(PresidentialDaily.org) – House Republicans are hyper-focused on reining in government spending as Democrats seem to feel as though there’s a never-ending supply of money.
Last week, the lower chamber of Congress passed a new bill that seeks to hold the White House accountable for all the actions it takes, especially those that the president can do on his own.
The new bill would make it so that the Biden administration would have to provide an estimate about how executive orders categorized as “major” that are signed by President Joe Biden would ultimately impact inflation.
The bill, dubbed the REIN IN Act – or Reduce Exacerbated Inflation Negatively Impacting the Nation – was overwhelmingly approved by a 272-148 margin. There were only four members of the GOP in the House that voted against it – Chip Roy from Texas, Matt Rosendale from Montana, Bob Good from Virginia and Andy Biggs from Arizona.
A total of 59 Democrats crossed party lines to support the bill as well.
Republicans in the House brought this bill to the floor for a vote only two weeks after the latest report from the Department of Labor that showed the consumer price index unexpectedly rose 0.5% in January of this year, to a point of 6.4% annually.
Annual inflation may now be on a decline from its height of 9.1% back in June, but it’s still sitting at rates that the country hasn’t seen in more than 40 years.
Elise Stefanik, who chairs the House Republican Conference, is the sponsor of the bill. During the floor debate on the bill last week, she said it was meant to ensure that the White House had to ensure there was “transparency” with everything it does
She explained:
“By passing the REIN IN Act, House Republicans will demand transparency for the American people by revealing how much Biden’s executive orders are costing hardworking families and the painful impact it has on inflation. This is about transparency for the American people.”
If the bill were to pass through the Senate and be signed by Biden – which might be a hard ask – then the chair of the Council of Economic Advisers as well as the director of the Office of Management and Budget would need to compile various reports on how “any major executive order” would affect inflation.
A “major executive order” is defined by the sponsors of the bill as actions that were estimated to have a gross budgetary effect of $1 billion or more on an annual basis. The production of the estimate would be required before any executive order could be implemented.
Other amendments that were introduced for the bill – and subsequently passed – lowered the dollar threshold to all actions that have a $1 million annual gross budgetary effect, and for the administration to be forced to take all inflation effects into account for costs of debt servicing as well.
Since so many Democrats in the House backed the bill, it’s possible that the Democrat-led Senate may take it up. Even if it passes through there, though, it would need to be signed by Biden himself, who the bill is targeting.
