Joint Hearing of the Rules Subcommittee on Technology and the House and
the Government Reform Subcommittee on Energy Policy, Natural Resources and Regulatory Affairs
Hearing on "Unfunded Mandates - A Five-Year Review and Recommendations for Change."
Chairman, Rules Subcommittee on Technology and the House
Thank you, Chairman Ose, for calling the joint hearing of our two subcommittees to order. I look forward to our hearing this morning for two reasons.
First, it is the inaugural hearing of the Rules Subcommittee on Technology and the House for the 107th Congress. At the start of this Congress, we slightly altered the Subcommittee’s name to reflect the fact that we will continue to be active in longstanding areas of the Subcommittee’s original jurisdiction, such as unfunded mandates, and we will also look to take a higher-profile role in examining how the technological advances of recent years affect the House as an institution, and the legislative process.
In this respect, I am pleased that the Subcommittee’s first hearing in this Congress will take a look at the “success story” we have had with regard to unfunded mandates reform over the past five years.
Secondly, I look forward to working with you, Chairman Ose, in your capacity as chairman of the Government Reform Subcommittee on Energy Policy, Natural Resources, and Regulatory Affairs. Our Subcommittees share jurisdiction over certain portions of the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act, or (“UMRA”).
As such, I believe that we share the common goal of today’s hearing: namely, highlighting the success of UMRA over the last five years in reducing the number and scope of enacted laws that contain unfunded mandates, and raising the consciousness level of members of the House and its standing Committees, and our staffs, about unfunded mandates earlier in the legislative process so as to maximize our ability to either eliminate, or greatly reduce, unfunded mandates before such measures come to the House floor.
I believe that the “key” to our success over the last five years in either eliminating unfunded mandates from being enacted into law, or greatly reducing their scope and cost, has been the change that UMRA made to the rules governing the consideration of certain legislation on the House floor.
Specifically, Section 425 of the 1974 Congressional Budget Act establishes a point of order that lies against authorization legislation containing an unfunded intergovernmental mandate exceeding $56 million.
Furthermore, Section 426 of the Congressional Budget Act establishes a point of order that lies against a rule governing consideration of a measure containing an unfunded intergovernmental mandate exceeding this level, if the rule waives the initial point of order with respect to the underlying authorization legislation.
In other words, with these two procedural safeguards the full House of Representatives is required to debate, consider, and ultimately pass judgment on either underlying legislation seeking to enact an unfunded intergovernmental mandate exceeding $56 million, or a rule that seeks to waive this point of order.
This represents a sharp break from the practices that were in effect prior to UMRA’s enactment, namely, routinely moving legislation through the House of Representatives without even a moment’s consideration to whether or not it contained an unfunded intergovernmental mandate.
Given these difficult hurdles to overcome, is it any surprise that the CBO found in annual reports submitted in January of 1997, February of 1998, February of 1999, and March 2000, that the number of legislative measures with unfunded intergovernmental mandates exceeding these levels was very, very small? – usually about 1 percent of the legislation that the CBO reviewed under UMRA. And, the number of bills with such unfunded intergovernmental mandates that were finally enacted into law was an even smaller subset of these groupings.
Or, stated a little differently, in the years since UMRA has been enacted, more than 99 percent of the legislation that the Congress has enacted into law contained either no unfunded mandates at all or unfunded mandates that did not exceed UMRA’s threshold levels.
I very much appreciate the fact that CBO Director Crippen will releasing the CBO’s newest report on UMRA at today’s hearing, and I look forward to his remarks, as well as the testimony of OMB Director Daniels.
I also look forward to the other witnesses we will hear from this morning, including the National Governors’ Association, the National Conference of State Legislatures, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, all of which will talk about their experiences with UMRA and unfunded mandates over the last five years.
Mr. Chairman, thank you for the opportunity to make this opening statement. Today’s hearing will be quite insightful, and I look forward to my Subcommittee working with your Subcommittee in the future.
