Coal Residuals Reuse and Management Act

Mr. Speaker, we've all been back in our districts for the last month, and we've been talking to friends and neighbors back home about what America is truly concerned with, what is most important in the eyes of all Americans, and that is getting America back to work.

Our economy is stagnant. This administration is throwing up barriers, which is freezing assets because the folks that normally would invest in growth and hiring people are frightened about what's around the next corner, and they're sitting with all their money and they're not growing.

I met this morning with around somewhere between 12 and 14 of my neighbors in just a sit-down cup of coffee, where we sat around and we talked about the way that folks in central Texas view what's going on with the job market.

You know, in Texas we've been blessed. We haven't faced the kinds of unemployment numbers that other States have had. But we now are certainly seeing unemployment creeping up in our State also.

We had small businessmen and -women there, and they talked about the things that concern them. But yet we've had meetings with bankers who've explained to us that you can look at their deposits and see that American local investors are sitting on the sidelines and keeping their deposits in the bank and not investing in growth and not investing in capital structure, not building buildings, and certainly not hiring people. And so part of the discussion this morning from some very intelligent small business folks was, we think we know why; why do you say this is happening?

The answers I got were answers that we hear on the floor of this House every day.

But the one that I've been talking about now for almost a year, probably maybe even over a year, is the fact that we are seeing the administration doing through government regulations, which are basically laws passed by the regulators which change the playing field for people and our economy across the board at every level. It's not done by acts of this Congress. It's done by acts of bureaucrats in the Obama administration as they make rules and regulations that fit their view of the world and how they think the world should work. And these regulations regulate the drivers, the force builders that employ the American people.

Many of these regulations have become such a shock to the conscience of people who are in business that they say, ``My Lord, I'm not about to get invested in growth until I know whether I'm going to even have my business once the regulators are through with me.''

And then sitting on the sideline is the giant regulator program, which is the health care bill that this House passed last year and the Senate passed. We call it ObamaCare. Its 2,000 pages are multiplying very rapidly as the regulators, the people who are able to pass rules to set up the regulations that govern that bill, are imposing more and more burden on the individual employer and on those people seeking health care.

So what I heard today from some people who are presidents of small businesses, run small businesses--a Thomas Barrett, a very intelligent lawyer who is both a financial adviser and a lawyer for small and other sized businesses all over central Texas and is highly sought after for his opinion--they said it's the unknown that's driving the investment off the page in the United States. It's the unknown. We don't know what's going to happen next. Our taxes. What are taxes going to do? We've got taxes that will last for a while and then go back to a different tax automatically unless this House acts.

Then most importantly, and what we talked mostly about today, was all the new regulations that are coming up.

In the next 3 or 4 months, the Republican leadership in this House is going to do everything it can to turn back some of the craziness that's gone on in the regulatory world. I brought the Members here tonight just a few examples of some of the regulations, many of which we've been talking about all year. We've spent a lot of time talking about the cement industry; we've talked about Boiler MACT; we've talked about a lot of other things we're going to talk about tonight.

But it's just a general outline of some corrective measures that this Republican-led House is going to try and going to pass through this body to just start slowing down and changing the direction of what we think are some ill-conceived regulations by the executive branch, the Obama administration.

I want to start off with this poster right here, which just gives you a small example of what we're talking about. In July of this summer-- this is what we've called the ``regulatory summer''--these are regulations that have been proposed by various agencies. Many of them are household words like the Environmental Protection Agency; but there are plenty of others, the Labor Department--you could go on and on.

In July, 229 proposed regulations went into effect, 379 final regulations, and the cost estimated of these proposed and final regulations: over $9.5 billion to the economy in the month of July. That meant business, the job creators, took a hickey of $9.5 billion in 1 month, the month of July 2011. We have just finished August--270 proposed regulations, 347 final regulations: over $8.2 billion in August. So for this summer, just July and August, the 2-month total: $17.7 billion in costs to the people who create jobs.

Now, is it any wonder that the people who create jobs are sitting on the sidelines and saying, holy cow, how do I hire somebody? And I think the American people know why people in business hire somebody. They hire somebody because they think that person will make their business more prosperous, will make it work more efficiently, will make it do the job the business was set up to do. If you are in the roofing business and you put roofs on houses, you hire more roofers because you think you will be able to produce a better quality product faster and more efficiently, therefore enhancing the profit that those who have invested their capital and labor into that business--they can make a profit so that that business can thrive. You don't hire roofers when you don't need to put roofs on houses. I mean, that doesn't make any sense, and everybody with any kind of common sense knows that.

Now, if you've got a person who's got some business, whether it be big or small, and they literally don't know what the government is going to do to them tomorrow or, let's just say, in the next 2 months, following this track record, they could be looking at another almost $20 billion worth of additional costs to their business that could be coming up in September and October. Based upon the last 2 months, it's arguable that it's pretty close to $20 billion of additional costs that they were not anticipating and never thought was going to happen to them; and all of a sudden out of the clear blue, it drops in their lap.

Now, you will hear arguments like, wait a minute, there are these things that are environmental and other ways and people have known all along something about this was going to be done. And that may or may not be true. But the ramifications of what the regulators actually did are turning out to be horrendous costs to industries that right now are trying to get the ground under them stable so they can start hiring people again.

If you're on balancing ground sort of like this earthquake we had up here in Washington, which I am very fortunate that I wasn't in, when that ground is unstable, you don't know which way to turn. Well, the same thing goes for business. When the foundation underneath your business is unstable, you don't know which way to turn. Are you going to go out and hire somebody, give them a job, when this is what your life is right now and someone is creating that problem, that are actually by their actions making it unstable?

I would argue that questionable regulations, the imposition of additional costs, the unknown of what taxes are going to be tomorrow-- all these things create an unstable environment for the people who hire people. So this last regulatory summer is a perfect example of the earthquake that has shaken the foundation of the small businessman and the job creators in America.

The President of the United States promised us, the White House promised us, to save $10 billion in redtape, which is kind of the slang term for bureaucratic regulations, in 5 years. But the White House has put forward $17.7 billion worth of redtape in 2 months. The message has been lost somewhere. Where is it? When did what we were promised change into a three-for-one worse situation? We were promised a $5 billion savings for the job creators; and, in fact, we've created a $17.7 billion expense and uncertainty to the job creators, and we wonder why we are not creating jobs.

Mr. Kucinich was talking about his view of the world. He and I don't see

the world the same way, but the facts are when he was talking about we need to create jobs, we darn sure need to create jobs.

The role of the Congress today is finding ways to get this country back to work. If we put this country back to work, 90 percent of our problems will be much, much better. So the real goal of the Republican House this year, to finish this year out, is going to be trying to correct at least some of this instability created by these regulators, these unelected regulators. These are appointed people, not elected people. The heads of these agencies are appointed by the President. They are under the wings of the White House, if you will. They are part of the executive branch of government. And the legislature, this branch, the Congress, is going to, in the next several months, try to put some reins on these out-of-control regulators and hold them back. And we've got just some of them I am going to talk to you about that some of my colleagues are putting forward in the future.

The week of September 12, which is next week, I suppose, we're going to take up the Protecting Jobs from Government Interference Act, by Tim Scott of South Carolina. Now, the facts of this situation are very unusual in my way of thinking, and I think most of the people in the United States, when they heard this on television, they said, they can't do that, can they?

It seems the Boeing Corporation has a big operation up in the Washington State area, and they were wanting to build an additional plant to build whatever Boeing builds, whether it's aircraft or whatever it is--they wanted to do it in South Carolina. They have been negotiating and working in good faith with the citizens of South Carolina and the government of South Carolina. They have looked at alternative locations around the country to make a determination of what is best for their business in their situation today, and they determined that they were going to build a very important plant in South Carolina.

But the National Labor Relations Board, the NLRB, issued a complaint against the Boeing Company for the alleged transfer of an assembly line from the Washington plant to South Carolina. Yet not one union employee at the Boeing's Puget Sound facility, that's the Washington plant, has lost his or her job as a result of the proposed South Carolina plant.

