McEachin Statement on His Amendment to H.R. 469 - Sunshine for Regulations and Regulatory Decrees and Settlements Act of 2017
WASHINGTON - Congressman A. Donald McEachin (VA-04) issued this statement following consideration of his amendment to H.R. 469, Sunshine for Regulations and Regulatory Decrees and Settlements Act of 2017.
“All Americans deserve clean air and clean water. My amendment sought to protect those rights by excepting consent decrees and settlement agreements that pertain to the maintenance or improvement of air and water quality from the onerous requirements H.R. 469 seeks to impose.
“Litigation empowers citizens to hold federal agencies accountable when they fail to take required actions by congressionally-mandated deadlines. In many of these cases, agencies’ failures are not in serious dispute — a missed deadline is a missed deadline. Litigants’ goal is simply to ensure that the law is followed, quickly and in full. In such cases, it is not unusual — and certainly not unreasonable — for lawsuits to conclude with consent decrees or settlement agreements. H.R 469 would introduce duplicative requirements and unnecessary barriers into the process by which these consent decrees and settlement agreements are reached. As a result, both tools would end up being used less often and less effectively. Across the board, that change would be a mistake — but it would be genuinely disastrous concerning pollution.
“Air and water quality are matters of public health. When they fail to meet certain levels, people get sick and potentially die. According to the World Health Organization, unhealthy environments kill more than 12 million people per year. In the United States, multiple studies have found that tens of thousands of deaths every year are attributable to air pollution alone. These figures, of course, do not begin to contemplate non-lethal effects on health and quality of life. We all know that justice delayed is justice denied — and that is especially true when human lives are at stake.
“When regulators fail to take mandated actions to maintain or improve air and water quality, that is an injustice. When they sincerely intend to take those actions but fail to do so in a timely way, that is also an injustice. If we make it harder for citizens to hold regulators accountable — if we take away the tools that empower Americans to make their voices heard, and hold agencies to account — we are compounding those injustices.
“This bill would stymie citizens’ efforts to ensure that our laws are faithfully executed — to protect our air and water, and therefore our health, in court. My amendment aimed to help fix that problem, and I am deeply disappointed that my colleagues in the majority failed to support it.”
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Congressman McEachin’s amendment was not adopted by a vote of 187-226. The amendment text is available here. You can watch Rep. McEachin’s amendment debate here and here.