H.R. 3409, Coal Miner Employment and Domestic Energy Infrastructure Protection Act

As ordered reported by the House Committee on Natural Resources
on February 29, 2012

H.R. 3409 would temporarily prohibit the Secretary of the Interior from issuing new regulations that would have certain impacts on the coal industry. Based on information provided by the Office of Surface Mining (OSM), CBO estimates that implementing the legislation would have no significant impact on the federal budget. Enacting the bill would not affect direct spending or revenues; therefore, pay-as-you-go procedures do not apply.

Under the bill, the Secretary could not issue new regulations until the end of 2013 if those regulations would affect the coal industry in certain ways, such as reducing employment or limiting access to coal resources. CBO expects that the bill would probably not affect any proposed regulations currently in the rulemaking process. In addition, based on information provided by OSM, CBO expects that any regulations proposed in the future would not be issued before the end of 2013 and would not be affected by the enactment of the bill. Therefore, we estimate that implementing H.R. 3409 would have at most a minimal impact on the federal budget.

H.R. 3409 contains no intergovernmental or private-sector mandates as defined in the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act and would impose no costs on state, local, or tribal governments.

The CBO staff contact for this estimate is Jeff LaFave. The estimate was approved by Theresa Gullo, Deputy Assistant Director for Budget Analysis.