Still, the NLRB is pursuing a restoration order against Boeing that would cost South Carolina thousands of jobs--these are new jobs in South Carolina--and deter future investment in the United States. This is the government telling Boeing how they can run their business at the base level of you can't move unless we tell you you can move; and if you choose to go to a right-to-work State instead of a union shop State, we're going to tell you, no, you can't do it.

What happened to the freedom of movement that our Founding Fathers created in this country? I mean, part of what makes us great is if you can't prosper in Texas, you can maybe prosper in South Dakota. In fact, people are right now, as we talk right now, people are taking businesses from one part of the country and going to another part of the country because of maybe newly discovered resources, maybe a better work environment, maybe a more intelligent workforce, maybe a better investment community, maybe better opportunities, maybe better tax structure. That's the free right of every American, is seeking prosperity for their company and for their family to go seek these places.

If we're going to tell Boeing they can't build a plant to create jobs in South Carolina, next they may be telling Sam Smith in Oklahoma, I'm sorry, but we need you to stay in Oklahoma, we don't want you to move to Texas, or we don't want you to move to South Carolina to go to work in the Boeing plant, which we just canceled. Is that the kind of world we have and we want this government to have? I would say no.

Do we want the people of South Carolina to have 1,500 new jobs? Yes. Is anybody talking about hurting the people employed at Puget Sound? No.

It's the issue of union membership that drove this whole thing, and we have given our States the right to choose whether they have a right- to-work State or they have a union State, and every State in this country has some difference in how they view that. It's part of the environment that State creates to bring business into the community.

What in the world is wrong with that, and when did that become Big Brother's job to tell somebody where they can and can't offer you a job? So are we now saying that the people of Washington State--and I have many friends there and I love very much, and I don't mean to be in any way defaming Washington State--but we have got a group of bureaucrats that are saying those are more important people than the people in South Carolina who want to work for Boeing for a good salary, because the government's telling them they can't do it.

The gentleman from South Carolina, Tim Scott, has got this bill, H.R. 2587, we're going to take it up next week, I understand, which is going to protect these jobs from this government interference. It would take the common-sense step, and it would prevent that National Labor Relations Board from restricting where an employer can create jobs in the United States.

Who would have ever thought we would have had to even address this on the floor of this House? This world that we have lived in, and, in fact, President John F. Kennedy in writing one of his dissertation papers at Harvard came up with a term ``The Great Frontier,'' which the whole concept of America was if you failed in one place, the great blessing of America is you can pack up and move to another place. At one time that was the frontier.

Now that frontier is in technology; that frontier is in science. That frontier is not just moved from one place to the other; it's moved from one idea to the other. That's the greatness of America. To have the government tell you where you can and can't locate is an abomination to the very spirit of the American Dream.

This one, we need to do it right away; we are going to do it. We hope our friends in the Senate are going to help.

We have the administration's new Maximum Achievable Technology Act, MACT, standards and Cross State Air Pollution, CSAPR, for utility plants, will affect electricity prices for nearly all American consumers. In total 10,000 power plants are expected to be affected. I can't tell you the number in other States, but Texas surprisingly fell under this act, which no one anticipated, and we actually had no input whatsoever--but that's a different argument which I have made before, but I know that we are talking about 17 to 19 plants just in Texas are being closed down.

These are coal-powered plants. We're talking about coal-powered plants in most instances here. The result to middle class America is an annual electricity bill increase in parts of the country anywhere from 12 to 24 percent, just by this one regulation that has been proposed dealing with coal-powered plants and greenhouse gas emissions. Well, Representative John Sullivan of Oklahoma has come up with a solution for this, H.R. 2401, the Transparency in Regulatory Analysis of Impacts on the Nation.

One of the things that we think any regulator should be looking at as he is doing this type of work is how does this impact the jobs of the American people, how does this impact the economy of the area. If you have a State that has 20 power plants and the results of your mandatory and arbitrary ruling is going to shut down 12 or 15 of those plants, it doesn't take a genius to figure the price of electricity is going up.

Even if they go in and they make a conversion to some other form of power at great cost and expense, billions of dollars of additional money happen to be spent, even if they do that, you are still going to have down time when electricity is going to be scarce and the risk of blackouts and brownouts is going to be increased. Quite honestly, it hurts every industry and every person that depends on that electricity.

Has anybody looked into this and said here is how we figure this out and told us with transparency what effect this has? No.

So what Mr. Sullivan is trying to say is that we need to call a time- out;

and it would require a cumulative, economic analysis for specific environmental protection rules and specifically delay the final date for both utility MACT and CSAPR rules until full impact of the Obama's administration regulatory agenda has been studied.

Some of this stuff is done with computer projections, but the facts are it's kind of a shock and surprise to everybody that's in the business, and it's time that we call time out and rather than cost this country jobs, give these people a chance to continue to have good jobs for the American people to work in.

This is a good bill, and we're going to take this bill up the week of September 19.

The next bill that this Republican Congress is going to go take up is H.R. 2250 to deal with what's called boiler MACT. From hospitals to factories, colleges, thousands of major American employers use boilers that will be impacted by the EPA's new boiler MACT rules.

These new stringent rules will impose billions of dollars in capital and compliance costs, increasing the costs of many goods and services. College kids will tell you how expensive going to university is today. They don't need any more cost increase there, but it will increase the cost of higher education; and it will put over 200,000 jobs at risk, just what they have done under the boiler MACT rules.

So what are we doing with H.R. 2250? Representative Morgan Griffith of Virginia has proposed this. It's called the EPA Regulatory Relief Act and would provide a legislative stay for four interrelated rules issued by the EPA in March of this year. The legislation would also provide the EPA with at least 15 months to repropose and finalize new achievable rules that do not destroy jobs and provide employers with an extended compliance period.

In other words, if it's a problem, let's fix the problem without costing people jobs. Let's fix the problem with a reasonable amount of time for compliance so that it's not a knee-jerk reaction that is required by everybody to try to keep from going out of business because of EPA-imposed rules.

So basically, just like the last bill we talked about, this is saying stop this craziness, take a new look, let the people you're regulating have some input into the cost and the compliance and the job loss, and then let's restructure. If we've got to fix this problem, restructure it in a manner that makes common sense to keep the American men and women of this country working, keep the factories open and producing and the colleges and universities open and producing and not impose a short-term, heavy burden of an additional capital infusion in order to meet regulatory changes. Give them a reasonable amount of time that common sense says it would take to fix the problem instead of imposing this rammed-down-your-throat series of rules. October 3 is the week the Republican Congress will be bringing that before the American people and before this House.

This is one I've been working on for quite awhile. I hope through part of our efforts during these evenings when we've talked about the cement MACT issue, the imposition of new regulations on greenhouse gas emissions for the cement factories, and the fact that we've had the opportunity to very effectively drive cement production out of this country and offshore to China, India, and maybe Mexico where they don't regulate at all the emissions, and then we think that somehow it's going to fix greenhouse gases. It's kind of insane that cleaning it up over here and driving people offshore to where they don't clean it up at all is going to help anything. It's going to hurt something, but that's a different argument.

In the week of October 3, the cement MACT and two related rules are expected to affect approximately 100 cement plants in America. The cost is estimated to be somewhere between $3-4 billion for a $6-8 billion industry. Just do the math. That's a tremendous burden if these rules come into effect. These stringent requirements will be cost prohibitive, and the American cement industry, quite frankly, could be at risk across the board. We could wake up finding ourselves importing from other countries, by necessity, a product that we now lead the world on.

You know, concrete is the second most used building material on Earth. The only thing that's used more than concrete is water. So Portland cement, which is the base ingredient in creating concrete, is as important to the building of infrastructure buildings, and basically everything that we live with, as anything on Earth. And we are in that business and we produce cement in various States in this country. We produce the Portland cement process, and these regulations would shut down factories and basically cause these international companies-- because all companies, whether they are based here or not, trade internationally--to move someplace else. And you wonder why jobs are going overseas. Well, in this case, in the cement industry, jobs will be going out of the country for one specific reason--government regulations beyond reasonableness.

