- 5 months ago
During a Senate Homeland Security Committee hearing in July, Sen. James Lankford (R-OK) asked Senior Fellow at the Bipartisan Policy Center and Former Congresswoman Allyson Schwartz, Distinguished Professor of Practice at the Regulatory Studies Center at George Washington University Susan Dudley, and Assistant Professor of Law at the Columbus School of Law at Catholic University Chad Squitieri about words and phrases that Congress members should avoid.
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00:00Thank you all for allowing me to be able to pause, run, vote, and then to be able to come back.
00:03Again, I appreciate the work on this.
00:06Let me start with some general comments.
00:08A couple things have been stated about things that Congress shouldn't say.
00:12The word appropriate has already come up once on it.
00:15I'll add to the word reasonable into it as well.
00:18But my question for you is, let's go ahead and write a vocabulary right now.
00:21What are the words that are most likely words or phrases that Congress is going to have to go back and look at again and say,
00:30we need to be careful when we actually write these words because it becomes so broad, but they're common.
00:35So I've raised two appropriate, reasonable.
00:38What else would you add to our vocabulary list?
00:41Any of the three of you?
00:42Jump ball.
00:42I might say science-based because it's too vague.
00:47Even something like protective of public health.
00:50We all want things to be protective of public health, but it's not as you're, you know.
00:54So recognizing that there are other factors beyond public health or that factor into that.
01:03Right.
01:04It becomes a pretty broad statement to say this is for the public health.
01:07Yeah.
01:07Okay.
01:08What else?
01:10Senator, another category is when a statute gives express defining authority to an agency.
01:18So it's common, for example, a statute might say, you know, Secretary so-and-so might do, must do X as defined by him.
01:28And that is perhaps more obvious that it's giving discretion to the agency.
01:34But it's very, it's kind of unique because it's giving legal rulemaking authority to the secretary in that context.
01:46Not just like policy or fact basis, giving like the authorities.
01:48You can essentially kind of make a small law.
01:51And Loper Bright has a line in a very important part of the opinion saying that's still permitted.
01:57Some of the justices, I think, were prepared to say that wouldn't be permitted as a constitutional matter.
02:02Right.
02:02But it would still be permitted.
02:04So it's just something, another category to be aware of.
02:06Mr. Scroteri, you'd mentioned the non-delegation doctrine and that the court has not taken that up to be able to address that for a very long time on it.
02:14And that's one of those issues when it's basically giving authority to an agency to go create things that, as you stated, as defined by whoever this may be, that's going to make the decision.
02:23They are suddenly the lawmaker at that point.
02:25At what point would you recommend that Congress engage in saying, why are we delegating power away?
02:31Or at what point does the court step in and say, that's not a power you can give away.
02:35That's Article 1 authority.
02:36You can't give that to Article 2.
02:38Right.
02:38So I'll say that's spot on.
02:41And Loper Bright, in that part of the opinion, the court says basically that the court's job there is to just police the outer limits of that kind of delegation.
02:50And what the court's referring to is like the non-delegation doctrine expressly.
02:54The court had an opportunity this last term to kind of reinvigorate the non-delegation doctrine.
02:59And they more or less passed on it.
03:01I wish they hadn't.
03:02But I'm not on the Supreme Court.
03:04But that doesn't mean that Congress can't reinvigorate the non-delegation doctrine itself.
03:10It just means that the court is not going to hold Congress's feet to the fire.
03:15Okay.
03:16That's helpful.
03:17Representative Schwartz, do you have more vocabulary you want to add to our list?
03:20Well, I was going to answer it this way.
03:22I think the thing that has to be worked out is if the court really thinks it's not specific enough or the agency's overstepped,
03:31the issue for me is who makes the decision then?
03:34Do they actually refer it back to Congress or are they referring it back into are they going to make a decision?
03:40And clearly they should be either referring it back to an agency or they should refer it back to Congress.
03:46The concern I have is that the court oversteps its mouth and starts to make the decision for us.
03:52And I think that's something Congress has to be deeply concerned about because clearly it's Congress's role to make the law.
03:59Theirs is to make sure it's constitutional, but that's not to make policy.
04:03Right.
04:03And so I think that's one of the ways to think about delegation and how much authority you can give them.
04:09If you're making clear about the policy, but the details of that policy, they can look at different choices.
04:17You know, I think that that might help to be a little clearer about it.
