House Passes Bill to Rein In SEC Rules, ‘Drain the Swamp’

By Melanie Waddell

January 12, 2017 at 01:53 PM

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The U.S. House has passed the SEC Regulatory Accountability Act, H.R. 78, which would require the agency to put its rules through a more rigorous cost-benefit analysis.

The bill, sponsored by Rep. Ann Wagner, R-Missouri, passed by a 243-184 vote on Thursday. It also stipulates that the SEC identify the issue, provide an appropriate cost-benefit analysis to justify the need for the regulation, and assess any available alternatives to rulemaking.

In addition, the agency would be prohibited from issuing a rule when it cannot make "a reasoned determination that the benefits of the intended regulation justify the costs of the regulation," according to Wagner.

The commission also must review existing regulations every five years in order to identify any outdated, ineffective, or excessively burdensome regulations, and then is required to modify, streamline or repeal such rules.

Wagner said in a statement after the bill passed that this "common-sense legislation will help drain the swamp that Washington bureaucrats have built over the past eight years, while better protecting American families from top-down, one-size-fits-all regulations that cost nearly $15,000 for every household."

The House is set to vote soon on the Regulatory Accountability Act, which would revamp the process by which Federal agencies analyze and formulate new regulations.

U.S. Chamber of Commerce President & CEO Thomas Donohue said Wednesday at the group's 2017 State of American Business event in Washington, that "regulatory relief and regulatory reform" is needed as "there is no justification for the regulatory overkill we have seen over the last eight years."

He argued that "much of the explosive regulatory growth we have seen can be traced to two mammoth laws that the chamber originally opposed and predicted would not work—Obamacare and Dodd-Frank."

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