The Cement Sector Regulatory Relief Act sponsored by Representative Sullivan, my good friend from Oklahoma, will provide a legislative stay of these rules--hold off, brother, we need to look at these things--and provide the EPA with at least 15 months to repropose and finalize new, and here's the magic word, achievable rules that do not destroy jobs and provide employers with an extended compliance period. Once again, quit cramming it down our throat. Quit saying you've got to do it tomorrow. Give us time to implement reasonable rules. And as we look at these rules, let's analyze what they are going to cost us in the way of jobs and in the way of our economy, and take that into consideration as you plan out the reasonable way forward. You'll find that many of the things that we'll be taking up in the next couple of months, right there is the secret key ingredient. We're going to come up with rules that you can achieve without destroying jobs that will still, over a long term, if you give time to comply, will meet the requirements that are necessary that people think to clean things up if they need to be cleaned up.

October 3 is when we are going to take that up. Sometime in the month of October or November we will take up another bill.

Oh, by the way, when you're talking about jobs in these Portland cement factories, these jobs are good jobs. These are labor jobs, but they are trained labor jobs. They are good jobs that pay somewhere between $65,000 and $85,000 each. Now, that's a good American job that ought to be done by an American, not by someone from China or from India because we have driven these industries out of our country.

Coal ash. H.R. 2273, these are anti-infrastructure regulations commonly referred to as coal ash rules that will cost hundreds of billions of dollars to fix, according to the existing regulations, affect everything from concrete production to building products, like wallboard. The result is an estimated loss of well over 100,000 jobs.

So, you know, at the end of this last month, we had no job gains. Not one job was created. That's what the report said. Well, just in the things that I've read to you so far as a result of these regulations, if all of this took place next month, just the numbers we've given, we're talking about 500,000 jobs so far that these bills that this Republican Congress is going to take up and try to get some reasonableness in this regulatory process.

It's time for this Congress to not surrender the lawmaking-- rulemaking is lawmaking--authority to regulators without overseeing what they are doing and making sure that they are not harming our economy and harming what is going on in America and the jobs that everybody needs. We can't afford to lose more jobs. We have to keep the people working who have jobs, and then we've got to enhance these businesses in such a way that they feel that they are not going to be threatened by surprise regulations; and, therefore, they are willing to say, I have got stable ground under my feet and I can start to expand and hire again and start to invest my capital which right now is sitting in the bank into new and better products, services, factories, et cetera.

So this coal ash bill that will cost this country 100,000 jobs, H.R. 2273, the Coal Residual Reuse and Management Act, sponsored by Representative David McKinley of West Virginia, will

create an enforceable minimum standard for regulation of coal ash by the States, allowing their use in a safe manner to produce products and protect jobs. It's just basically saying let the people who have this coal ash--and it's in certain States more than other places--use this coal ash and regulate this coal ash in such a manner that it does enhance the environment without destroying American jobs.

Once again, the Congress has got to act, and the Republican Congress is prepared to act.

Now, here comes my favorite of the crazy regulatory acts. The EPA is now proposing rules to regulate dust. Now, I live in Texas. We've got more highway miles than any other State in the Union, plenty of paved roads, but we've also got what we call farm roads and ranch roads. And in the western part of the State, those farm roads are covered with what we call caliche, which is a pulverized limestone, and over in the eastern part, they're covered with certain types of gravel. Some of it's river gravel and other things.

When a farmer drives up to his house on his driveway, it's usually got some kind of gravel or caliche on it and it kicks up dust. The EPA is now saying you can be fined for driving home every night on your gravel road. Now, what is your solution? Well, it's easy. Go out and spend $20,000 and pave your driveway--5 miles of driveway. So put pavement on it. Oh, but make sure you put a certain kind of pavement because it's got to have pavement that doesn't kick up dust. Arguably, if you use asphalt, it won't kick up dust, or concrete won't kick up dust--or not as much--but you might kick up a little more dust if you do what they call ``squirt top,'' which is what most farm roads are, which is tar with gravel spread on it. Until that gravel sets, it kicks up dust.

So even if you went to the expense to build a farm road that was a paved farm road, your paving method might kick up enough dust to get them to fine you and take money out of your pocket anyway. And the EPA now wants to regulate dust. California does this already. I asked one of my California colleagues, How do you keep from getting fined in California while having the dust regulations? Here's what they said: Water down your roads every day so it doesn't have dust. Mud is okay. Dust is bad.

Okay. Now that may be great for California. I don't know what the water situation is in California. But it hasn't rained in Texas. Some kids are about to go off to school and haven't seen rain in Texas, it hasn't rained so long. But seriously, I landed at the airport and looked out at this waterfall up here on the east coast, and said, Holy cow, we don't know what that looks like back home. Why don't they move all this water on the east coast down to Texas, where it hasn't rained, to my knowledge, in 6 months. And half of my neighboring county of Bastrop is burning to the ground because it's so dry and so hot, and we haven't had a rain in so long. We may be the only State in America that's praying that a hurricane will hit our coast so we can get some rain.

Are you going to tell that farmer that the only way he's getting that water that he's feeding his animals is through shallow wells that may have gone dry on him, or deep wells he has to drill to get to additional water under the ground, or windmills that are pumping that water, if you are out West, which are not that deep, and a lot of them have gone dry--his precious water that his livestock and his family needs to survive, he's got to take it out and squirt it on his road so he can get home at night?

Now, does that make economic sense to the American people? I don't think so. But then if you sit in the big EPA building in Washington, D.C., and have never even seen one of these roads and probably never been outside this Beltway, it may make perfect sense to that person in this paved world that we live in inside the Beltway. But it doesn't make sense to the average person that's trying to make a living all across the rural parts of the United States. And not just rural, but all across the United States where, unfortunately, we kick up dust. By the way, plowing kicks up dust. So then you can only plow when the fields are wet. Did you ever plow when the fields are wet? The only person who would sit in the EPA office and think that the farm products magically appear at their grocery store would know that you can't get off in a muddy field and plow effectively. Yes, you can turn up some moisture at the right time, and you can keep dust down, and farmers do. They don't want their top soil blowing away like it did in the Dust Bowl. They've learned their lesson about that, and they're doing the best they can, and I would commend them for doing it.

I went to school in Lubbock, Texas, back in the 1960s, at the end of what we call the Dust Storm era. And because of modern farming methods and so forth, they still have dust storms up there, but they're nothing like what they had in the fifties, nothing like what we had in the sixties, and I would argue that because of good modern farming methods, we keep the dust to a minimum. But we still sometimes have half the State of New Mexico blow through the panhandle of Texas.

Now, who are you going to fine? The State of New Mexico? The New Mexico farmers? The Texas farmers where it lands? Who's going to be responsible for all that dust that's out there in the air? Well, the EPA says somebody is, because they set regulations, and that would be a violation of these regulations. The biggest shortage of anything in this town is common sense. This is the most nonsensical rule of anything that's come down.

One of our new freshman Congressmen, Kristi Noem, is a smart lady. She knows rural America. She knows the ridiculousness of this set of EPA rules. She's come up with a farm dust bill which we will take up this winter to make EPA start using some common sense. The President was asked a question about this in one of his meetings here recently at a town hall. He sent this farmer on a bureaucratic wild goose chase and he never got anything in return. So as a result of that, that farmer, his efforts which--that wild goose chase produced nothing that was satisfactory--Representative Kristi Noem of South Dakota has H.R. 1633, which would protect American farmers and jobs by establishing a 1-year prohibition against revising any national ambient air quality standards applicable to coarse particulate matter--that's dust--and limiting Federal regulations of dust which are already regulated under State and local laws. In other words, let the States take care of it.

Let me tell you something. This is not one of those Texas brags. We had dust storms when I went to school where girls didn't wear dresses in the spring because it would pick up pea gravel the size of a dime with those 60-mile-an-hour winds coming across the plains and it would blow that gravel so hard against their bare legs, if they had on dresses it would literally cut them off if they tried to walk to class. Now that's an act of God. Nobody created that wind. And certainly pea gravel is about as big a particulate matter that would be flying around anywhere. But the Federal Government doesn't control the wind, and it never will. We've got to get some reasonableness back into what's going on.