04:21How you actually do that depends on, you know, what the issues are and to be as specific as you can in, again,
04:28the authority you're giving and the direction you're giving to the agencies.
04:31But then just make sure at the end of the day it's not the court who's taking the job of Congress.
04:38There's been some conversation as well about when a piece of legislation, statute, is silent on an issue.
04:46Who gets to be able to speak into it?
04:48And I've long been a proponent that nothing doesn't mean something.
04:51Nothing means nothing.
04:53And there has been this argument that if it's silent that the agency may need to get to fill that in.
04:58And the court seems to be pushing back and saying no silence means silence, that you don't have the authority to be able to do that.
05:04I did one other thing.
05:05I think that's interesting and maybe it's true.
05:08But I also think that that's where the expertise within Congress and the House and the Senate comes into bear is that you,
05:13I know there was something in that got dropped out of the reconciliation package that gave the secretary the right to,
05:21said to just to deal some, something that had to do with taxation.
05:24And some observers did call them on and say, whoa, wait a minute, you can't just say they, I think it was an international work.
05:32But it got pulled and dropped because someone said, that's ridiculous.
05:36You can't completely turn over this whole package of taxation to the secretary of commerce.
05:43So I think that is, that's another way for Congress to be able to please itself in a careful review by ledge counsel to say,
05:51where have we been too vague and where actually have we given enough direction to make it clear enough for the agencies to make the choice in the directions we want.
06:02Right. Professor Dudley, both of you have actually mentioned an OIRA-like entity within Congress to be able to look at legislation as it's going to the floor,
06:13to be able to examine it and to say, is this language tight?
06:17Representative Schwartz, you know full well Congress doesn't have a body that's like that to be able to check it.
06:22We're self-checking it among our staff.
06:24There is no process to be able to review as OIRA has the ability to be able to review regulations as they're going out the door.
06:31How do you see that that would function?
06:34And it's an interesting proposal to be able to make and to be able to offer.
06:41Yeah, and this was also a recommendation that was raised at a National Academy of Sciences workshop that I was involved in looking at the effect of loporbrite on agencies,
06:51especially health and safety agencies, and one of the recommendations that came out of that was an OIRA-like office, a Congressional Regulatory Office.
06:59So I think it could do both things.
07:01I don't think it would, it wouldn't have to be huge.
07:05So OIRA is about 50 people.
07:07I don't think it would have to be that big because it wouldn't be doing the same number of transactions.
07:11But still people with that expertise like the CBO that provides you that counterpart to OMB.
07:19So it would be able to do both the support that the BPC report talks about that Congress needs for drafting legislation, reauthorizing,
07:28but also help you review agencies' regulations under the Congressional Review Act,
07:33or also their retrospective evaluations to see what the impacts of the regulations are.
07:38Also, can I say that I really liked your last question, and I would love a chance to think more about your vocabulary and come back to you more on that.
07:45I would be glad to be able to have any insight you have on that.
07:48You have a busy schedule as well, and so if you have any insight on it,
07:51it's one of the things that my team and I, we've talked about to say,
07:54how do we help absent an OIRA-like entity to be able to help our counterparts to say,
07:59what are the words we should watch for?
08:01To know that this gives away a tremendous amount of authority to someone else that's not Article I,
08:07to be able to make decisions that look a lot like Article I, that the court is now saying,
08:12hey, that's not really something that is clear, that creates ambiguity, basically.
08:17We shouldn't be writing something now, especially now, that we know creates ambiguity,
08:22when we know already the court is saying if it's ambiguous, it's got to get back to Congress.
08:26What I've often said is if you take a group of letters from a Scrabble game and just throw them on the table,
08:33you shouldn't be able to make of it whatever you want as an agency.
08:36You should say that says nothing, or there's no way to tell what that says,
08:40so Congress has to go back and do its job to actually say what they mean,
08:45so at the ages you're able to carry out the law in the statute.
08:49Go ahead, Professor.
08:50Senator, if I could add to that, I would say even when Congress does use words like appropriate or reasonable,
08:56that's not something that Congress should totally avoid.
08:59It's just to be very conscious of using it.
09:02And when Congress does use those terms, I would recommend using what I kind of refer to as like speed bumps,
09:08saying the agency, you must do an appropriate measure of blah, blah, blah.
09:13And when you do that, consider the effect on American industry, consider the effect on American worker,
09:18consider the effect on this endangered species, whatever the policy is.
09:22And that will cause Congress or cause the agency to slow down and kind of show its math
09:28and exercise policy in the way that maybe Congress would have if Congress was there overlooking the agency's shoulder.
