Welcome to Overnight Regulation, your daily rundown of news from the federal agencies, Capitol Hill, the courts and beyond. It’s Wednesday night, the day before Comey testifies. We saw a preview of his dramatic written testimony earlier today, and it’s already set off some fireworks. Tomorrow should be entertaining. Check out TheHill.com to watch the coverage with insight from our reporters.
THE BIG STORY
President Trump’s Labor Department head is pushing back against criticism from his own party for implementing an Obama-era financial advisor rule.
Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta said Wednesday that he can’t just snap his fingers and undo a regulation.
Republicans on a House Appropriation subcommittee had been pressing him on why he wasn’t simply getting rid of the rule, which businesses have said will impede Americans’ ability to access financial advice.
“No one in government should be able to snap their fingers and undo laws or undo rules because that’s not a respect for a fundamental democracy,” Acosta said.
The Trump administration was able to initially delay the rule from taking effect on April 10. But Acosta said his office could find no legal justification for delaying the rule further, and so it will be implemented starting June 9.
Acosta explained that Administrative Procedures Act, which requires a new rule to change an old rule, prevents him from simply squashing it. There’s a proper notice-and-comment period that the agency needs to use, and it’s a lengthy process, even if he disagrees with the rule.
Lydia Wheeler from The Hill’s regulations team has the story here.
ON TAP FOR THURSDAY
There’s a big vote on the docket. The House will vote on the Financial CHOICE Act, Financial Services Chairman Jeb Hensarling’s (R-Texas) sweeping bill to roll back much of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act.
The House Committee on Science, Space and Technology at 1:30 p.m. will mark up the “American Space Commerce Free Enterprise Act of 2017” which is intended to cut regulations on commercial space businesses.
Agency chiefs are also heading to Capitol Hill for hearings on their fiscal 2018 budget requests.
Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price pulls double duty, testifying at the Senate Finance Committee at 9:45 a.m., and at 1 p.m. in the House Ways and Means Committee.
Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke will testify in front of the House Appropriations interior subcommittee at 9:30 a.m.
At 10am, the House Agriculture Committee holds a hearing on the Commodity Futures Trading Commission budget with Acting Chairman J. Christopher Giancarlo.
Department of Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson will testify before the House Appropriation transportation, housing and urban development subcommittee at 10:30 a.m.
Robert Lightfoot, Jr. NASA’s acting administrator, will testify at 10:00 a.m. in the House Science, Space and Technology space subcommittee
In addition, a House Energy and Commerce oversight subcommittee will hold a hearing on how HHS regulates healthcare cybersecurity.
REG ROUNDUP
Nominations: President Trump’s “two-for-one” rule can actually work, according to his nominee for “regulations czar.”
In her confirmation hearing, Neomi Rao said Trump’s order requiring agencies to eliminate two rules for every new rule proposed is “an important step for considering how to reduce the overall regulatory burden.”
Rao is under consideration to lead the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, where she would oversee the review of all significant proposed and final rules.
The “two-for-one” Executive Order applies only to “significant” regulations with an economic impact exceeding $100 million or meeting other specified criteria.
Rao said the order is “an important step for considering how to reduce the overall regulatory burden.”
Lydia Wheeler has more here.
Labor: The Labor Department on Wednesday rescinded Obama-era guidance that defined a joint-employer.
As The Hill’s Lydia Wheeler reports, the informal guidance was similar to a 2015 National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) ruling now being challenged in court, but impacted different laws.
NLRB considers a company jointly liable for its contractors’ compliance with the National Labor Relations Act, which gives employees the right to unionize, if they have “indirect” control over the terms and conditions of employment or have the “reserved authority to do so.”
The Obama administration considered a company jointly liable for complying with the Fair Labor Standards Act — the primary federal law governing minimum wages and overtime pay — and the Migrant and Seasonal Agricultural Worker Protection Act when two or more employers jointly employed an employee.
Acosta’s decision to rescind that guidance was welcomed by business groups, who have long argued that the NLRB and the Obama administration created a confusing patchwork of rules and regulations that made it impossible for companies to know whether they should be following the labor board’s decision or the administration’s interpretation.
Read Lydia’s full story here
Healthcare: Legislation that would renew the Food and Drug Administration’s authority to collect user fees from regulated industries advanced through the House Energy and Commerce Committee Wednesday by a 54-0 vote.
The fees from the respective regulated industries — drugs, medical devices, generic drugs, and biosimilars — help fund FDA operations. In return for the fees, FDA agrees to meet certain performance goals. User fees comprise about $2 billion of the agency’s $5 billion budget. The agency’s authority for collecting user fees expires at the end of September, but if Congress doesn’t renew it by August, FDA would have to start issuing layoff notices to employees.
It was a rare moment of bipartisanship in the middle of a contentious effort to repeal ObamaCare. Republicans and Democrats on the committee also debated numerous amendments to deal with the price of prescription drugs, but it didn’t get in the way of passing a bipartisan bill through committee.
Environment: The Trump administration is delaying implementation for at least a year of a major ozone air pollution rule from the Obama administration. Under the new schedule, the EPA will make final decisions on which areas are out of compliance with the ozone rule by October 2018.
EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt told governors of the delay in letters sent late Tuesday. But he didn’t specify if other deadlines in the rule — including when states must submit plans to reduce ozone levels in areas that need reductions — would also be delayed.
Pruitt said the delay was because of the administrative burden and increased costs the rule puts on businesses, but he did not discuss the public health benefits that led former President Obama to make the rule in the first place.
The Hill’s Timothy Cama has the full story here
Environment: In a related story, another rule delayed by the EPA is being questioned by a federal court.
Tim writes that the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit is giving the EPA until June 15 to respond to a lawsuit filed Monday by environmental groups, who say the agency’s action halting a methane pollution rule was illegal.
The Obama administration last year published a final rule that set the standards that oil and natural gas drillers must follow to monitor and reduce emissions of methane from drilling. The EPA paused the rule for 90 days while it considers whether to initiate a full regulatory process to repeal it.
Green groups including the Sierra Club filed suit, saying the EPA doesn’t have the authority to halt the regulation.
Read more from Timothy Cama here.
WE’LL ALWAYS HAVE PARIS: Remember the Paris Accords? It’s been nearly a week since President Trump said the U.S. is leaving the Paris climate accord, and there’s still more fallout.
Former President Barack Obama weighed in again on the decision, saying late Tuesday he thought the climate pact could still be saved. North Korea, meanwhile, ripped Trump for pulling out. And in the U.S., supporters of the pact are pushing ahead to honor its terms. The mayor of Pittsburgh teamed up with the mayor of Paris for a climate op-ed. And over in the Pacific, Hawaii is aligning its laws with the climate pact.
ALSO IN THE NEWS
CBO says Dodd-Frank rollback would shave $33.6B from deficit (Financial Times)
Commerce to release report on manufacturing regs next week (CNBC)
Walden ties rural broadband to net neutrality fight (Morning Consult)
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