Finally, because I've been talking about this now for over a year, and in my office we are tracking every regulatory agency, and every day we're seeing new and bizarre concepts of what we need to do from regulatory agencies--we're seeing bugs shut down major highway projects. When the President laughed and he said he learned that shovel-ready jobs are not really shovel-ready jobs, he should have gone on to tell you why many of those shovel-ready jobs weren't shovel ready, and it was because of regulations created by the regulatory agencies that stopped legitimate road and bridge projects that were funded. I have one in my district right now that is funded and the dozers are on the ground, ready to move, and that project is shut down by one of these many, many regulations. It's the same across the country.

We can't do today what FDR did. It's great to talk about what FDR did. I don't think it accomplished a whole lot in getting us out of the Depression, but that's my opinion. But the facts are you couldn't build a Hoover Dam today. Just up and go out there and start building a Hoover Dam. My Lord, just to build an electric power plant,

the number of regulatory agencies and permits that you would have to have would cover the walls of this Chamber before you even get to break ground. I've seen those rules put on walls. It's an amazing number of rules. We are a world of government control of everything. That's what these regulatory acts are about.

Finally, this Congressman, John Carter, because of looking at this stuff now just for the last year or so, I really and truly think the best thing we can do to give the stability to the employers who employ people is to basically ban the implementation of any new Federal regulations from now through January 31, 2013, guarantee a 2-year window for businesses to hire without any fear of new costs from regulations, and certain exceptions would be allowed for the military or foreign affairs or internal agency management and personnel rules. So they'd still be able to have regulations that fit in those categories and make sure that we keep our foreign operations and our military operating. They have to make rules to operate under. We would exempt those particular things. But the rest of them, we would say: Timeout. Continue your studies. Continue your discussions. I would encourage you to extend an arm out to business to say, This is what we're looking at. Let's hear what you think.

Let's start putting ourselves together with the idea that people are part of this environment, too.

People are really what makes up this country. Without people, we're just a barren land. People, to live, need to have a job, and the people who create jobs need to have a reason for hiring people and giving them a job. People who have ideas--the great driving force of America, the new idea. We just have so many examples of new ideas just in the high- tech industry and the communications industry, the revolution that has taken place just in the last 10 years of new ideas. Those new ideas come from the freedom to think and the belief that you can take that idea and put it into reality without somebody stepping on your toes and preventing you from doing it.

These regulations and this control from Washington, D.C., this cradle-to-grave mentality that seems to be running inside this beltway and the creation of these regulatory rules is putting the brakes on our economy and putting fear in the hearts of American entrepreneurs and businesspeople and employers who want to make their business better by hiring those good people that we're graduating from our colleges and universities, those good people that are trained in trained skills that we need to put to work in America, and we'll put them to work in real jobs, not government-created jobs with borrowed money but real jobs that produce something and create wealth and make us and continue to keep us the most prosperous Nation on Earth.

It doesn't come from government; it comes from the people. The people are the wealth of this Nation--their ideas, their entrepreneurship, the investment of their own personal capital, and their willingness to take a risk on America because they know America is great. And to people who don't think we're great or think that they're smarter and can be inside this beltway and make rules that can do a better job of telling you how to run your life or how to drive home on your farm road than you know, I say, Get out of the way.

That's what this fall is going to be about. We're going to be bringing these things up. And these are things that are going to be discussed and talked about and voted on this fall because we Republicans believe that the right path to create jobs and create wealth in America is to get the regulators to start thinking in terms of creating jobs, not destroying jobs; enhancing businesses, not negating businesses; and to put America back to work.

And if we put America back to work, all the rest gets better: the debt goes down; the tax revenues go up; the country has more to pay back the people we owe, which ought to be our first priority. We can get our financial house back in order. We can get our credit rating back that was taken away from us, and we can start operating like America has always operated. The business of this country is business; and as much as that was criticized back in the twenties, that statement is true today just like it was then. It's the American people that give the American people jobs, not the government.

Let's put the brakes on these regulatory things. We're going to do that this fall. I look forward to it. Pay attention to it. Members of this House and anyone around the country who has an interest, pay attention to it. Give us your input because we are bound and determined to level out and stabilize that playing field that business creates jobs on so that we can put America back to work.

Mr. Speaker, I thank you for your time, and I yield back the balance of my time.

I want to thank my friend from South Carolina for yielding

me the customary 30 minutes, and I yield myself such time as I may consume.

(Mr. McGOVERN asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in opposition to this structured rule and the underlying legislation. I should point out to my colleagues that Democrats yesterday introduced an amendment in the Rules Committee to make this an open rule, but, unfortunately, every single Republican on the Rules Committee voted against making this an open process. So much for Speaker Boehner's pledge for an open House of Representatives.

This rule makes in order six amendments; six out of 16 submitted, less than half that were offered to the Rules Committee. Included in those amendments was an amendment by Mr. Kissell which would have required, essentially, that all the components of the infrastructure that would create these holding facilities for steel ash would have to be made with American products, so that it wouldn't be made with Chinese steel, it would be made with American steel, American concrete, and American rebar. I have no idea why that was controversial. The American people are worried about jobs, and there was an opportunity to make an amendment in order that would have protected and ensured American jobs, and they wanted no part of it.

Mr. Speaker, once again, the Republicans are jamming a rule through the House that shuts down the debate and cherry-picks a handful of amendments.

I should also point out that this bill that we're debating here today didn't even have a hearing--no hearings. I thought we were going to adhere to regular order, and that means that the committees of jurisdiction hold a hearing on the legislation--not a general hearing on the topic, but on the legislation. No hearings were held on this.

Discussion on this bill the other night in the Rules Committee was, I thought, kind of comical. The chairman of the Rules Committee, someone who's served in this institution a very long time, said he would have preferred an open rule but said that the schedule forced him to vote against my amendment to make this an open rule. The schedule? The same House schedule where we go into recess every 2 weeks?

Mr. Speaker, the American people want us to address the challenges that are facing our economy. They want us to be focused on the issue of jobs. And we're not legislating under this schedule that the Republicans have put into place. Since there were no hearings on this bill and since there were a lot of amendments that were offered, we should have had an open process. And if it took us a couple of days to debate and vote on this bill, so be it. That's the way this place is supposed to work.

Yesterday on the floor, we wasted time debating an abortion bill that is going absolutely nowhere, a bill that is designed to inflame and divide our country. I would suggest to my friends on the other side of the aisle, instead of bringing up hot-button social issues designed to fire up the right-wing base, maybe they should think about bringing a jobs bill to the floor of the House of Representatives.

In reality, Mr. Speaker, we should be debating the President's jobs bill, and yet the Republican leadership has refused to allow us even to have a vote on the bill. If my friends on the Republican side don't want to vote for a jobs bill, then they can vote against it, but we ought to be able to have a vote on the President's jobs bill.

The fact is that it's been 281 days that we've been in session--281 days without a jobs bill, 281 days that the Republicans have stood on the sidelines while Americans struggle to make ends meet, struggle to put food on the table, struggle to make house payments, struggle to find a job to pay their bills. We need a real jobs plan, not another bumper sticker bill demonizing the EPA, which is what today's bill is all about.

The American people don't want us wasting time on these trivial bills, bills that are going to go nowhere. What they want us to do is to pass a jobs bill. They want, Mr. Speaker, us to pass the President's jobs bill. Don't take my word for it. The NBC/Wall Street Journal poll that was released this week shows that nearly two-thirds of Americans want the President's jobs bill. The poll finds that 63 percent of Americans support the President's bill and that only 32 percent oppose it. It's not even close. The American people want action on jobs. They want to go back to work. They want us to do something meaningful, and they want us to do it now.

Mr. Speaker, if there's one thing that the new House majority has been consistent on this year, it's their almost religious crusade against the EPA. H.R. 2273 fits right in with their political agenda to undermine the agency at any cost and, in the process, threaten the health and safety of the American people, all under the guise of job creation. I'm appalled that that is their idea of a jobs bill.

Mr. Speaker, coal combustion waste is enormously toxic. It contains an array of the most harmful chemicals out there--mercury, lead, cadmium, hexavalent chromium, and arsenic--that are especially devastating to the development of children. Over the years, billions of tons of coal ash have been dumped in poorly designed waste pits and containment sites in communities across the country.