09:36So it's more Congress, of course, can't know what's 20 years in the future,
09:41but they might know we're always going to care about the American worker,
09:44so let's make sure that the agency does an analysis of that going forward.
09:50So those might be a way to, even when you are using a word like reasonable, to kind of cabin the discretion.
09:56Okay, that's fair.
09:57Do you mind if I jump in on that too?
10:00Courts are increasingly interpreting language like that to require tradeoffs of benefits and costs.
10:07Cass Sunstein has referred to it as the cost-benefit state.
10:09And if that's the case, then I think that's right.
10:14Those are the kinds of things, and Congress could,
10:16and again, this is legislation you've introduced, bipartisan bills,
10:19that does require agencies to systematically lay out the expected impacts,
10:27the benefits, the costs, the distributional impacts, the unintended consequences.
10:31So if that could be incorporated, if it could be interpreted that that's what reasonable and appropriate means,
10:40Justice Scalia's, you know, interpretation, it can't be reasonable not to consider the costs,
10:45I think that could make that vocabulary allowed if Congress reinforces the court's interpretation,
10:52that that requires a balancing.
10:54Okay, that's helpful.
10:56Professor Daly, you had mentioned about doing Congress actually engaging in the comment period more,
11:03and that when that notice and comment comes out, that we actually comment on it as members of Congress as well,
11:09and to say this was the intent of this.
11:10I was the author, or I was a part of that committee.
11:13This was the conversation.
11:14Make sure it follows through this.
11:16That's not something that's common at this point to be able to engage with an agency at that level in a more formal process.
11:22I think that's a very interesting idea.
11:25That is something that we could actually put on the record.
11:28That is something courts have looked at occasionally,
11:30to go back and look at the debate on the floor or statements that were put in for the record,
11:34to be able to say when they're interpreting a law, sometimes they will go back to that.
11:38But it's not often that we do that with an agency after that.
11:42That was actually Congressman Schwartz's excellent point, I think.
11:46That's fine.
11:47It was.
11:47But I was also going to say that I think we, I guess one of the things I would,
11:52I think all this has to sort of, is a good, all these are good ideas.
11:55I do think we want to make sure that it isn't so cumbersome for Congress that you actually can't pass any laws.
12:01So I think that you need to give yourself some leeway in this,
12:05that the court has to be more prescriptive, more directed, clearer in intent, clearer in language.
12:10I think all of that's a good idea.
12:12But then you also don't want to tie your hands so much that you, you can't actually say,
12:16look, this is difficult for us to figure out.
12:19We want to do it as, you've been through this a little bit in your, you know, negotiations.
12:24And then you get stopped over some details that actually maybe you didn't have to give that many details.
12:30But, and the other is that things change over time.
12:32So you do want to be able to give the agencies some leeway to, because by the time they do the regulations,
12:40and by the time it's implemented, you're talking about a year later, typically.
12:44So who knows what happens with artificial intelligence and, you know, who knows what's going to happen in the world, you know,
12:51or whether there's, there are other crises that intervene.
12:54So you, you want some ability to have some leeway for, for your, both around legislating as well as for the agencies.
13:02If Congress was reauthorizing agencies, this would be very different on a regular time period.
13:07But currently we're not.
13:08We're not so good at what you're supposed to do now.
13:10So maybe it would be useful to actually just keep that in mind as you go forward.
13:14Yeah, that's the challenge that we have is if we knew three years from now we were going to reauthorize this,
13:19then we would have that moment to be able to come back and look at it again.
13:22But currently that's not happening.
13:23That would be a simpler way to go forward is to just say we're going to do it.
13:27And here's how we're going to do it.
13:28And a commitment to do that as close as you can to what else is going on and getting in the way of that.
13:33So there, there has been some conversation with the courts and there's still some ambiguity in this as far as going back and reviewing regulations.
13:40And with the courts are going to review this and send it back in and whether it's a de novo review,
13:44whether this is going to be a Skidmore review, that's looking more like the agency's give me your best counsel,
13:49what are you going to do with this?
13:50Do you all have thoughts or recommendations on how that should be handled or could be handled better?
13:54So as a formal matter now, in our recent opinion, this last term, the court referred to the review as de novo review.
14:04And that, that was, that was a debate before that case came down.
14:10The court kind of just passionately said de novo review, like C, Loper Bright.
