. That is not correct? But he was terminated, 

though. 

Mr. DEMUTH. I don’t even know if that is the case. I know that 

he left the institute. 

Mr. JOHNSON. And I think that is the same gentleman who I saw 

an article from a couple of days ago that wondered whether or not 

Paul Krugman, the hated liberal progressive economist—whether 

or not he in fact is correct with all of his analysis of our current 

economic state. Were you aware of that? 

Mr. DEMUTH. No, sir. 

Mr. JOHNSON. So this is a guy who was a neo-conservative who 

has now seen the light, but he was dismissed from your organization. But your organization is—this American Enterprise Institute 

is funded by corporations and financial services industry Wall 

Streeters. Correct? 

Mr. DEMUTH. Does it receive any contributions from businesses 

and people from Wall Street? 

Mr. JOHNSON. Yes. 

Mr. DEMUTH. Or is it funded by? Those are very different questions, sir. 

Mr. JOHNSON. It is funded by, receives contributions from. Isn’t 

that a fact? Both? 

Mr. DEMUTH. It receives donations from businesses, including 

businesses that are located on Wall Street. 

Mr. JOHNSON. Now, climate change you all have made opinions 

about. You all have given opinions. Some of your high-level officials 

have intimated that they are not convinced of this global warming 

being a manmade—or at least manmade actions contributing to 

global warming. You all don’t believe that, do you? 

Mr. DEMUTH. I am sorry, sir. The question is do I believe that? 

Mr. JOHNSON. You don’t believe in climate change—your organization. 

Mr. DEMUTH. Excuse me, sir. The organization does not take positions such as that. On that and several issues, you would find 

people of varying opinions, just like in the United States Congress. 

On the question you posed, some people would agree, some people 

would disagree. 

Mr. JOHNSON. Have you all ever studied the influence of the political process—excuse me—the influence of corporations on the political process after the Citizens United Supreme Court ruling? And 

I will note that you have a close connection to The Federalist Society also. 

Mr. DEMUTH. It is a big organization. I do not know of any research that we have done on that subject. 

Mr. JOHNSON. Well, it is no coincidence that we would be sitting 

here today talking about a piece of legislation that would forever 

paralyze the rulemaking process by the administrative agencies 

that are in charge of our environmental protection, workplace safety, consumer products safety, and the financial services industry 

misconduct. It is no coincidence that we would be seated here today 

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165 

omy where jobs is the issue, and the only thing that the Republicans want to do is cut regulations and cut taxes. So we are talking about a situation that I am certainly not surprised at. 

Mr. COBLE. The gentleman’s time has expired. 

Mr. JOHNSON. Thank you. 

Mr. COBLE. The distinguished gentleman from Texas is recognized for 5 minutes. 

Mr. GOHMERT. When you say ‘‘distinguished gentleman,’’ were 

you talking about me, Mr. Chairman? 

Mr. COBLE. I was indeed. 

Mr. GOHMERT. Oh, okay. I wasn’t sure. 

Mr. Shapiro, you referenced potential delay of 10 years, if I understood correctly, if this bill were passed, in the length of time it 

would take to promulgate regulations and make them effective. Is 

that right? 

Mr. SHAPIRO. The current system is particularly ossified, so it 

now takes 4 to 6 years to get a regulation done. And my best estimate is if all these procedures would apply, that would lengthen 

the process another 2 to 4 years. 

Mr. GOHMERT. Thank you. 

And you say the current system takes 4 to 6 years. So I note that 

the regulations the EPA has come up with in the last 2 and a half 

years that they have announced this year that will take effect January 1st, I will be sure and let the President know those can’t take 

effect for another 4 to 6 years. And the people in Texas will be glad 

to know our plants don’t have to shut down on January 1st. 

Mr. Gray, you had referenced earlier ways to game the system, 

if I understood correctly. Isn’t that correct? 

Mr. GRAY. Yes. 

Mr. GOHMERT. And I was wondering since you mentioned that, 

if you had something specific in mind as the way the system is 

being gamed or can be. 

Mr. GRAY. Well, I think—just take an example from EPA which 

affects your State. I should perhaps know more about this, but 

what EPA is doing when they include your State in one of these 

rules of cross-state, interstate rule, they are trying to reduce NOx 

emissions in two counties, one in Illinois, one in Michigan. And 

what EPA neglects to do when it does that is to take into account— 

and it should. This bill hopefully would make it do this—the fact 

that when you reduce NOx—it is very counter-intuitive—you actually increase pollution. So what EPA is doing by including your 

State in this rule is actually to increase pollution where they say 

they are trying to reduce it, which is in Michigan and Illinois and 

the Great Lakes. 