I want to remind my colleagues on the other side of the aisle of the catastrophic coal ash spill in Kingston, Tennessee, in 2008 where 1.1 billion gallons of liquid coal waste seeped out of a contaminated pool and contaminated local drinking water. I would also remind my Republican colleagues that it cost the taxpayers more than $1 billion to clean up that disaster, and that residents in the Kingston area are still dealing with its continuing effects.

H.R. 2273 is a bad piece of legislation, and it flies in the face of commonsense safety precautions when disposing of hazardous materials. By leaving the establishment of coal ash safety standards solely to the discretion of States, this bill simply encourages a ``race to the bottom'' where the State willing to have the least protections will become the dumping ground for the entire country. And H.R. 2273 leaves taxpayers on the hook for paying for another cataclysmic disaster like the one in Tennessee.

Mr. Speaker, I don't think any of my colleagues would want their families, their wives or husbands or children, living anywhere near the vicinity of a coal ash dumping site.

H.R. 2273 is another Republican bill that undermines commonsense health and safety protections from toxic chemicals and ultimately lowers the quality of living for millions of American families.

I urge my colleagues to reject this rule and instead send it back to the Rules Committee. Let's have an open rule. Given the fact, again, the bill didn't have a hearing, we should have an open rule here. I would urge my Republican colleagues to finally get to work on putting the American people back to work.

With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

I yield myself such time as I may consume.

To the gentleman who just spoke, I would remind him that we're debating the rule here. We could have this debate about whether or not there are health concerns here or not. I happen to believe there are, and I think most scientists believe that there are health concerns that we should take into consideration here.

But what's wrong with an open rule? What was so wrong with bringing an amendment to the floor that would have required that the components to build these containers, if you will, be made of materials made in the United States? What's wrong with U.S. steel or U.S. concrete? Why is that a controversy?

So I would say to my colleagues on the other side who like to say that they're open, let this be an open rule, especially since there were no hearings on this particular bill.

My colleague from South Carolina got up and he said he was confused. I'm sorry he's confused. Let me try to un-confuse him about one thing, which is, if you want to create jobs, bring the President's jobs bill to the floor. Economists predict that the American Jobs Act could create up to 1.9 million jobs next year and boost economic growth by about 2 percentage points. You've got a twofer here. Not only do you put people back to work, but you help to reduce our deficit when you put more people to work. If we could lower the unemployment rate in this country by a few percentage points, we could lower our deficit. Why is that so controversial?

Rather than focusing on partisan bills that don't mean much for the economy, it's time for the Republicans to take up the American Jobs Act, which is fully paid for, includes bipartisan ideas, will create jobs, and grow our economy now. What we should be doing every single day on this House floor is focusing on jobs, on putting people back to work. Instead, today is another bill attacking the EPA, and yesterday we did an abortion bill. I mean, we're talking about everything but how to put people back to work, so I would urge my colleagues to get their priorities straight.

With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

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

I would remind my colleague on the Rules Committee, the gentlelady from North Carolina, that over half the Senate--over half the Senate-- voted to bring up the President's jobs bill. Over half the Senate supports the President's jobs bill. But under the arcane rules in the United States Senate, you need 60 votes to have lunch, never mind pass a bill.

So it wasn't defeated. A majority actually support the President's jobs bill. It is the Republicans who are obstructing this legislation, who are using procedural tricks to keep this bill from coming up before the United States Senate for a clean up-or-down vote. It is Republicans in the House of Representatives who are saying that none of us will have an opportunity to vote on the President's bill.

I mean, here's a good idea. You bring up what you want to bring up; you let us bring up what we want to bring up. The President's bill, as I said, is very popular. The legislation, I would remind my friend from South Carolina, is paid for, is paid for.

The legislation's specifics as well as the idea of taxing the very, very, very wealthy to pay for it are popular with the American public, and that's according to an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll.

So, I mean, what are you afraid of? If you don't want to vote for legislation to help put people back to work, then you don't have to vote for it. You go home and explain to your constituents why you're against the bill.

What we should be doing here in this U.S. House of Representatives is, every day, debating and legislating on ways to be able to put this country back to work. You want to reduce the deficit? Put people back to work. If you want to improve the economy, put people back to work. It's simple. And we're doing everything in this place but debating legislation to put people back to work.

I reserve the balance of my time.

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

I would say to the gentlelady from West Virginia, I don't know how many cosponsors there are on the bill, but I want to vote for the bill. I'm willing to propose a unanimous consent request that we amend this rule and we bring up H.R. 12 today. If the gentleman on the other side of the aisle is willing, let's bring it up and have that debate right now.

I am happy to yield to the gentleman if he wants to agree to that unanimous consent.

Well, the silence, Mr. Speaker, is deafening.

The fact of the of the of the matter is that we are going to finish up today at 2 o'clock or 3 o'clock or whatever and then go on another week recess when the American people are struggling, when there are millions of people who are out of work, when there are millions of families struggling to try to pay their mortgages, when there are millions of families who are trying to figure out how they're going to have the resources to send their kids to school. This is the best we can do? Come on, we can do a lot better than this, Mr. Speaker.

I would again urge my colleagues to get serious and, if you don't like the President's jobs bill, then vote against it. It's that simple. But let us bring a bill to the floor that by every measure, by every public opinion poll that is out there, is popular. The American people want it. You always like to invoke polls. Well, the polls overwhelmingly show the American people support this. So let's bring that bill to the floor.

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

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

My colleague on the Rules Committee from South Carolina said we should all work in a bipartisan way, and I agree. And that's what the President attempted to do. His jobs bill represents a series of initiatives that were all bipartisan, that were all bipartisan until he announced he wanted to move on it, and then all of a sudden it became a partisan deal. Everything in the President's jobs package has been sponsored in a bipartisan way. So I don't understand why now. If you want to call it the Republican idea, I don't care what you want to call it, but bring it to the floor and allow us to be able to debate these bipartisan initiatives that will put people back to work.

Again, I would say about the rule, where's the openness here? I mean, the majority of amendments that were offered were not made in order, including an amendment that would require that the building materials for these holding tanks be made in America. Why is that so controversial? Why is making things in America a radical idea to my Republican friends? Why is it somehow a bad thing to insist that the steel used to build these plants be made in the United States of America and not China? I mean, we all should be on the side of American workers here, and that means standing up and making sure those jobs are here in the United States. So let's open this rule up so we have an opportunity to protect American jobs.

With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

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

Again, I appreciate the words of my colleague from Illinois, but H.R. 1391 is not H.R. 2273. There was no legislative hearing on H.R. 2273.

I yield to the gentleman from Illinois.

I reclaim my time.

So the new definition of openness under the Republican majority is you don't have to have a legislative hearing on a bill that you bring to the floor, but you can say it doesn't matter or that you did, or whatever. This is not the way this place is supposed to work. This process is not what my friends on the other side of the aisle promised.

Again, I have yet to hear a good reason why this is not an open rule. Given the fact that there was no hearing on this specific bill, given the fact that there were a number of germane amendments that were not made in order, given the fact that during the debate there may be Members on both sides of the aisle who may have ideas they may want to bring to the floor and amend this bill, and also given the fact that one of the amendments that was not made in order was an amendment that would have required that the materials that are used to make these coal ash containers be made in the United States of America, why is that such a heavy lift for my friends on the other side of the aisle?

With that, Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Garamendi).

I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, a new study from Tufts University shows that we can create tens of thousands of new jobs by requiring safe disposal of coal ash. Ensuring that coal ash disposal sites protect human health and the environment will take work. It will take construction workers, equipment operators, and engineers. And this isn't a ``make work'' effort. These jobs will provide tremendous benefit to the communities in which they take place. But these jobs will not happen if we pass this bill. This bill basically preserves the status quo. So if we want to create jobs, I think we need to vote this bill down.

Again, Mr. Speaker, we're still trying to get an understanding on this side of the aisle as to why we don't have an open rule and why an amendment that would require that job stability infrastructure for all of this, that all the materials be made in America. If we want to protect American jobs and create American jobs, we have to stand up and fight for American jobs and fight for American workers.

With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, let me close by, again, first of all, saying that this rule should be an open rule and that, at a very minimum, the amendment that would require that the materials that would be used to construct any of these containers be made in the United States of America. It's important that we stand up for American jobs. It's important that we make it in America. And so this rule deserves to be defeated based on that alone.

