To improve consideration by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission of the costs and benefits of its regulations and orders.

Mr. Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I call up House Resolution 738 and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. Speaker, for the purpose of debate only, I yield the customary 30 minutes to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Hastings), pending which I yield myself such time as I may consume. During consideration of this resolution, all time yielded is for the purpose of debate only.

General Leave

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks.

House Resolution 738 is a structured rule providing for consideration of H.R. 6082, the Congressional Replacement of President Obama's Energy-Restricting and Job-Limiting Offshore Drilling Plan, from the Natural Resources Committee and Chairman Hastings, and seven other bills that will be considered as a single package, including mine, H.R. 373, the Unfunded Mandates Information and Transparency Act; H.R. 4078, the Regulatory Freeze for Jobs Act by Mr. Griffin; H.R. 4607, the Midnight Rule Relief Act by Mr. Ribble; H.R. 3862, the Sunshine for Regulatory Decrees and Settlements Act by Mr. Quayle; H.R. 4377, the RAPID ACT by Mr. Ross of Florida; H.R. 2308, the SEC Regulatory Accountability Act by Mr. Garrett; and H.R. 1840, which is a bill by Mr. Conaway to improve consideration by the

Commodity Futures Trading Commission of the cost and benefits of its regulations and orders.

H.R. 6082 is a bill to replace the Obama administration's final offshore drilling plan announced on June 28, which keeps 85 percent of America's offshore areas off limits to energy production, with one that would establish a timeline for 29 specific leases, some of which are not open for drilling under the Obama plan.

The legislation would also require the Interior Department to prepare a multilease environmental impact statement for any leases required under the bill not in the June 2012 plan.

The remaining bills are rolled into one package; and while each has its own unique virtues, they're all intended to provide for Federal regulatory relief.

H.R. 373 is the culmination of nearly 5 years of work to build on the success of the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act, or UMRA, which is a bipartisan initiative that has not been modernized since its inception in 1995.

Given his express support for regulatory reform, my hope is that President Obama will support my bill, which incorporates many of his ideas, including those embodied in Executive Order 13563.

Mr. Speaker, so often we thank people for working on our legislation and for working in the Congress only at the time that they retire, but I want to give some thanks today for the hard work that's been done, particularly on H.R. 373. There's an enormous amount of work that has gone into bringing this bill to the floor.

I'd first like to thank Brandon Renz, my legislative director, who has worked with this for over 5 years. I thank Kristin Nelson and Peter Warren with the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee for providing the diligence and creative thinking needed to shape the product we're considering today.

I also thank Ryan Little, Austin Smythe, Daniel Flores, and Hugh Halpern for their help shepherding this bill through the various committees of jurisdiction. It's this kind of cooperation that's necessary to ensure the proper functioning of this legislative body.

I thank Chairman Darrell Issa for bringing this bill to the Oversight and Government Reform Committee. He is providing extraordinary leadership for that committee and our country. But it's my colleague and good friend, Congressman James Lankford, the chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee's Subcommittee on Technology, Information Policy, Intergovernmental Relations and Procurement Reform, who is deserving of my most sincere appreciation and praise.

Mr. Lankford's dogged work and determination to build upon and improve on my initiative is only one demonstration of his keen intellect and exceptional legislative acumen. For a freshman with no prior legislative experience to have received such immense respect by peers of both parties further underscores his professionalism and amiable personality. Undoubtably, this House would be better off if it were filled with legislators as serious about seeking tangible solutions to problems as Mr. Lankford and Mr. Issa.

Mr. Speaker, it's on that note that I urge my colleagues to support this rule and the underlying bill and reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I just would like to point out to my colleague from Florida that we certainly agree on our side of the aisle with Governor Romney that we need regulations. These bills don't do away with all regulations. Republicans know you need government. We just want some common sense brought into our government. We want a cost- benefit analysis done to rules and regulations.

After all, we're here, we're breathing the air, we're drinking the water, we're eating the food. Our children, our grandchildren are, too. It doesn't make any sense these tired old accusations against Republicans that we don't care anything about our environment or our food because we're here living with them, also.

I don't think the American people are going to buy the arguments that my colleague made.