So is that a gaming? Well, yes, I think it is a gaming. And I 

think this legislation would, I think, correct that. It would have the 

impact of forcing EPA to acknowledge when you do costs and benefits, that the benefits have to include negative benefits, which is 

what they are going to cause not only you but downwind States of 

Michigan and Illinois. 

Mr. GOHMERT. Well, but I think you would have to admit, 

though, there are some positives about the new EPA regulations 

that will cause many Texas power plants to shut down the first of 

next year. Thousands of people that are working with the lignite 

166 

in other parts of the industry will be out of work. The positives 

that I see coming from that will be to someone who is running for 

reelection and is sick and tired of people pointing to Texas and saying look at all the jobs they have created and all the good things 

that are going on. It will be a real positive for that person to be 

able to say, look, they got plants closing down. They got thousands 

of people out of work. You know, it is not the great State people 

have said it was. So I think there are some positives particularly 

if you are running for reelection as President that you don’t want 

to miss. 

And in fact, when we talk about—you brought up this gaming 

the system. Some people say they are not sure if anybody but me 

and Congress, the House or Senate, has read the President’s entire 

jobs bill. I really don’t believe—I really don’t believe, based on the 

things the President said, he has read his own bill. 

I also know from the fact that the President’s bill was filed with 

a Senate number instead of stripping a House number when it was 

known his jobs bill raises revenue, that it couldn’t be passed like 

that. It could never become law like that. They have to strip out 

a House bill so that it originated in the House under Article I, section 7 that by Harry Reid doing that, he knew this will never become law. It was gaming the system here in Congress. 

And now this week we have the President out there saying since 

Congress won’t pass my jobs bill, then he is going to have to take 

regulatory action to get things done. He is going to have to do executive orders and take action himself to get around Congress. That 

appears to be gaming the system to me. 

One of the reasons I support this legislation is that I know 

enough about our history to know that the Founders wanted it to 

be difficult to pass laws, and when regulators can pass them in a 

system that takes 4 to 6 years, as we have heard, to get done and 

they can get it done within 9 months in a system designed to take 

4 to 6 years, then we have got some work to do. 

And I appreciate all of your being here. I know it is inconvenient. 

I know the pay is not all that good to come testify. That is sarcasm 

because you don’t get paid. I know. But anyway, thank you for 

coming and for your input. 

Mr. COBLE. The time of the distinguished gentleman from Texas 

has expired. 

Gentlemen, thank you all for being here. 

This concludes our hearing, but the distinguished gentleman 

from Virginia has asked permission to ask a very brief question 

and it is granted. 

Mr. SCOTT. Yes. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. Shapiro, if a judge determines that a better rule could have 

been promulgated, is he subjected to a standard that the promulgator the new rule is not unreasonable by clear and convincing evidence or preponderance of the evidence? What standard is he to 

make that determination by? 

And then if in the final analysis a better rule could have been 

promulgated, what happens next? Does he throw out the new rule? 

Can he oppose the new rule, or do you have start from scratch? 

What happens? 

167 

Mr. SHAPIRO. The bill changes the rules of deference for the judiciary in certain instances, and it would make it more likely that 

a Federal judge who, after all, is unaccountable because she or he 

has lifetime tenure, could decide that the agency’s job was inadequate and would remand it back to the agency. So it would just 

add years of delay, assuming it ever got reenacted. 

Mr. SCOTT. What is the standard? In administrative law, if a law 

is not unreasonable, it will stand. But is that the standard that the 

judge is held by, or is it he has to show by clear and convincing 

evidence that the rule is wrong? 

Mr. SHAPIRO. Right now—— 

Mr. SCOTT. And can he impose the new rule? 

Mr. SHAPIRO. No. The judge can’t impose a new rule under 

standard administrative law practice. The agency can only do that. 

Right now, the question that a judge asks is whether or not the 

agency’s decision is either arbitrary or capricious or in certain instances lacks substantial evidence. But the important point, in 

reaching that decision, the courts have ruled that the agency, in 

order to justify a rule as being reasonable, has to respond to each 

and every comment in the rulemaking record. So when business interests and others file a comment saying you have miscalculated 

the costs, the costs are too high, there should be a different rule, 

you didn’t understand this, the agency must reply to each and 

every one of those objections. And the judge must determine whether or not the agency’s reply to those specific objections is a reasonable one. 

Mr. COBLE. The distinguished gentleman’s time has expired. 

Gentlemen, thank you again. We are appreciative to you all for 

your contribution today. 

Without objection, all Members will have 5 legislative days to 

submit additional written questions for the witnesses or additional 

materials. 

This hearing is adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 12:36 p.m., the Committee was adjourned.] 

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f 


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Æ 


70911M-7.eps