The Congressional Record is a unique source of public documentation. It started in 1873, documenting nearly all the major and minor policies being discussed and debated.
“THE MANDATES INFORMATION ACT” mentioning the U.S. Dept of Labor was published in the Senate section on pages S5429-S5430 on June 9, 1997.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
THE MANDATES INFORMATION ACT
Mr. ABRAHAM. Mr. President, I ask to have printed in the Record an editorial by C. Wayne Crews of the Competitive Enterprise Institute. The editorial, which appeared in the Journal of Commerce, explains how the Mandates Information Act will improve the quality of Congress's deliberation on proposed unfunded mandates on the private sector.
The editorial follows:
Passing the Budget Buck
(By Clyde Wayne Crews, Jr.)
Weary of the federal government's habit of enacting popular environmental and other reforms but imposing all their costs on state and localities, governors and local officials revolted in 1995.
They rightly charged that for every dollar spent on federal priorities, they lost the ability to control and allocate their own budgets. That outcry resulted in the 104th Congress's Unfunded Mandates Act.
The legislation didn't halt unfunded public-sector mandates but it did increase Congress's accountability by requiring both disclosure of costs of significant mandates and explicit votes on the intent to impose those costs.
There remains a gap in the quest for accountability and disclosure. Congress is still free to ignore costs when enacting legislation that will impose mandates on the private sector.
Recognizing that government-imposed costs can have profound economic consequences, Sen. Spencer Abraham, R-Mich., is leading a new campaign to force Congress to disclose and assume responsibility for private mandates through the same procedure that exists for public ones.
In an era of budget balancing, Sen. Abraham's campaign assumes new importance. Costs of off-budget mandates on the public now exceed $600 billion a year. That's more than one-third the size of the entire federal budget, greater than personal income taxes, and several times the annual deficit.
The danger is that, as the federal budget is cut to eliminate the deficit by 2002, pressure to shift the costs of favored government programs off-budget to the private sector will mount.
For example, advocates of a new federal job training program could propose funding it through a Department of Labor appropriation, or alternatively, through a new mandate that all Fortune 500 firms provide such training. The first appears on the budget, the second does not.
With the ``Mandates Information Act of 1997,'' Sen. Abraham and Rep. Gary Condit, D-Calif., hope to remedy today's absence of disclosure and regulatory bias. They hope to ensure that mandates imposing higher wages, increasing unemployment, or increasing consumer prices shall no longer slip through Congress unacknowledged.
Their proposal would work by extending certain provisions of the 104th Congress' popular Unfunded Mandates Act to remove the arbitrary distinction between public and private sector mandates.
The Mandates Information Act would allow a single Senator or House member to raise a point of order against any private sector mandate costing over $100 million annually. The point of order would halt further floor action until members vote specifically to waive it.
Making Congress explicitly vote on its intent to impose a burden in this fashion wouldn't necessarily stop any mandate. But it would allow constituents to determine where their representative stood on a particular mandate.
Cost estimates would be prepared by the Congressional Budget Office prior to floor consideration for any bill reported out of committee, and disclosed in a document, called a ``Consumer Worker, and Small Business Impact Statement.''
The statement would include mandate impact estimates on consumer prices and actual supply of goods and service in consumer markets; wages, benefits and employment opportunities; the hiring practices, expansion, and profitability of businesses with 100 or fewer employees.
Knowing such impacts is worthwhile. Sen. Abraham points out that mandates not only result in workers losing jobs, they can prevent job formation in the first place. Mandates mount as a small firm grows; for example, at 15 employees, mandatory compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act kicks in; at 25, the Health Maintenance Organization Act does; at 50, the Family and Medical Leave Act applies.
Sen. Abraham cites the case of Hasselbring-Clark, an office equipment supply firm in Lansing, Mich. Its treasurer Noelle Clark says, given the additional mandates that would otherwise apply, ``we have hired a few temps to stay under 49
(employees).''
Since the Abraham-Condit bill merely calls for disclosure, it should stand above criticism from advocates of government-regulation; if the majority believes it worthwhile to pass a mandate in the first place, enough votes to override the simply majority point of order ought to be there as well.
The point of order enforcement mechanism for high-dollar rules and the impact statement together could help make Congress far more answerable for excessive mandates. That could be the lasting innovation of the Mandates Information Act.
While most regulatory reforms attempt merely to require agencies to police themselves better through cost-benefit analysis, Sen. Abraham and Rep. Condit are bringing the focus back to the real source of excessive lawmaking: Congress.
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