This process is also bad and flawed because there was no hearing on this particular piece of legislation, and the ranking member of the full Energy and Commerce Committee did not think, based on what he said, that this was a particularly bipartisan, open process. In fact, there are some Members who supported this bill in committee who will not support it on the floor because of promises that were supposedly made that were not kept. So, for a whole bunch of reasons on process, we should defeat this rule.

Secondly, Mr. Speaker, on the underlying bill, I would remind my colleagues that part of our job here is to protect the safety and well- being of the people we represent. Coal ash contains arsenic, lead, and many other toxic materials that can escape into the air or water if the material isn't properly contained. We should be concerned about the safety implications here. We should be concerned about any consequences that may result in poor regulation and poor oversight. And to basically, again, take this time on the floor to again take another slap at the EPA because that's the favorite punching bag of my friends on the Republican side of the aisle, I think, is not a credit to this institution and is not doing what we were elected to do, and that is to make sure that we are upholding the safety and protecting the people of this country.

My colleagues on the other side of the aisle say that the problem is all regulation, only EPA regulation. There was an interesting opinion piece that appeared in The New York Times by a fellow named Bruce Bartlett--he had held senior policy roles in the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations, served on the staff of Jack Kemp--who did a piece for The New York Times entitled, ``Misrepresentations, Regulations and Jobs.''

I'll read a couple of the lines from his piece. He says:

``Republicans have a problem''--and he's Republican himself. ``Republicans have a problem. People are increasingly concerned about unemployment, but Republicans have nothing to offer them.''

He further says: ``No hard evidence is offered for this claim'' that all the uncertainty within business is tied to regulation.'' He says that notwithstanding the lack of evidence, the Republicans repeated this assertion ``endlessly throughout the conservative echo chamber.''

He also says: ``While concerns about regulation have risen during the Obama administration, they are about the same now as they were during Ronald Reagan's administration, according to an analysis of the federation's data by the Economic Policy Institute.''

He ends by saying this: ``In my opinion, regulatory uncertainty is a canard invented by Republicans that allows them to use current economic problems to pursue an agenda supported by the business community year in and year out. In other words, it is a simple case of political opportunism, not a serious effort to deal with high unemployment.''

I bring that up not to say that regulation isn't a problem and that we should not deal in a constructive way with needless regulation--the President said that in his speech to the House when he introduced his jobs bill--but it is not the only problem out there. And to suggest that bringing bills like this to the floor are going to somehow create jobs is just patently false.

If we want to create jobs in this country, we should bring the President's jobs bill to the floor. Again, the American people overwhelmingly support what the President outlined in his speech before the Congress; and all the things that he articulated, I say to my friend from South Carolina, were bipartisan ideas. Republicans and Democrats all cosponsored legislation on various pieces of his proposal. Why now they have become controversial is beyond me.

I'll just close with this: At some point I hope my friends on the other side of the aisle will get serious about the issue of jobs; at some point I hope they will bring something meaningful to this House floor that, if passed, will actually put people back to work, because up to this point the Republican leadership has failed miserably. And I think people all across this country--and you see this reflected in the public opinion polls--have had it. They're tired of this constant agenda of hot-button issues and of trivial matters that we debate passionately and important ones not at all.

Mr. Speaker, I would urge my colleagues to defeat the previous question. If we defeat the previous question, I will offer an amendment to the rule to make in order an amendment by Mr. Garamendi of California which was submitted to the Rules Committee. They didn't make it in order even though it is germane and fully paid for and meets every requirement of the rules of the House. The amendment would make sure that construction materials used to build holding facilities for coal ash are made in America.

Mr. Speaker, 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.

Again, Mr. Speaker, let me repeat, the amendment we want to make in order would make sure that construction materials used to build holding facilities for coal ash are made in America. Why that should be controversial is beyond me. Why anybody on either side should oppose that is beyond me.

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.

[From the New York Times, Oct. 4, 2011]

Misrepresentations, Regulations and Jobs

(By Bruce Bartlett)

Bruce Bartlett held senior policy roles in the Reagan and

George H.W. Bush administrations and served on the staffs of

Representatives Jack Kemp and Ron Paul.

Republicans have a problem. People are increasingly

concerned about unemployment, but Republicans have nothing to

offer them. The G.O.P. opposes additional government spending

for jobs programs and, in fact, favors big cuts in spending

that would be likely to lead to further layoffs at all levels

of government.

Today's Economist Perspectives from expert contributors

Republicans favor tax cuts for the wealthy and

corporations, but these had no stimulative effect during the

George W. Bush administration and there is no reason to

believe that more of them will have any today. And the

Republicans' oft-stated concern for the deficit makes tax

cuts a hard sell.

These constraints have led Republicans to embrace the idea

that government regulation is the principal factor holding

back employment. They assert that Barack Obama has unleashed

a tidal wave of new regulations, which has created

uncertainty among businesses and prevents them from investing

and hiring.

No hard evidence is offered for this claim; it is simply

asserted as self-evident and repeated endlessly throughout

the conservative echo chamber.

On Aug. 29, the House majority leader, Eric Cantor of

Virginia, sent a memorandum to members of the House

Republican Conference, telling them to make the repeal of

job-destroying regulations the key point in the Republican

jobs agenda.

``By pursuing a steady repeal of job-destroying

regulations, we can help lift the cloud of uncertainty

hanging over small and large employers alike, empowering them

to hire more workers,'' Mr. Cantor said.

Evidence supporting Mr. Cantor's contention that

deregulation would increase unemployment is very weak. For

some years, the Bureau of Labor Statistics has had a program

that tracks mass layoffs. In 2007, the program was expanded,

and businesses were asked their reasons for laying off

workers. Among the reasons offered was ``government

regulations/intervention.'' There is only partial data for

2007, but we have data since then through the second quarter

of this year.

The table below presents the bureau's data. As one can see,

the number of layoffs nationwide caused by government

regulation is minuscule and shows no evidence of getting

worse during the Obama administration. Lack of demand for

business products and services is vastly more important.

Bureau of Labor Statistics

These results are supported by surveys. During June and

July, Small Business Majority asked 1,257 small-business

owners to name the two biggest problems they face. Only 13

percent listed government regulation as one of them. Almost

half said their biggest problem was uncertainty about the

future course of the economy--another way of saying a lack of

customers and sales.

The Wall Street Journal's July survey of business

economists found, ``The main reason U.S. companies are

reluctant to step up hiring is scant demand, rather than

uncertainty over government policies, according to a majority

of economists.''

In August, McClatchy Newspapers canvassed small businesses,

asking them if regulation was a big problem. It could find no

evidence that this was the case.

``None of the business owners complained about regulation

in their particular industries, and most seemed to welcome

it,'' McClatchy reported. ``Some pointed to the lack of

regulation in mortgage lending as a principal cause of the

financial crisis that brought about the Great Recession of

2007-9 and its grim aftermath.''

The latest monthly survey of its members by the National

Federation of Independent Business shows that poor sales are

far and away their biggest problem. While concerns about

regulation have risen during the Obama administration, they

are about the same now as they were during Ronald Reagan's

administration, according to an analysis of the federation's

data by the Economic Policy Institute.

Academic research has also failed to find evidence that

regulation is a significant factor in unemployment. In a blog

post on Sept. 5, Jay Livingston, a sociologist at Montclair

State University, hypothesized that if regulation were a

major problem it would show up in the unemployment rates of

industries where regulation has been increasing: the

financial sector, medical care and mining/fuel extraction. He

found that unemployment rates in these sectors were actually

well below the national average. Unemployment is much higher

in those industries that one would expect to suffer most from

a lack of aggregate demand: construction, leisure and

hospitality, business services, wholesale and retail trade,

and durable goods.

Gary Burtless, an economist at the Brookings Institution,

asserts that if businesses were really concerned about rising

regulations, they would be investing now to avoid them. But

there is no indication that this is the case. ``The real

reason for anemic investment and hiring is that businesses

are not confident there will be enough potential customers to

justify expansion or even routine capital replacement right

now,'' he says.

