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S. 522: Providing Accountability Through Transparency Act of 2021

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The text of the bill below is as of Jun 21, 2021 (Reported by Senate Committee).

Summary of this bill

For short and understandable summaries of congressional bills, there’s GovTrack Insider. But what about for federal agency regulations?

Context

The federal government creates a lot of new rules and regulations. In 2020, a record 134 economically significant federal rules were created, defined as having an economic effect above $100 million.

These rules are usually written in “legal-ese,” not easily comprehensible to the layperson. This problem dates back to our country’s founding, as the Thomas Jefferson character rapped in Broadway’s Hamilton: “This financial plan is an outrageous demand / And it’s too many damn pages for any man to understand.”

Whether the U.S. institutes too many of these …

II

Calendar No. 79

117th CONGRESS

1st Session

S. 522

[Report No. 117–25]

IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES

March 2 (legislative day, March 1), 2021

(for himself, Ms. Sinema, Mr. Risch, Mr. Johnson, and Mr. Peters) introduced the following bill; which was read twice and referred to the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs

June 21, 2021

Reported by , without amendment

A BILL

To require each agency, in providing notice of a rule making, to include a link to a 100-word plain language summary of the proposed rule.

1.

Short title

This Act may be cited as the Providing Accountability Through Transparency Act of 2021.

2.

Requirement to post a 100-word summary to regulations.gov

Section 553(b) of title 5, United States Code, is amended—

(1)

in paragraph (2), by striking and at the end;

(2)

in paragraph (3), by striking the period at the end and inserting ; and; and

(3)

by inserting after paragraph (3) the following:

(4)

the Internet address of a summary of not more than 100 words in length of the proposed rule, in plain language, that shall be posted on the Internet website under section 206(d) of the E-Government Act of 2002 (44 U.S.C. 3501 note) (commonly known as regulations.gov).

.

June 21, 2021

Reported without amendment