WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senators Angus King (I-Maine) and Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), along with Senators Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) and Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), today reintroduced the Regulatory Improvement Act, legislation that would create a Regulatory Improvement Commission to review outdated regulations with the goal of modifying, consolidating, or repealing regulations in order to reduce compliance costs, encourage growth and innovation, and improve competitiveness.

“This Commission is a sensible, bipartisan proposal that right-sizes the scope of federal regulations while retaining core labor, environmental, and health safeguards essential to Americans’ well-being,” Senator King said. “With the federal government implementing thousands of regulations every year, and with no good way to determine if the existing ones are even still working, this bill is a sorely-needed fix to help ensure that businesses and entrepreneurs can do what they do best – create jobs, support livelihoods, and drive the economy – without a mess of bureaucratic red-tape holding them back.”

“Every day, I hear from Missouri families, farmers, and job creators who are burdened with too many confusing, inefficient, and duplicative government regulations that continue to hold back economic growth and job creation,” Senator Blunt said. “Americans need more economic certainty, and this bill will give us a better process to streamline regulatory burdens and help job creators, entrepreneurs, and innovators grow and hire more people.”

“We ought to be able to work together in a bipartisan fashion to eliminate unnecessary regulations in order to encourage job creation, grow our economy and save taxpayer dollars,” Senator Shaheen said. “Our bill provides a commonsense framework to identify outdated and ineffective regulations so that we can ultimately make the government more efficient, all while still performing important regulatory oversight.”

“Excessive regulations are the enemy of job growth,” Senator Wicker said. “Repealing outdated rules and contradictory government mandates would help strengthen our economy and put Americans back to work. With the size of the U.S. workforce at a historic low, Congress should take strategic steps, such as this proposal, to unleash the American workforce.”

Thousands of regulations are implemented every year. In 2014 alone, more than 3,500 regulations were finalized, 80 of which were considered “major” rules that would have an annual economic impact of at least $100 million or have significant impacts on prices, industries, or trade competitiveness.

However, the current systems for reviewing the efficacy of existing regulations are largely ineffective. Under current law, regulations are screened prior to their enactment and, once implemented, agencies are encouraged to conduct retrospective reviews but often lack the resources and incentives to do so in a timely and comprehensive fashion. The result is that thousands and thousands of regulations accumulate without any concern for their effectiveness.

To address that problem, the Regulatory Improvement Act would create a bipartisan Commission that incorporates wide stakeholder input to reach a consensus on how to retain essential environmental, public health, and safety protections with the minimum necessary compliance costs while also reducing regulatory burdens in a targeted manner by focusing on repealing regulations that are outdated, duplicative, or inefficient.

Members of the bipartisan Commission will be appointed by Congressional leadership and the President and will give particular attention in their review to the impact of regulations on small businesses. Upon an extensive review process, involving broad input from the general public and stakeholders, the Commission will submit to Congress a report containing regulations in need of streamlining, consolidation, or repeal.

Both Houses of Congress will then consider the Commission’s report under expedited legislative procedures, which allow relevant Congressional Committees to review the Commission’s report but not amend the recommendations. The bill will then be placed on the calendar of each house for privileged floor consideration.

The legislation, which Senators King and Blunt also introduced last Congress, has been endorsed by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers, the National Federation of Independent Business, and the Progressive Policy Institute.

To read a summary of the legislation, click HERE, or to read the complete text, click HERE.

###