I would now like to yield 5 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Oklahoma (Mr. Lankford).

Mr. Speaker, I now yield 3 minutes to my colleague from Florida (Mr. Ross).

Mr. Speaker, I yield an additional 30 seconds to the gentleman from Florida.

Mr. Speaker, as I often do when I'm handling a rule, I have to make sure that the public understands the facts.

It's my understanding that the amendment that the gentleman spoke of that was adopted in the committee and then presented in the way that it was presented for this bill was not germane. I need to point out to the public that it was not the majority, it wasn't the Republicans, who decided the amendment wasn't germane. It is our Parliamentarians, who are nonpartisan.

I would now like to yield 3\1/2\ minutes to my colleague from Texas, Representative Canseco.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

The rule before us today provides for consideration of my bill, H.R. 373, the Unfunded Mandates Information and Transparency Act, as I mentioned before. While working on this legislation over the years, I have come to appreciate that the subject matter is not one of the most thrilling ever to be considered by this House. In fact, I'm confident that reading a summary of my bill would provide an effective remedy for even the most stubborn case of insomnia.

Some have compared observing the legislative process with that of making sausage. Admittedly, in the case of my bill, it more closely resembles watching paint dry. Nor do I expect many in the media will sell many advertisements dissecting legislation entitled the Unfunded Mandates Information and Transparency Act. However, this certainly does not diminish the meaning or value of this important work.

By collaborating with the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, we've worked to create a comprehensive legislative package that promotes the principles of good government, accountability, and transparency that my constituents sent me to Congress to represent. These principles have been a top priority of mine throughout my legislative career, starting in the North Carolina State Senate.

Very simply, H.R. 373 advances these priorities by drawing upon bipartisan initiatives to expand access to information. The legislative text, itself, identifies the stated purpose of H.R. 373 as improving:

the quality of the deliberations of Congress with respect to

proposed Federal mandates by providing Congress and the

public with more complete information about the effects of

such mandates, ensuring that Congress acts on such mandates

only after focused deliberation on their effects while

enhancing the ability of Congress and the public to identify

Federal mandates that may impose undue harm on consumers,

workers, employers, small businesses, and State, local, and

tribal governments.

But it does so much more than that. The strength of the bill is that it serves to inform more fully decision-makers engaged in the policymaking process while letting affected State and local governments and those in the private sector who must put Washington dictates into practice know what's coming and better participate in the process.

Many provisions of the bill simply codify, clarify, and streamline existing practice. Others enhance the purpose of UMRA by applying its disclosure requirements to more circumstances while initiating more complete, detailed, useful, and accurate cost estimates to expose otherwise hidden costs. Yet others still protect legislative intent by closing loopholes in current law, allowing enterprising rule-makers to circumvent disclosure requirements while imposing costly mandates.

All of these provisions are harmonized in a way that provides something for everyone--which, unfortunately, is a rare legislative virtue--yet underscores the unique opportunity Members of both parties have to vote for a modest, yet effective legislative solution.

With that, Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

That would be fine with me, Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman is prepared to close. I will have some more comments to make, and then I will close.

Mr. Speaker, the various elements of the comprehensive reform contained in title IV of the underlying bill can be overwhelming, which is why it may be helpful to elaborate on the purpose of some of the most prominent individual provisions within the package.

In that light, it is important for the American people to understand the oppressive nature and full scope of the costs associated with complying with Federal mandates.

As a former small business owner, I experienced a myriad of costly, overly burdensome Federal mandates, and I hear from my constituents every day about the challenges that they face in dealing with them.

In my position as chairwoman of the House Subcommittee on Higher Education and Workforce Training, I have become familiar with an example of a ridiculous rule that will unnecessarily complicate student access to higher education. As we all know, in recent months, students and families have urged Congress to act to stem the ever-increasing cost of higher education. In response, the Obama administration has offered several proposals claiming to reduce student loan debt and rein in tuition. However, these initiatives only further entrench the Federal Government in the affairs of States and institutions.

In response, higher education officials are crying foul over a 2010 Department of Education rule establishing a Federal definition of a credit hour. Higher education personnel believe this regulation will restrict innovation, limit flexibility, and pave the way for additional Federal overreach into higher education. As we've seen many times before, onerous Federal regulation always come with a price, which in this case is paid by students or their families.

