[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 162 (2016), Part 4]
[House]
[Pages 4519-4520]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




          REINING IN GOVERNMENT: A NEW ATTITUDE AND A NEW DAY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Florida (Mr. Yoho) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. YOHO. Madam Speaker, it is a great day here in America.
  Four years ago I came to Congress with a desire to change the 
business-as-usual politics in Washington, D.C. That road has been 
tough, but change has been achieved. My efforts, along with the efforts 
of like-minded colleagues, changed the leadership of this House for the 
better. There has been a renewed work ethic and excitement to set forth 
an agenda for the American people that puts them first, not Big 
Government, not Big Business. There is truth in the saying: Do not grow 
weary in well doing.
  Madam Speaker, with positive incremental changes taking hold, the 
keystone to our success will be a change in leadership at 1600 
Pennsylvania Avenue. Our current administration has done everything it 
can to avoid working with Congress. Time and again, Republicans have 
sent legislation to the President's desk on behalf of the American 
people, only to have each one of them vetoed. With every veto, the 
President casts aside the will of the very people who elected us to 
serve, telling them, essentially: I know what is best for you. Or he 
rules with a pen and a phone.
  Every Member of Congress takes their work and the work of the 
American people seriously as Representatives and as a legislative body. 
If this

[[Page 4520]]

administration, in their remaining time in office, doesn't want to work 
with Congress on anything, then the Republicans in the House and the 
Senate must take action to address the issues facing the American 
people.
  Due to the President's policy of stonewalling Congress, the 
legislation that we have passed has no chance of gaining his signature. 
Compromise, once accepted as a means to accomplish the greater good, 
now seems to be a thing of the past. The executive branch, whether held 
by Democrats or Republicans, has grown accustomed to exercising 
unilateral power to reinterpret existing law and twist it to fit its 
own ideology.
  Again, I want to repeat. The executive branch, whether held by 
Republicans or Democrats, has used that power and twisted it to fit its 
own ideology.
  Congress has no answer to the authoritative rulemaking process used 
by government agencies today. Madam Speaker, we need to reestablish a 
check on those agencies that are willingly disrupting business across 
America.
  I am not talking about rules that were crafted with an understanding 
of the industry and a truly thoughtful process which included all 
stakeholders. I am talking about the rules, like the Clean Power Plan, 
endorsed by radical environmental groups with no reasonable knowledge 
of what affordable energy means to people who live paycheck to paycheck 
and follow an ideology of their own.
  To blunt these rules, Congress must have a tool that truly is a check 
on the executive, one that forces the executive and legislative branch 
to work things out together.
  One tool that scholars repeatedly pay lip service to is the power of 
the purse. We talk about it all the time, but we don't see it in 
action. While historically being an important tool to enforce the will 
of Congress, nowadays, a fight over spending devolves into a blame game 
over shutting down the government. It is a black eye to our system of 
government; it is a black eye to the notion of stability; and it is an 
insult to the American people and furthers the dysfunction of this 
great institution.
  The balance of power in our government is out of alignment, and it is 
up to us in Congress to reclaim what used to be ours--the legislative 
veto. The legislative veto used to be a potent check on the executive 
branch for the better part of the 20th century. However, a broad ruling 
by the United States Supreme Court in 1983, INS v. Chadha, nullified 
the legislative veto in over 280 statutes. This was a sweeping 
decision, one that both handed more authority to the executive branch 
while limiting Congress' ability to stand up to Federal bureaucracies.
  In his dissent, Justice Byron White, who was nominated to the Court 
by President Kennedy, correctly identified the fallout from the 
decision, and I quote: ``Without the legislative veto, Congress is 
faced with a Hobson's choice: either to refrain from delegating the 
necessary authority, leaving itself with a hopeless task of writing 
laws with the requisite specificity to cover endless special 
circumstances across the entire policy landscape or, in the 
alternative, to abdicate its lawmaking function to the executive branch 
and independent agencies. To choose the former leaves major national 
problems unresolved; to opt for the latter risks unaccountable 
policymaking by those not elected to fill that role.''
  As members of the legislative branch, we all must take this 
seriously. We may be in the middle an election year, but if we play 
party politics when it comes to the struggle between the executive and 
the legislative power, neither party wins, and the American people 
lose. What is at stake, and more important than party politics, is the 
survival of our very form of government, a constitutional Republic.
  This is the time to come together, not as Republicans or Democrats, 
but as Americans, to bring this power back.

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