14:13But at the same time, Loper Bright itself kind of goes out of its way to permit Skidmore respect.
14:21I'm not really sure we can call it deference now, but some sort of Skidmore respect.
14:25So I think courts will be allowed to continue to use Skidmore as long as they don't cross that line of giving the interpretive authority to the agency.
14:36And kind of a hypothetical that I might use to think about it is, for example, like a senator speaking to a staff member.
14:44A senator might think, okay, a particular staff member, I know they have an expertise on this topic.
14:49They wrote a very persuasive memo.
14:51It looks like there's a lot of good citations and authority here.
14:54But at the end of the day, like as the senator, you are not giving the decision-making authority to the staff member,
14:59but you are giving an appropriate level of respect depending on the circumstances.
15:03So I think the situation is similar between a court and an agency.
15:07A court might say, look, I'm going to be the one that interprets the law, but you do have expertise in this.
15:13You are statutorily required to do X, Y, Z.
15:16And so when you kind of walk into the room, into the courtroom, I am inclined to listen to you.
15:22It doesn't mean I'm deferring to you.
15:24That's not allowed after Loper Bright.
15:26But you are kind of inclined to give respect.
15:28Okay.
15:29Fair enough.
15:31So there's an interesting question out there as well that's a post-Loper Bright conversation of all of the decisions that were made based on Chevron.
15:41The court said we're grandfathering all of them in.
15:43All of them stay.
15:44Now, the question that hangs out there is, fast forward five years, six years from now, situations change.
15:50An administration comes and re-promulgates that rule.
15:53It goes to the Administrative Procedures Act, handles step-by-step to be able to re-promulgate that particular rule.
16:02Should I make the assumption?
16:03It could not go back to what it was before because the previous version of it was based on Chevron decision.
16:10That's not allowed anymore to go back.
16:12It sits with a Chevron decision, but if it changes, it can't go back to that.
16:17I don't think I'm overstretching this, but I'm trying to be able to kind of stretch the boundaries of our thinking on this to try to figure out how those regulations will be handled in the future.
16:27Now, that may be up to a court to be able to make a decision, but I'm literally throwing a hypothetical.
16:31But there are decisions that were made, even in 2021, on issues that were based on Chevron.
16:38They sit there, done.
16:39They're going to be unchanged, I assume, unless they're re-promulgated, but they could never return back to the previous.
16:44Does that make sense?
16:45It does, Senator, because you're touching on a part of Loper Bright that is not, as a doctrinal matter, very persuasive, I guess.
17:03The court, I think, in that part of the opinion gave a very practical answer and essentially said,
17:09we are inclined to let sleeping dogs lie.
17:12Don't go back and upset a bunch of regulations.
17:15As a pure doctrinal matter, smart lawyers will be able to find ways to challenge those old cases that relied on Chevron,
17:24because you could still respect an opinion that relied on Chevron that just said the agency gave a reasonable answer.
17:32And then you come and say, okay, Your Honor, you can still respect that precedent saying your last ruling was reasonable,
17:38but here's a more reasonable, a.k.a. the best one.
17:40And so you can overrule that regulation.
17:43So as a doctrinal matter, I think those old regulations can certainly still be challenged.
17:48If it relied on Chevron in the past, that's a good place to look to challenge old regulations.
17:53But the court kind of signaled in more practical terms, look, we're probably not going to look too favorably on this.
17:59I'm doing it, right.
18:00Exactly.
18:01Yeah.
18:01Any other thoughts on that?
18:04I know it's a purely hypothetical situation.
18:05We've not faced that before, but just in our consideration of the what ifs of this,
18:10it is one of the things that kind of hangs out there on that.
18:14As I try to be able to walk through this, some of your testimony mentioned adding legislative counsel.
18:22That is a, I'm trying to figure out if whoever made that recommendation,
18:25if you're recommending that similar to this OIRA type format of a separate entity,
18:30or if it's more of a recommendation that each office add somebody in,
18:33that they're just checking this as it comes through.
18:36That was in the, that is in the bipartisan policy center paper.
18:40So there's more detail about all this and why we think so.
18:43But there was suggestion actually,
18:45maybe it's that legislative counsel helps write the law, right?
18:49We, you know, you come up with an idea and then you go to led counsel and they draft it,
18:53do some drafting and then you tweak it.
18:55At least that's how it works in the house.
18:56Maybe you don't have such a thing in the Senate, but it is the opportunity then is,
19:01did that really say what you wanted it to say?