It's time to take a comprehensive view of the problems facing our Nation's higher education system and eliminate burdensome Federal regulations that pile unnecessary costs on institutions and students. Rather than getting the Federal Government further entrenched in higher education, we should be working together to remove costly mandates that pile unnecessary financial burdens on colleges and universities.

Mr. Speaker, I enter into the Record a statement from the 2012 edition of ``Ten Thousand Commandments'' issued by the Competitive Enterprise Institute relative to the explosive growth of regulations by Federal agencies in the past 2 years.

Mr. Speaker, again I want to say that Republicans, contrary to what our colleagues have said across the aisle, are not opposed to all regulations and rules. We are not opposed to government. We understand that we have to have government in order to have a civil society. We understand that we have to have regulations to protect us in some cases from each other and to make sure that we have an orderly society.

We live in the greatest country in the world, Mr. Speaker; and we got here not because of the government, but we got here because of the hardworking Americans who have good values, who love this country and want to see it continue to thrive. We can count on those hardworking Americans to do the right things in almost every case. What Republicans want are commonsense regulations, and we want to stop the flood of regulations that have come particularly from this administration. And the materials that I have submitted to the Record, Mr. Speaker, will document the unnecessary rules and regulations that have come, particularly in this administration.

We have heard today many reasons for Congress and President Obama to pursue Federal regulatory reform as a cost-free way in which the Federal Government can promote economic growth. We have the worst deficit, the worst debt we've ever had in this country. We have an unemployment rate that is stifling economic growth. What we're proposing here today will help our economy, will help revive our economy, and will bring jobs to this country.

This legislative package, with the passage of this rule, represents a variety of ways we can move towards these ends. As Americans look to Congress for innovative solutions to spur private sector job growth, I call on my colleagues to support this rule and the underlying legislation.

The 2011 Federal Register stands at 81,247 pages. That

number is just shy of 2010's all-time record-high 81,405

pages. These years are the only two in which the number of

Federal Register pages topped 81,000.

In 2011, agencies issued 3,807 final rules, compared with

3,573 in 2010, a 6.5-percent increase.

Proposed rules appearing in the Federal Register increased

even more than the number of final rules, from 2,439 to

2,898, an 18.8-percent increase that signals a likely future

rise in final rules.

Although regulatory agencies issued 3,807 final rules in

2011, Congress passed and the president signed into law a

comparatively few 81 bills. Substantial lawmaking power is

delegated to unelected bureaucrats at agencies.

Of the 4,128 regulations now in the pipeline, 822 affect

small businesses and 212 are `economically significant' rules

wielding at least $100 million in economic impact. That

number represents a 32.5-percent jump over the 160 rules five

years ago, in 2006, and a higher level than any year of the

past decade except for the 224 rules in 2010.

The number of final `major rule' reports issued by agencies

and reviewed by the Government Accountability Office (GAO)

has grown. The 99 rules of 2010 represented the highest

number since this tabulation began. Five years ago, there

were 56 such reports.

The five most active rule-producing agencies--the

departments of the Treasury, Commerce, the Interior, and

Agriculture, along with the Environmental Protection Agency

(EPA)--account for 1,733 rules, or 42 percent of all rules in

the Unified Agenda pipeline.

The government's reach extends well beyond the taxes

Washington collects and its deficit spending and borrowing.

Federal environmental, safety and health, and economic

regulations cost hundreds of billions--perhaps trillions--of

dollars every year over and above the costs of the official

federal outlays that dominate the policy debate.

Economics 101 on tax incidence explains how and why firms

generally pass along to consumers the costs of some taxes.

Likewise, some regulatory compliance costs that businesses

face will find their way into the prices consumers pay and

into wages earned.

Taxation and regulation can substitute for each other

because regulation can advance government initiatives without

using tax dollars. Rather than pay directly and book expenses

for new programs, the government can require the private

sector--as well as state and local governments--to pay for

federal initiatives through compliance costs.

Because such regulatory costs are not budgeted and lack the

formal public disclosure of federal spending, they may

generate comparatively little public outcry. Regulation thus

becomes a form of off-budget or hidden taxation.

