WASHINGTON - November 3 - The House Judiciary Committee today approved a bill that would institute a bureaucratic system that would overturn laws designed to protect the public and make it next to impossible to set congressionally mandated safety, health or environmental standards.

The following is a statement from Scott Slesinger, legislative director at the Natural Resources Defense Council, on H.R. 3010, the Regulatory Accountability Act:

“This bill is a cynical attempt to disguise as technical changes to the regulatory process sweeping legislation that would make it nearly impossible to issue safeguards under key environmental laws.

“There’s no point in having strong laws on the books if they can’t be carried out.  This bill changes the basis for setting health-based standards designed to protect the public. Instead, it adds |numerous unnecessary bureaucratic steps to the process.”

This Tea Party-backed bill is one of several moving through Congress designed to rollback consumer and environmental protections in order to appease big business interests.

Recently, the House moved to approve the even more radical REINS - or Regulations From the Executive in Need of Scrutiny - Act. The Senate is also about to take up consideration of REINS.

REINS would undo the system for protecting the public that has been in place for more than 100 years, and would allow a single chamber of Congress to block any protection – even those required by laws that would remain on the books. 

For more details on RAA, please see NRDC senior attorney Jon Devine’s blog here.

For more details on the REINS Act and the House GOP’s ongoing attempts to undermine health and environmental protections, please see NRDC president Frances Beinecke’s blog here.