00:00My question is actually for all of you. Congress doesn't write perfect bills. We
00:05avoid detail to keep majorities. We need to pass bills. Sometimes we think we're
00:12being clear and we're not. We are also can't see the future and our decisions
00:17likely are going to have some unintended consequences. What are the courts and
00:21agencies going to do now that they have to determine best reading and now what
00:26the Congress needs to do in order to be ready to react in those situations?
00:34So Senator, I can start answering that question. So at least from the judicial
00:39perspective, courts have been instructed from the Supreme Court now to use really
00:43every tool in the interpretive toolbox to come down to give a statute its best
00:49reading. And this is familiar to the judicial task in non-administrative law
00:55areas of the law as well. Like, I don't know, like a criminal statute for example.
00:59There is no agency for the courts to kind of throw up its hands and defer to
01:05what the agency view is. The court has to come to a meaning of the law there. And
01:08post Loper Bright, courts are under instruction to do the same thing in the
01:14administrative law context. So using statutory canons, precedent, dictionaries,
01:18what have you, coming to what the court's own independent judgment is about what the
01:24the best meaning of the law.
01:26Does any of you have a response?
01:29I think agencies too obviously will have to do that. And research by Chris Walker at Michigan Law
01:39found that they already are, they're relying less on Chevron, the assumption that
01:47they'll get Chevron deference and working harder to interpret the best
01:51interpretation. So maybe getting back to what Representative Schwartz was saying, the
01:56iteration, the back and forth, the communication between the executive and
02:00the legislative branch could help there.
02:02I would just ask that, I would just again reiterate the fact that it's Congress that
02:11actually makes these decisions ultimately. So being, coming back to Congress if they
02:15need to, is one possibility. But again, making sure that you have the expertise and
02:20they have the expertise. It does not help to have hollowed out so much of the
02:24expertise in these agencies. How can you rely on them if you, if there's no one
02:29there to pick up the phone, so to speak, which is happening. You know that, you see
02:33it, we're seeing, we expect more cuts to happen. And I think that's a real problem
02:37to invest, we invest a lot of confidence in the agencies. And we always had in
02:43summer civil servants who serve Republicans and the Democratic
02:46administrations, they know this field. But again, if they have questions, or you do,
02:50in terms of the regulation, there are comment periods. I think we don't actually
02:54use that comment period very well. We actually leave that to the
02:58outside interest groups and representatives and individuals to write
03:02in. But it doesn't mean that Congress can't also say, we didn't quite mean this,
03:06I suppose, and really try and articulate that better. It's, so I think there are
03:10opportunities that exist. But again, making sure that you have the expertise to be
03:15able to respond, and making sure that there are experts in the agencies you can
03:20rely on. And because it's, you want to do their jobs completely. The other, as I would say,
03:25is again, you can use, don't use reauthorization the way we could. We
03:30sometimes wait on reauthorization for years, or we just continue to say, okay,
03:35we don't have time, just let it go. I have one big one coming up, MACRA is, you know,
03:40expires at the end of the year. Is there a real discussion we know, should be going on,
03:45about changes that can be made to enhance that legislation. There's a lot of
03:50by-person interest in it working. But it really, to just let it go another year,
03:56or two, or three, could actually undermine a really important effort that's been
04:01passed by Congress. But it needs time and effort to actually get into what should
04:06change, and what could improve that law. So I would use a reauthorization process,
04:11and also ask for, we talked about this, a possible review of how a law has been
04:19implemented. What's the data? What's the evidence? What is it doing what we want it
04:23to? And I can do that. You can find out, are people healthier as a result of what we
04:28did, or are they worse off? Are they spending more money as consumers, or they're
04:31not? Is in fact the air cleaner, because we've gotten getting rid of our efforts
04:37to do clean energy? Are we happy with you, with what's happening? Is that working for us, or
04:42for you, and for the American people? That's something you could call on, in law,
04:48to say, I want to report back in a year or two, even before reauthorization, to be,
04:54how is this working? And how could we improve it if we need to?
04:57Yeah. I appreciate that very much.
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