As the mounting federal debt causes concern, the impulse to

regulate instead can also mount. Deficit spending, in a

manner of speaking, can manifest itself as regulatory

compliance costs that go largely unacknowledged by the

federal government. Worse, if regulatory compliance costs

prove burdensome, Congress can escape accountability by

blaming the agencies that issue the unpopular rules.

Openness about regulatory facts and figures is critical,

just as disclosure of program costs is critical in the

federal budget . . .

[But] Disclosure of and accountability for regulatory costs

are spotty. This allows policy makers to be reckless about

imposing regulatory costs relative to undertaking ordinary--

but more publicly visible--government spending.

The material previously referred to by Mr. Hastings of Florida is as follows:

An Amendment to H. Res. 738 Offered by Mr. Hastings of Florida

At the end of the resolution, add the following new

section:

Sec. 3

It shall not be in order to consider a concurrent

resolution providing for adjournment or adjournment sine die

unless the

House has been notified that the President has signed a bill

to extend for one year certain expired or expiring tax

provisions that apply to middle-income taxpayers with income

below $250,000 for married couples filing jointly, and below

$200,000 for single filers, including, but not limited to,

marginal rate reductions, capital gains and dividend rate

preferences, alternative minimum tax relief, marriage penalty

relief, and expanded tax relief for working families with

children and college students.

I yield back the balance of my time, and I move the previous question on the resolution.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

I thank the gentlelady for yielding me the customary 30 minutes.

I'd like to address process just very briefly, and that is that, when we began this session of Congress, we were advised by our Republican colleagues that we were going to bring up each measure individually and discuss them. This is a structured rule that does contemplate the opportunity for many Members to participate, but it isn't an open rule. What it is is it's a measure as the base bill that has cobbled to it six distinctly different measures--evidenced by the number of thank- yous that had to come from Dr. Foxx to the various committees.

I do agree with the one, Dr. Foxx, where you thank the young man for creative thinking. This is out of the box when it comes to us as far as process is concerned being creative. Cobbling six pieces of legislation--with another to make seven--is a bit much.

This rule provides for consideration of H.R. 4078, the Red Tape Reduction and Small Business Act of 2012, and H.R. 6082, which has such a long and convoluted name that the cost to the government to simply print the bill may require the Republican majority to raise the debt ceiling.

What the red tape bill should be called, Mr. Speaker, is the ``Eliminate the Government's Ability to Protect Its Own Citizens Act of 2012,'' because that is what the radical legislation--creative, though one may think it is--aims to do.

Under this legislation, Federal agencies would be prohibited from issuing new regulations until the unemployment rate falls below 6 percent.

And I defy any economist or anybody else in the world to tell me when that's going to be in an economy such as the one that we have. So too, would new regulations be prohibited between Election Day in early November and Inauguration Day in late January.

For the past 2 years, the Republican majority has been spending its time doing everything, it seems to me, to crash the economy by defaulting on our debt, eliminating the greatest health care protections made in decades, and turning sensible decisions about women's health care into a fantasy of religious persecution.

But now it appears that perhaps struggling Americans have finally managed to capture the Republicans' attention, except that the majority's response is not to make the kind of investments that will actually create jobs, but, instead, to gut the Federal Government's efforts to protect the health and safety of American citizens.

I realize that in the fantasy world inhabited by some far-right ideologues allowing polluters to run amok is tantamount to creating jobs, allowing corporations to pursue fantastic profits at the expense of public health and safety is somehow good governance, and enabling the middle class to fall farther and farther behind the ultra-wealthy is somehow a shining example of the American spirit.

But I have to ask, under this legislation, where will these new jobs come from?

I suppose we'll need more doctors to care for sick children, since the FDA will be prohibited from monitoring the safety of baby formula. We will need caregivers, I'm sure, willing to provide free care for older Americans, as Medicare will be unable to change its payments to providers. And we'll need new water treatment plant workers, as corporate polluters will have increased freedom to dump harmful chemicals into our drinking water, as they have for years.

If I sound extreme, Mr. Speaker, it's because this bill is extreme. A blanket prohibition on new regulations is not any kind of solution to grow our economy. The FDA, the EPA, and the Veterans Administration, these agencies are not responsible for the failure of our jobless recovery.

