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Floor Speech

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Mr. SCHMITT. Mr. President, I rise to speak about the grave threat that the administrative state poses to our country and what we can do to stop it.

I want to thank the Senator from Oklahoma for sort of leading the effort here today to talk about this and to air this out on the Senate floor. Quite frankly, one of my big surprises, I think, in my first 2 years here in the U.S. Senate, is how little we actually talk about this and how little time we have spent addressing this.

So many of the conversations that happen inside the beltway here are so detached from the conversations that I have back home in Missouri. Quite frankly, the people whom I talk to who work hard every day can't believe the waste that happens here. They can't believe we spend millions of dollars on drag shows and DEI trainings in countries halfway around the world. If they knew more about it, my guess is it would be an even bigger topic of conversation; there would be more outrage. I think that is part of what the table setting is going to be over the next 6 months or so here, which is to identify these things, talk about them, highlight them, and do something about it.

Last year, when I gave my inaugural speech on the Senate floor, I talked about how the administrative state was one of the biggest threats to our to Republic. Nameless, faceless bureaucrats who are accountable to nobody, promulgate rules and regulations that deeply impact everyday Americans every day.

The EPA can promulgate a rule that devastates farmers. A farm that has been in a family for generations can be under water just like that, and they don't even know whom to talk to about it.

Ranchers are impacted.

None of these folks are ultimately ever held accountable. You don't know their name. Their title is ambiguous, and they are in an Agency you have never heard of.

The Loper Bright case that the Supreme Court just recently heard dealt a significant blow to the power of the administrative state. It involved NOAA, which was attempting to force fishermen in that case to pay out of their own pocket for Federal observers on their own boats. There are many, many more examples than just this particular case, but this one made it to the Supreme Court. They had an impactful decision. Real Americans--real Americans--have been impacted by this bloated bureaucratic mess that has developed over the decades.

While the administrative state is still a great threat to our country, the good news is that President Trump will soon occupy the White House. DOGE will soon get to work, and we can finally have some real momentum to dismantle the administrative state once and for all, returning the power back to the people.

You see, the difference is, when the Senator from Oklahoma gets elected or I get elected, the folks get a say. They can send us back or they can send us home. If you want to ban gas stoves, we should have to vote on that. My guess is, it would receive very few votes. But if you have got a bureaucrat that is not even in an office anymore--because only 6 percent of them are actually in the office--making these kinds of decisions, you lose every sense of accountability, and our representative form of government is ultimately undermined.

To ensure that President Trump and DOGE hit the ground running, yesterday, I introduced two bills that are a critical one-two punch in dismantling the administrative state.

The first bill is called the ERASER Act, which prohibits any Agency from issuing a rule unless the same Agency has repealed at least three rules. Additionally, the bill prohibits an Agency from issuing a major rule unless the Agency has repealed three or more rules and the cost of the new major rule is less than or equal to the cost of the rule that is being repealed.

This would make Agencies think twice before promulgating new regulations, and because Agencies are addicted to the power that comes from regulating Americans, it could have the added benefit of stripping many regulations from the books altogether and freeing Americans from the bonds of overregulation.

The second bill is called the Separation of Powers Restoration Act, which builds on the Supreme Court's ruling in the Loper Bright case and the tearing down of the Chevron deference that we have lived with for decades. This bill would enact a stricter standard of review. No longer can Agencies expect the courts to just side with their interpretation of the statute, like they could when the Chevron deference was in place.

This bill would institute a de novo standard of review. Under a de novo standard of review, courts will weigh the merits of the arguments without deference--without deference standards--to either side, placing American citizens and businesses, either caught on the wrong side of regulatory enforcement action or challenging the validity in the first place, on equal footing in a court with that Agency. This is a critical effort, which will strip power away from the unelected bureaucrats and put the power back in the hands of Americans.

I look forward to working hand in hand with the Trump administration, Elon Musk, Vivek Ramaswamy, and my colleagues in the DOGE Caucus to finally reform and dismantle the administrative state, shrink the size of the Federal Government, reinstitute fiscal sanity here in Washington, and stop these Agencies from burdening American citizens with onerous regulatory schemes.

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