In my opinion, regulatory uncertainty is a canard invented

by Republicans that allows them to use current economic

problems to pursue an agenda supported by the business

community year in and year out. In other words, it is a

simple case of political opportunism, not a serious effort to

deal with high unemployment.

Will the gentleman yield?

I would just remind my friend that you have already brought up 30 measures under a closed rule since you took over. Again, I'm just trying to keep you to your promise that you made about all this new openness, which we haven't seen. And today is an example of that.

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

Mr. Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks on H.R. 2273 and to insert extraneous material.

I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of H.R. 2273, the Coal Residuals Reuse and Management Act.

Fifty percent of our Nation's electricity generation comes from coal. This means that we need to do something to address the long-term disposal issues presented by these wastes. This bill is a measured, appropriate, protective response to the issue of coal waste generated to safely, responsibly, and affordably provide heat to communities across the country.

The trash we throw out daily contains everything from milk cartons to household cleaning items and pesticides, all mixed and destined for the same destination. The chemical characteristics of coal ash put it somewhere in between these two extremes. For years, States have been successfully managing these nonhazardous wastes through their municipal solid waste programs.

Yet even though EPA has confirmed on multiple occasions that coal ash does not trigger its own toxicity test to be labeled as hazardous, regulation was proposed by the EPA in June 2010 that would do just that. EPA's regulation would have prevented coal ash from being governed under the municipal solid waste programs despite its nonhazardous nature and EPA saying in its proposed rule that it preferred the municipal solid waste option.

The results of EPA's regulations would have been devastating effects on jobs, higher utility rates at home, and crippling of a very successful emerging byproducts industry.

H.R. 2273 strikes the right balance to provide certainty to producers and recyclers of coal combustion byproducts at a time when recyclers do not have time to wait. It also facilitates a safe and appropriate disposal and monitoring of coal combustion byproducts.

The bill establishes, for the first time ever, comprehensive Federal standards specific to coal ash disposal. These new standards for the management and disposal of coal combustion residuals are based on existing Federal regulations issued by EPA to protect human health and the environment.

H.R. 2273 provides a benchmark for States to regulate under their existing municipal solid waste programs, which are already required to meet this Federal baseline of protection. These standards will include groundwater protection and detection and monitoring, liners at landfills, corrective action when environmental damage occurs, structural stability criteria, financial assurance, and recordkeeping.

EPA will continue to have an oversight role to ensure States are meeting their obligations. EPA will review the contents of a State permit program and determine whether it meets the minimum specifications set in H.R. 2273. They will also review State implementation of permit programs to make sure States are implementing a permit program meeting the minimum specifications.

However, discretion will remain with the States to regulate coal ash even more stringently than the Federal standards set in H.R. 2273. And should a State fail to meet these baseline standards or decline to regulate coal ash, EPA has the authority under the bill to come into a State and operate a program.

H.R. 2273 received strong 3-1 bipartisan support when it was favorably passed out of the Energy and Commerce Committee. We have continued to work hard since then with colleagues on both sides of the aisle to clarify and address additional concerns reflected in the manager's amendment. This has resulted in a bipartisan product that empowers States, saves jobs, controls public and private costs, and protects people and the environment.

H.R. 2273 has endorsements by a diverse stakeholder community as well from the Environmental Council of the States, State environmental officials, the beneficial use community, labor unions, and a coalition of regulated stakeholders.

Mr. Chairman, some of our colleagues are going to oppose this bill based upon this information or misguided policy. That is unfortunate. We will hear plenty about that in this debate. I urge Members to pay attention to the debate as many of our Nation's environmental laws already apply to the concerns being raised. More laws requiring the same thing to be done that is required in other laws do not improve the environment nor the law. We need to be serious about that point.

Most importantly, our economy continues to struggle and businesses are trying to figure out how to get out from underneath the weight of overly burdensome regulations. H.R. 2273 is a jobs bill that gives us yet another chance in the House to regulatory certainty and unemployment relief with passage of H.R. 2273.

This bill protects the working men and women of this country. It encourages jobs in road building and construction industries and encourages an affordable and more secure standard of living in this country for all Americans and their families. This bill is worthy of all my colleagues' support.

I urge my colleagues to vote for H.R. 2273, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Latta), a primary mover on this bill.

Madam Chairman, I yield 1 minute to a member of the subcommittee, the gentleman from Mississippi (Mr. Harper).

Madam Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

I will just tell my friend from Florida, H.R. 2273 includes structural integrity inspection requirements on impoundments that do not exist today. They allow only those facilities that are structurally sound and operating in a protective manner to continue to operate.

In this Kingston debate, what is never mentioned is that in the cleanup of the Kingston spill, all that waste went into nonhazardous landfills because they were not hazards. This is really a debate about hazardous and nonhazardous. EPA has numerous times ruled that coal combustion residual is not hazardous. That's why there's confusion.

I yield 2 minutes to my colleague, also a member of the committee, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Olson).

I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Johnson).

Before I yield time to my colleague from Tennessee, let me ask the time remaining.

Thank you, Madam Chairman.

I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Just to my friend from Virginia, I hope he will look at the manager's amendment, because in the manager's amendment it beefs up the list of constituents for groundwater detection and assessment monitoring specific to coal combustion residuals. This is something we received from your side of the aisle that they wanted more clarity. That's what the manager's amendment does on runoff aspects of the Clean Water Act.

The other thing is, if the toxic sludge, as you had defined it, was so toxic, why did it go into municipal landfills and not into toxic landfills?

The reality is the cleanup materials did not go into toxic landfills. So we just want to clear up some false statements here.

I would now like to yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Tennessee, Dr. Roe.

Madam Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Just to my friend from Minnesota, I would quote the United Mine Workers letter that says: According to a June study, there's an estimate of the 183,000 to 363,000 possible job losses if we do not pass this bill. So for those who really want to effect, there will be-- I mean, this claim that this hurts the recycling when, then, you define coal combustion residuals as ``toxic'' is nonsensical. It really makes no sense.

If you really want to encourage recycling, this bill protects the recycling industry. It protects coal, fly ash from going into concrete. If you label this ``toxic,'' which is what EPA's trying to do, that's very misleading. And I think even my friends on the other side are having a hard time grappling with what the EPA's trying to do because that's the direction we want to do, they want to move it to.

With that, I would like to yield 2 minutes to my colleague from Illinois (Mr. Hultgren).

Madam Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

I just want to remind my colleagues that they will be interested to know the EPA noted in its June 2010 proposed regulation for coal combustion residuals that municipal solid waste rules provide an appropriate, comprehensive framework for regulating coal combustion residuals. That's from the EPA, the same EPA people say we're trying to gut.

And I will continue to hold up the Veritas study that says, because of the recycling aspect of coal ash that goes into concrete, if you claim it to be toxic, you can no longer use coal ash in concrete for roads and for bridges and for buildings. That's the debate. And then when you tear down those structures, they would have to go in the toxic landfills. I also remind my colleagues that, from the spill, none of the spill cleanup went to toxic landfills.

With that, I yield 5 minutes to my colleague from West Virginia (Mr. McKinley), the author of the legislation.

Madam Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

To my friend from Virginia, he is correct that some States have laxer standards. In fact, your Governor sent us a letter in which I quote, ``H.R. 2273 is a realistic approach to dealing with CCR, although it would require effort to implement in Virginia.''

So our point is this is going to help those States that are weak to implement higher standards. That's just your Governor, but that's what he says in a letter to us in support of this legislation.

If you label something ``toxic,'' it's not going to be reused, I can guarantee you, just because of the threat to the coal combustion residual community. The recyclers have no market. Who wants to build a school with concrete when the EPA may, 6 months or a year from now, say, That concrete is all toxic? So it's already had a negative impact in that job sector, and we've quoted studies both back and forth.

The manager's amendment requires an assessment for all of these constituents that you identified. I would just highlight the fact that just because it's a constituent doesn't mean it's hazardous.

This blue line is the hazardous level.

The green is the amount.

You could make the claim that there is hazardous material in Honey Nut Cheerios. The question is: What's the amount? And that's what this gets to is the amount.