What is irresponsible is the failure to address the real needs of the American people. Rather than preventing the Federal Government from ensuring clean drinking water, we ought to be investing in the infrastructure that makes clean drinking water possible and that desalinates salt water.

We ought to be investing in economic development projects, in the national infrastructure, in clean energy technology, in education, and in the kinds of programs that support those Americans who are struggling the hardest. Rich CEOs of big polluters aren't one of those that are in need.

But speaking of rich CEOs out of touch with everyday Americans, it was Mitt Romney who said in 2009 that, ``You have to have regulation.'' He said that regulations need to be modernized, reviewed, and effective, and that Republicans ``misspeak'' when they say they don't like regulation.

I guess what Mitt Romney calls ``misspeak'' other people might call ``outright ridiculous'' because that is what the ideology behind this bill is. It is as ridiculous a notion that yet more drilling for oil will somehow--drilling in these places where companies like BP can cause the kind of incidents that we saw in the gulf--that somehow this is going to benefit the country. It won't.

The other bill to be considered under this rule is just the latest manifestation of the Republican energy doctrine: ``Only drilling, all the time, and everywhere.'' This legislation does exactly two things. It tears up environmental protections, and it further enriches oil company executives.

The House, under the Republican majority, has taken 142 pro-oil-and- gas drilling votes this Congress. Using the hourly cost of voting in the House, as calculated by the Congressional Research Service, the more than 90 hours we have spent debating these measures that everybody in this House knew were going nowhere when they left this House, we've spent $54 million of the taxpayers' money debating, and these are the people that would tell me they want to cut costs.

I suppose, Mr. Speaker, that there's always a chance that the Republicans will achieve success the 143rd time and additional hours that they try something. But once again, the majority's efforts reflect a dogged determination to rely on an outdated ideology that seeks only to reward the wealthiest corporations.

We are already drilling at historic levels in this country. The United States is home to more offshore drilling rigs than the entire rest of the world combined. Seventy percent of offshore areas currently leased are not even active yet.

This legislation isn't going to change the price of fuel for the average American. It does not mandate that oil drilled in the United States--Mr. Markey brought an amendment that allowed that if it's going to be drilled here, it ought to stay here. But this legislation doesn't allow for it to even be sold in the United States.

In fact, oil will simply be shipped out to the highest bidder, similar to what's going to happen with Keystone when it's completed, on the world market, generating enormous profits for the oil companies while sticking the American public with the bill.

I recently saw an editorial cartoon by Joel Pett. And in the cartoon, a man stands up at a climate change summit and asks, what happens if climate change is, indeed, a hoax, but we achieve energy independence anyway, that we preserve the environment anyway, that we create green jobs anyway, and livable cities, and have cleaner air and water. The answer, of course, is that we will all be better off.

Republicans can stick their heads in the tar sands all they want, but pumping more fossil fuels out of the ground and into the atmosphere will not sustain the American economy, nor provide the kind of economic prosperity that will benefit all Americans. And as I've said before, and I repeat again, I'll be the last person standing against drilling offshore of Florida.

At the same time, preventing the Federal Government from acting on behalf of public health and safety will not create new jobs. It won't return the unemployment rate to 6 percent, and it won't send a signal to the American public that their elected Representatives are ably minding public resources.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to yield 5 minutes to my good friend, the distinguished gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Castor).

Mr. Speaker, I would say to my good friend and colleague from Florida that when he speaks about 120,000 jobs that may have been created, Governor Rick Scott categorically rejected money for light rail between the I-4 corridor of Orlando and Tampa that would definitely have produced 18,000 jobs.

You can't have it both ways. You can't one minute say that you don't want something, and then the next minute say that some fictional number is going to take place that's a magic bullet. We worked hard to get that money appropriated. The last statement that he made was that you can't give something unless you get something. Well, they got from Florida, and that money went to the east coast corridor, to California, to Illinois. I'm not certain about whether any of it went to Kentucky, but I'm sure that the next speaker would be prepared to address that.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to my good friend, the gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. Yarmuth).

Mr. Speaker, would you be so kind as to tell both sides how much time remains.