19:03There's like, you know, there's back and forth on it.
19:05But we, we, the recommendation was to actually enhance that body,
19:10not to create a new one necessarily,
19:13to just make sure they have the expertise given this decision.
19:16And, and again, I think has been said by others is that we,
19:21we don't have to go so overboard on this.
19:23You know, I think that's the thing.
19:24You want to be respectful, of course,
19:25because this is now what the Supreme Court decided.
19:29But I also think you need to respect the prerogative of Congress
19:33to actually say what it wants to say
19:34and be able to write legislation once it's right.
19:37So again, we think that ledge house counsels adding to their expertise
19:41could be helpful in that regard.
19:42They're used to advising members about how to write legislation.
19:46And that is a way to go to enhance that,
19:49the expertise and capacity of that counsel,
19:53because they get pretty backed up.
19:55And the House Appropriations Committee has already added dollars
19:58to invest more in ledge counsel.
20:01I don't know if that's the reason for it, but is this decision,
20:04but it certainly could help in this regard.
20:07So we're back to giving to ledge counsel
20:09or having ledge counsel advise both directions.
20:12the vocabulary.
20:14Here's what we're going to use.
20:14Here's what we're not going to use.
20:15Here's how to prove out clarity.
20:17But to also have somebody that's there that they're doing a final review
20:20to be able to determine,
20:22are we making this too ambiguous?
20:23And again, they're offering counsel, you know,
20:25but we actually also had some discussion
20:26when we were working on this working group
20:28about should we come up with some different language?
20:30And we struggled with it as well as to
20:32what is better language?
20:34Obviously, we know that reasonable or appropriate
20:36leads a lot to interpretation,
20:39but that doesn't mean you can't still say that
20:42if there are parameters around that
20:43as to what you expect them to be doing, you know.
20:47But I think we've all talked about the idea
20:49that they can be using more data and more analysis
20:51and when they do it.
20:52I mean, we try to on some level
20:54as members of Congress too
20:55to really find out what the economic impact is,
20:59you know, and what the cost is,
21:02what the impact is going to be on our constituents.
21:04That becomes part of the conversation
21:07that happens in crafting the laws.
21:09So the question is,
21:10are we doing a good enough job of that
21:12to actually be able to be directed,
21:14directive in the authority granted
21:17to the agencies to implement,
21:20to write the law,
21:20and to oversee the implementation of that law?
21:24That's ultimately up to the Congress to decide.
21:27It is.
21:27Several of you mentioned that you've noticed
21:29that agencies are slowing down in the process
21:32and thinking this through in a different way.
21:35I'd be interested to know
21:36if you've seen a specific example
21:37of where agencies,
21:39where you perceive agencies at least,
21:41are paying more attention to this
21:43to say we've got to stick closer
21:44to the statutory language.
21:46We've got to be able to try to determine intent more
21:48rather than try to find the,
21:51if I can use the major question statement,
21:53I've defined the elephant in the mouse hole
21:54type effect here
21:57to try to draw a little closer in.
21:59If anyone has seen a practical example
22:01of that at this point
22:01or maybe heard of one.
22:04I haven't myself,
22:06but that Walker article that I mentioned,
22:08he did survey agencies a few years ago
22:10and found that they said they already,
22:13they saw the writing on the wall
22:14and were already trying to justify
22:18their interpretations as being the best
22:22rather than assuming they would get deference.
22:25Okay.
22:26Any comment on that?
22:27I would tell you from a congressional side of things,
22:30I have for years noted that members of Congress
22:34will allow the agency to be able to do hard things
22:37if it looks hard.
22:39And to say, this looks controversial,
22:41this is going to cause a lot of issues,
22:42we'll go figure out if the administration
22:44can figure out a way to do this.
22:46And administrations over the last 20 plus years
22:48have said, yeah, we'll figure out a way to do it.
22:50It needs to be done.
22:51So we'll find some ambiguous part of the law.
22:53We'll find some area where there's silence.
22:55We'll find some way to be able to do it
22:57because Congress doesn't want to make the hard call
22:59to be able to do it.
23:01The major questions doctrine
23:03and this decision on Loper Bright
23:06seem to be the Supreme Court saying to Congress,
23:09suck it up and do your job.
23:10You were sent there to do hard things.
23:12Go do hard things.
23:14Don't ask someone else to go do the hard thing
23:16that's not actually in statute.
23:17So for me, this is a pretty clear clarion call
23:22to Congress to go back, do more work,
23:26pass more legislation.
