Grijalva Amendment to Republican REINS Act Forces GOP to Either Acknowledge Harms of Deregulation or Hide Data From the Public

Washington, D.C. – Ranking Member Raúl M. Grijalva will offer an amendment to the sweeping House Republican deregulation bill known as the REINS Act later today that forces GOP lawmakers to either account for the health and environmental impacts of weakened federal standards or vote against providing the public with valuable information about the costs of their actions.

Formally, Grijalva’s amendment mandates that any agency promoting a rule offer a public accounting of the rule’s impacts on public health in low income and rural communities and of the rule’s greenhouse gas emissions impacts. It also requires congressional approval for any regulation that would increase carbon pollution by 25,000 metric tons or more or that would increase cancer, birth defects, kidney disease or cardiovascular or respiratory illness in low income or rural communities.

The language of the amendment is available online at http://bit.ly/2iUt3DL.

“If my Republican colleagues are so eager to rewrite the regulatory process, they should be willing to vote publicly to allow polluters to poison our air,” Grijalva said. “Doing their polluter friends a huge favor and hiding behind regulatory process when cancer rates go up is taking the coward’s way out. Our yardstick for whether a rule makes sense should not be whether Wall Street investors are happy with it. It should be its impact on the health and well-being of the American people.”

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Media Contact: Adam Sarvana            

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