Mr. Speaker, at this time, I am very pleased to yield 1 minute to my good friend from Connecticut (Mr. Courtney), whose State did benefit from that money that was to go to Florida, as appropriated.

I yield the gentleman an additional 30 seconds.

Mr. Speaker, I would advise the gentlelady that I'm going to be the last speaker, and I am prepared to close.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time.

We could go back to the days when government was helpless against the robber barons who abused our public resources. We could go back to the days when citizens had no recourse against corporations who valued profit above individual health and safety. And we could go back to the days when unelected oligarchs drove this Nation's destiny, rather than democratically elected governments representing the interests of the American public.

Prohibiting Federal agencies from carrying out necessary and essential public protections will not create new jobs. It will not boost our economy. It will not protect the most vulnerable and disadvantaged Americans in a time of extraordinary uncertainty.

Drilling for oil everywhere and anywhere is not a solution. It won't even provide much benefit, unless you consider further enriching oil executives to be a benefit for millions of struggling Americans.

What Americans need is government that is willing to invest in its citizens.

Mr. Speaker, if we defeat the previous question, I will offer an amendment to this rule to make in order an amendment which proposes that Congress will not adjourn until the President signs middle class tax cuts into law.

We have an opportunity to extend the middle class tax cuts for 98 percent of Americans who make less than $250,000. This should not be a partisan fight; this is what we were elected to do. We should not adjourn into August recess while American families across this country are trying to make ends meet. It is imperative that Congress act on behalf of families across this Nation and bring them the certainty and security that their taxes will not go up in 6 months.

I don't know about all of my colleagues here, but I have had the misfortune of having been involved in lame duck sessions; and the one that is coming up where we are about to go off the cliff is going to be brutal for some of the newcomers in this institution who do not understand that it seems to be a methodology to wait until the last

minute before we do something. We can do it in August. We can give 98 percent of the American people certainty about their taxes and be assured that if they make less than $250,000 their taxes will not go up in December, or that their taxes will not be leveraged so we can avoid seeing to it that the Bush tax cuts on the 2 percent of Americans that are even concerned about the little bit of money that each one of them would have to provide in order for us to ensure safety for children, education for children, safety for old people, and understanding that the middle class has this great need.

I ask unanimous consent to insert the text of the amendment in the Record along with extraneous material immediately prior to the vote on the previous question.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' and defeat the previous question. I urge a ``no'' vote on the rule, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

I thank Ms. Foxx, my colleague, for her kind introduction on that.

All aspects of this bill, each part of it, has gone through the committee process. Multiple of them have had multiple hearings related to them. There has been plenty of opportunity to be able to allow for input and for votes through the traditional committee process on this.

The reality is that red tape is strangling our businesses. Each day, they wake up, and they are worried about what the Federal Government is going to do to them rather than what the Federal Government is going to do for them. There is an appropriate role for the Federal Government for regulations, but it seems like there is a never-ending acceleration of regulations--and not just small--they get larger and larger and larger and more and more expensive and more and more nonsensical at times.

Let me just give you one quick example of this: community bankers that are facing hundreds of new regulations.

When the problem seemed to be the largest investment banks, the one who got hit the hardest with the regulations were the community banks. Now community banks have to step aside. A bank that may have 14 to 20 employees and $50 million or less in total assets, which is a very small rural bank, has to go and prove that these rules don't apply to them. That involves their hiring outside attorneys. That involves setting aside staff that should be doing loans. That involves setting aside additional time to prove these hundreds of rules don't apply to them and that they're not a big bank. Regulations passed on to them-- death by a thousand paper cuts is how they explain it to me.

Simplicity and common sense need to be applied to how we do regulations. When there is no check and balance in the regulatory environment, it needs to have that.

Now, the other side seems to assume that, occasionally, Americans are in need of daily oversight by the Federal Government, that unless some Federal bureaucrat or some Federal regulator is not standing next to their beds when they get up that they won't know how to get to work and that, when they get to work, they're going to cheat a neighbor and that, on the way home, they're going to cheat another neighbor, so we'd better have a Federal regulator standing right next to them because American citizens can't be trusted to do the right thing without Federal control.