23:27We've lost our muscle memory of passing legislation.
23:31We've increased our muscle memory of passing the buck.
23:34And we've got to be able to figure out
23:36how to be able to take that back at this point.
23:38So I really don't blame the executive branch
23:41for trying to be able to stretch this.
23:43I really do blame my own peers and myself
23:46for not finding enough ways to be able to lock it down
23:49and to say, no, we have to keep negotiating
23:51until we solve this.
23:53That's why we're here,
23:55is to make sure everyone's heard,
23:57everything is negotiated out,
23:58everyone had their voice,
24:00and we make a decision.
24:01Rather than this is hard, somebody else do it.
24:04So we'll figure that out.
24:05By the way, I'm not interested in commentary on that
24:07because you know I'm right,
24:08but you don't have to say it.
24:09So that's my biggest challenge on this.
24:12I do want to wrap this up
24:13and respect everyone's time,
24:15but I want to open this up
24:16for any final comment that you may have.
24:20Professor Secretary.
24:21I like the way you just made that last point, Senator,
24:25and it reminds me,
24:26there's a law professor, Gary Lawson,
24:28he kind of has famously said
24:30that Congress likes saying,
24:32you know, a statute that says something like,
24:33you know, go do good and nice things, agency.
24:36And then Congress gets the credit for saying,
24:38look, we told the agency to go do good and nice things,
24:40and when the agency goes and interprets that
24:43to do something bad,
24:44Congress can say that wasn't us.
24:46So I think you're exactly right
24:47that by exercising that muscle memory
24:51of making more decisions by Congress,
24:53some of the decisions might not be the best,
24:54but some of them will be good,
24:55and just by more routinely doing it,
24:57I think it would be better for self-governance.
25:01Okay, thank you.
25:02Professor Dutton.
25:03I guess I'd just like to say
25:04thank you so much for doing this
25:05and your other committee members who are involved,
25:08and if there are things that we can do
25:10to help you think about this,
25:12we'd love to.
25:13And I would definitely recommend
25:14the Bipartisan Policy Center report
25:16and also the National Academies Workshop report.
25:20But thank you again.
25:22No, thank you.
25:22That has been added to the record in this,
25:24and you can be assured
25:26that I'm going to go back with my colleagues
25:28and say we need to be able to pull some of these ideas
25:30and figure out how we implement
25:32some of these things as well.
25:33Representative Schwartz.
25:34And I, too, I just want to wish you good luck on this,
25:36and we're happy to, you know,
25:38of course be available to you
25:39and, of course, the Bipartisan Policy Center.
25:42And I would just say as a former member,
25:44you know, my respect and admiration
25:45for the work that the Senate and the House does
25:47and recognizing how difficult it is
25:50sometimes to work all this out
25:51is no small matter.
25:53So there are efforts that you can do
25:56that I think are probably less scary than others
25:58in terms of changing procedure,
26:00but to make sure that the, as you just pointed out,
26:03that the record is clear
26:04as to what the intent was
26:06and that it's Congress that makes the laws the land.
26:10You know, I'll end and say that.
26:11That is really the job of Congress
26:13and to do so in a way
26:16that we don't leave it to the courts to decide
26:17and work with the agencies in a way
26:20that actually makes it as effective as possible
26:23and implement it to the degree that you lay out,
26:26you know, to get the purpose
26:28and the intent and the mission
26:29the way you've formulated.
26:32So even in a time when I don't agree
26:34with some of the legislation,
26:36it's hard for me to say go forth and do it,
26:38but I do think that it is your responsibility.
26:42It is a congressional responsibility.
26:44And it could help with the public's understanding
26:47of what the law means
26:51and the impact on their lives
26:52to have it in clearer language
26:54and be more directive.
26:55And I think that actually would be a great help
26:57to keeping our democracy strong.
26:59Yeah.
27:00Yeah, I do as well.
27:01Thank you again to all of you.
27:02Any additional ideas that you may have,
27:04we are all ears.
27:06And so I appreciate all the reports and the work
27:08and the written statements
27:09in your testimony time today on it.
27:11Again, I apologize for having to take a quick break
27:13for votes right in the middle of it,
27:14but that is what they pay us to do
27:17is to be able to go vote.
27:18So that's an area that we've definitely
27:19got to be able to take on.
27:21The record for this hearing will remain open
27:22for 15 days until Thursday, August the 14th, 2025.
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