Government regulations are everywhere: They govern the water we drink, the air we breathe, and the homes we live in. But it would likely surprise most Americans to learn that the government they elect is not the same government dictating regulations.
That is why, for almost 15 years, Republican lawmakers have sought to change that by passing the Regulations from the Executive in Need of Scrutiny (REINS) Act — a fairly simple reform that would require the government to treat regulatory proposals as though they were laws. Any “economically significant regulation,” according to a press release from the non-profit American Commitment, would have to be “approved by the House and the Senate and signed by the president, or subject to a veto-override, before it could take effect.” (READ MORE: The Bidenomics Scam)
It seems that it ought to be a fairly straightforward piece of legislation, and it should hardly come as a surprise that a recent poll conducted by American Commitment found that most of the GOP presidential candidates were willing to back the act.
“The federal bureaucracy is unelected, unaccountable, and running riot over our rights. Under my economic plan, we will revive the middle class and make sure the government is working for the American people again,” Nikki Haley wrote in response to American Commitment’s survey. “The REINS Act will force Congress to vote on price-hiking, job-destroying, family-crushing mandates, and I will sign it into law as President.” (READ MORE: INTERVIEW: Speaker Gingrich Reveals America’s Current Crisis)
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis agreed. When Rep. Thomas Massie asked during the governor’s campaign launch if he would sign the bill, DeSantis responded: “Oh, yeah, of course. Yeah, that’s a no brainer.”
During their 2016 campaigns, both Chris Christie and Donald Trump promised to support the bill. “I will sign the REINS Act should it reach my desk as President and more importantly I will work hard to get it passed,” Trump said at the time. His campaign has not yet updated its statement.
Currently, passing regulations is a fuzzy process that essentially protects elected officials from ever being held accountable. American Commitment President Phil Kerpen told The American Spectator that “Congress kind of passes broad, vague laws, and then all of the policymaking, all the real decisions, are made by agency bureaucrats.” He added that if the bill were to become law, “it would pretty dramatically transform the way that laws are passed and where the regulations are written and the regulatory burden on the economy.”
As Kerpen explained, the results of the poll demonstrate that “we’ve got pretty widespread recognition, at least on the Republican side, that the process we’ve got right now is not a good one and that elected officials need to take a lot more responsibility for the specific regulations that come into effect by voting on them.” (READ MORE: How the Major Questions Doctrine Protects the Rule of Law)
The problem is that while Republicans have certainly demonstrated support for the bill, Democrats have failed to rally behind it. When it was passed in the House of Representatives in June 2023, just one Democrat voted for it, Maine Rep. Jared Golden.
“The Democratic view has basically been: this is an attack on all of the wonderful regulations from the EPA and FDA and HHS, and Republicans want to do this because they want all the children to die and that kind of thing. They don’t really engage the constitutional argument … the idea of accountability and responsibility,” Kerpen said.
By requiring proposals to pass both the House and the Senate before being signed into law, the REINS Act simply advocates that government regulations come into effect the way in which Article 1 Section 1 of the U.S. Constitution intended.