I would say the neighbors that I live around, in the cities that I visit all over America, have great citizens who want to do the right thing and are doing the right thing and are serving their neighbors. We have great city and State governments. They're doing very good regulatory schemes. We should trust them more to engage in what they're doing in the communities that they live in, where they eat the food, where they drink the water. They are the first line of defense on that, rather than taking all those things to Washington, D.C., and assuming all Americans can't function without someone from Washington, D.C., checking on them each and every day. Let me just give you a couple things on that.

During the first hearing that I participated in here in this Congress, someone from the other side extolled the benefits of adding more regulations because companies were sitting on money and were not spending it. This was a way to force companies to hire additional people by hiring compliance officers--people to oversee regulations-- and that, if we couldn't increase employment in America through producing more goods and services, we would increase employment in America by creating more bureaucrats just in the private business.

That's not how I see that you should grow an economy. Let me just highlight one area, one title of this great bill.

Title IV of this is the Unfunded Mandates Information and Transparency Act of 2011. This was a bill that started in the previous Congress with Ms. Virginia Foxx as the author. That bill went through multiple processes in the previous Congress. We picked it up in the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, and we did three hearings on it at the beginning of last year. We had city leaders, we had State and county leaders, we had private business leaders, and we had administration individuals from this administration and from the previous administration come and testify.

In 1995, the House and the Senate and the President signed a bill called the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act. It was a wide bipartisan act-- 394 votes in the House and 91 votes in the Senate--to give information to the House and to the Senate before decisions were made about what is an unfunded mandate, and what effect will that have.

There are large loopholes that have been exploited in the last 17 years. This bill aims to fix those loopholes:

It takes in all the independent agencies, and it also puts them under those same requirements;

It puts in the language that President Clinton put in in Executive Order 12866 in order to clarify this, that the administration's functioned under. It puts that language and codifies it from President Clinton into this bill. It also takes a clarification of President Obama's that he has for this bill and also adds it into the language;

It redefines ``direct costs'' with how the CBO already defines ``direct costs,'' and it actually codifies that language and provides ability;

It allows for a ranking member or a chairman of a committee to do an analysis of a rule to make sure that it is not exceeding our unfunded mandates requirements. It is very bipartisan. It's not just the chairman. A chairman or a ranking member can get in on that.

It is the intent of this, in this modern regulatory environment, to clean this up and to make sure Congress has the information to make their decisions.

I thank my good friend from Florida on the Rules Committee for yielding time.

I rise to oppose the rule and the underlying bills, particularly H.R. 6082, because that bill unreasonably expands offshore drilling without the corresponding and necessary safety standards.

The Republicans are ignoring the lessons that we learned after the BP Deepwater Horizon blowout. Again, they are putting the profits of the oil companies ahead of the safety and larger economic concerns of families and businesses all across our great country.

Certainly, memories cannot be so short that we don't remember the devastation caused by the BP Deepwater Horizon blowout and disaster. That oil spewed for months and months, and they could not cap the well. In the meantime, it caused serious economic damage, not just to my home State of Florida and to the tourism industry and fishing and to the hotels and motels and restaurants, but all across the gulf coast and all across the country.

I recall very well, prior to the blowout, they said it was safe. They said drilling in deep water and offshore was safe and that there hadn't been very many accidents. But they were wrong. I remember Tony Hayward came in front of our committee, and he said, We were wrong. We didn't anticipate this would happen.

You've got to anticipate that it will happen.

Unfortunately, in the aftermath, we appointed a blue ribbon commission, the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon blowout. They issued their report in January of 2011. They had many recommendations from experts in how you make offshore drilling safe. The Congress has not acted on any of those recommendations to make it safe. Yet, in this bill, they press ahead to open even more areas for oil drilling. That's not right. You're putting our economy and our environment at risk when you do so.

This was a great commission, by the way, because they didn't just stop there. They've issued progress reports along the way. I know people oftentimes don't like report cards, and the Congress is not going to like this report card. They've broken it down into safety and environmental protection, spill response and containment, and ensuring adequate resources.

Under safety and environmental protection, they say Congress has done nothing to make permanent the improvements that have been made by industry and the Obama administration. We've got to enact these into law before we go forward with more offshore drilling in new and pristine areas.

They say Congress has provided little support for spill response and containment. If we're going to expand drilling--and it certainly has to be part of our energy portfolio--we have to be able to respond to a disaster, and yet Congress has done nothing there.

It says, although the administration has provided increases in funding to oversight, Congress has taken little action to adjust the unrealistic limits on liability. Who is going to pay? It shouldn't be the taxpayers who pay for these disasters. Right now, they have not adjusted the outrageous liability limits that these oil companies have when there are accidents.

What you're doing is really thumbing your nose at--you're turning a blind eye to--the hard work done by the commission, the commission that proposed to protect us if we were going to rely on offshore oil. I think it's going to be part of our portfolio, so why not adopt reasonable safety standards?

I know some of my colleagues say, Well, we don't like red tape. I don't like red tape either, but this isn't red tape. These are vital environmental and economic safety standards to ensure that the $60 billion tourism industry in Florida is maintained. Those are hardworking folks and good jobs back home. For the hotels and motels, even though the oil was coming out of the ocean 350 miles away, their businesses fell off. All we ask is that simple safety standards be adopted.

Mr. Markey and Mr. Holt have proposed some of those as amendments. The Republicans rejected other ones. We need to adopt these. Otherwise, it is irresponsible to press ahead with expansive, new deepwater drilling in deeper areas, in pristine areas.

These recommendations are reasonable. And if the Republican Congress cannot take up reasonable safety standards in the wake of one of the worst economic and environmental disasters in our history, then I'd hate to say what's at risk for this great country.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlelady from North Carolina.

Mr. Speaker, recent economic indicators show that another recession is a real danger. Consumer confidence is plummeting, businesses aren't hiring, and recovery continues to slow. Real unemployment is at 14.9 percent, and millions of Americans have given up hope. The World Bank reports that the U.S. is now 13th in the world when measuring the ease of starting a new business. In 2007, we were ranked third. Last month, American manufacturing shrank for the first time in nearly 2 years. Economists are revising their growth projections downward. Inflation looms on the horizon, and Europe's sovereign debt crisis continues unabated.

Some of the circumstances that led to this crisis are out of anybody's control, but many of these circumstances are not. Policymakers in Washington have an obligation to our constituents and to this country to work together to create an environment where the American people prosper. We have such an opportunity today. The Red Tape Reduction and Small Business Job Creation Act takes a balanced approach towards regulatory reforms that are desperately needed in today's market.

For 25 years, before I was elected, I was a small businessman. I started a business not because of a government program or because of government lending; in fact, I couldn't even get a bank to loan me money. I borrowed money from a friend and grew that business over 20- some years to 27 employees. I didn't do it because there were good bridges and roads next door to me. I saw a need, I took a risk, and worked harder than the next guy. I also knew the rules and understood that government was the referee, not the player.

Today, the regulatory climate and litigious nature of many government agencies create uncertainty. Some falsely claim that certainty has nothing to do with our current economic crisis. Mr. Speaker, economics is as much a behavioral science as anything. When businesses don't know what the next regulatory hurdle will be, they won't invest.

The Florida Chamber of Commerce has recently done a study of small

businesses in Florida. The results were clear: uncertainty is the number one issue facing job creators and entrepreneurs. Right now there are projects waiting on the sidelines that have the potential to create 1.9 million jobs annually in this country. Talk about a shot in the arm to the economy.

The only thing certain about this President has been the uncertainty that he has provided and the regulatory reform and tax reform for small business. Take my home State of Florida for example. According to research by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, there is potential for 121,000 jobs there if we have regulatory certainty. In the first year of operations, businesses could generate over $2 billion in employment earnings. This bill is not about generating profits for fat cats and Big Oil. How do I know? Because I have seen firsthand a project in my area come to a halt because of a litigious activist group that affected 200 blue color jobs: secretaries, machinists, and more. There were 14 Federal agencies, State and local agencies, 7 years of permits and review, only to have a lawsuit 1 month later kill the dreams of a better life for my neighbors.

Mr. Speaker, one thing I know about government is that before it gives to someone, it must take from someone else. This legislation presents solutions that are sensible and immediately effective. My neighbors are tired of the regulatory burden. I'm tired of the regulatory burden.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to support this rule and the underlying bill.