EPA has consistently said this doesn't raise to the standard of toxic. Even under the Clinton administration, when I served here, their EPA said it doesn't rise to the standard. The fear of EPA involvement is what's causing a problem in the recycling sector. Where is all this waste going to go? It's going to fill up the landfills. In 2 years, all the landfills will be filled up unless we continue to recycle this coal fly ash.

I yield to the gentleman from Virginia.

Reclaiming my time, the manager's amendment that will be debated will talk about, for the first time, an analysis on run-on and runoff, which was the recommendation from the folks on your side of the aisle for us to consider, which we have now included. We'll take that up in the manager's amendment debate when we get to the amendment.

You have a lot of time, but I would be happy to yield. But I do want to have time to close.

Reclaiming my time, that's why this new standard under the municipal and solid waste act will have liners for the first time. Right now, there are no liners. That's a better argument from past years, but this is a fix. This is a fix to that issue of leaching out. This is a fix to the possibility of the damage because we're going to be able to look at that in working in conjunction with the EPA, and of course, the people closest to the citizens are the State and local levels.

I thank the gentleman.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Chairman, I yield myself the balance of my time.

This has been a good discussion and a good debate. With regard to the State border issue in our opening statements and comments, what we highlighted was the fact that current Federal law applies to hazardous material. CERCLA still applies, and EPA air quality standards still apply. Those laws are still in effect across States. If they are having an impact, EPA has authority under CERCLA and under RCRA, with imminent and substantial endangerment, to take action to force a remedy and cleanup.

So our debate has always been that that's covered. Let's try to address the impoundment issue, the leaching issue, some standards. The Municipal Solid Waste laws are very, very successful. I would argue, if you want to talk about toxicity, there are probably many more chemicals in a municipal solid waste landfill than the 7 to 12 that you mentioned in coal combustion residual; and out of the 80 tests, the standards are much lower than the toxic standard under this test.

So this is a focus on jobs. This is a focus on recycling. That sector is being ravaged just by the threat. This is an important bill, and I am glad my colleague from West Virginia has brought this to this Chamber. It has been a great debate, and I look forward to the amendment discussion.

Madam Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Madam Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk.

Madam Chairman, for the purpose of a colloquy, I would like to yield to the gentleman from West Virginia.

To my friend from West Virginia, my response is that it does not.

My amendment keeps that door to EPA alternative regulation closed and locked. The language the gentleman cites merely references law that is already on the books, as you heard in the general debate. Section 4010(c) of RCRA was enacted years ago to protect human health and the environment. My amendment merely clarifies that your bill does not change that.

Again to my colleague and friend from West Virginia, my amendment in no way reduces the administrator's authority to take into account facility capabilities. That authority is unchanged by both my amendment and your underlying bill.

Madam Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

I appreciate the ranking member's accepting the amendment. We do think it improves the bill.

I would like to yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Gene Green).

I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from New Mexico (Mr. Pearce) to speak in support of the bill.

I want to again thank the ranking member for accepting this, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Madam Chair, I seek time in opposition.

Thank you, Madam Chairman.

I appreciate the comments of my colleague from California because obviously there is a recognition that we have been talking, we have been trying to get some bipartisan support. As tough as that may seem in this Chamber and in this Congress, there is a recognition that we're trying. I think the ranking member gave us an ``atta boy'' just by allowing that voice vote on the manager's amendment, and I appreciate that.

Part of this debate is that if States are allowing any type of waste to affect their constituents, don't you think that the States are going to get involved? If you use the Maryland example, Maryland has aggressively changed its own permitting processes based upon those experiences. So they've done it. Again, States are closer to their people. I can imagine the calls State reps and State senators got when that occurred. The basic bill says coal combustion residual which doesn't rise to the level of toxicity should be treated as that in liners and the like. That's really the debate we have.

The EPA's technical assistance which was placed on the ranking member's committee's Web site mentions that this requirement could be implicitly inferred based upon the drafting of the bill. And I would just say on page 10, line 8, if the administrator determines that a State determination under this paragraph does not accurately reflect the needs for the management of coal combustion residuals in the State, the administrator may treat such State determination as a deficiency. And if it's a deficiency, then the EPA can then be involved.

So we think that the issue that my colleague from California has raised has been addressed, and we look forward to debate of the further amendments.

I yield back the balance of my time.

I rise in opposition to the amendment.

Thank you.

My friend from Massachusetts has great rhetorical skills, and I have finally made it to the big time where I can do it as managing a bill and addressing amendments.

He wasn't on the floor when we talked about the letter from the Governor of Virginia, who admits that this bill is going to force the State of Virginia to do more. It's because of this bill, he says,--and I quoted it before--that will require effort to implement in Virginia, such as regulatory amendments for conformance, and notifying and seeking EPA approval.

So here is the Governor saying, We support this bill, and we know we're going to have to do more.

I think that's positive.

We're talking about how H.R. 2273 already includes structural integrity requirements that would allow only those facilities that are operating in a protective manner to continue to operate. Moreover, EPA has just completed a nationwide evaluation--I'm sure you're going to be happy to hear this, Mr. Markey--and in this evaluation they said that they have found none, zero, zip of these impoundments to be unsafe.

Now, that's our own EPA. And we're glad that they're out. They're now checking these impoundment areas. I think a lot of this is a result of moving this bill and having now at least a standard for liners. I think from our testimony in subcommittee, liners are important. Liners are what we do in municipal solid waste. Liners are what we should do with coal combustion residuals. Well, this bill ensures that we have liners in the coal combustion residual ponds and facilities.

So I think it's a very exciting time. It protects jobs. It helps for, obviously, the recycling of this in the industry sector. It helps save jobs. I think the amendment only hurts the passage and movement of this bill.

I urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' on the Markey amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Thank you, Madam Chairman.

A couple of things. The gentleman's well-meaning amendment requires public notice and comment, including from the administrator of the EPA, before the State submits its certification paperwork to the administrator of the EPA.

There's confusion as to what this bill does. For the first time, States have to conform to the EPA standards. I read this before in another part of the debate on page 10. If the administrator determines--this is the administrator of the EPA. If the administrator determines that a State determination under this paragraph does not accurately reflect the need for the management of coal combustion residuals in the State, the administrator may treat such determination as deficient.

So there's really no purpose for my colleague's amendment. The EPA has the ability to say good State program, bad State program. The Governor of Virginia says we're already going to have to do more than we do now because of this bill. And section 7004(b) of RCRA requires public participation.

So part of our debate is: Why do we have to continue to put more laws on the books when those provisions are already covered under RCRA? Requires public participation in any enforcement of any regulation guideline, information, or program under this act, including at the Federal and State level. This requirement is not waived, it's not amended, it's not altered or affected under this piece of legislation. Those requirements under RCRA apply to H.R. 2273.

The gentleman's amendment is unnecessary, it's duplicative, and I ask my colleagues to reject it.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Thank you, Madam Chairman.

Let me thank my colleague for offering an amendment to the bill.

A couple of things have been discussed during the debate. Obviously, she mentioned Kingston, Tennessee. What she has to remember is that was TVA. That was a government entity. That wasn't a natural disaster. That was a manmade disaster by a Federal Government, in essence, an agency.

I've stated numerous times what this bill does. It sets a standard that the States have to comply with to get certified by the EPA. Of course, in that process, under Federal law currently and locally, there is an opportunity for comment.

In addition, EPA, within the last week, announced that soon it will be seeking comments under the Notice of Data Availability, or what is referred to as NODA, on the adequacy of State programs--this would fall directly in this; that's why this amendment is duplicative--as well as the State's comments on EPA's proposed rule for coal ash.

This NODA was not required by law and certainly was not the result of a statute. This is something that the agency is doing. While the study is found to be innocuous, it does have a cost to taxpayers and the agency, and so in that aspect.

My colleague also is following this a little bit. The debate is coal ash, or fly ash, which is in impounded areas that we are now going to have some standards and liners, is used in recycling. It's used in road construction. It's used in building schools. The whole reason why we're here today is to ensure that the recycling sector can still do that if the EPA continues to label it as ``toxic,'' which does not meet the standard of a toxicity based upon an analysis.

I love this, ``toxic sludge.'' You can pick up dirt, and there's toxic elements in the dirt. The question is: To what standard does it rise? And if it doesn't rise to the level of toxicity, then it's not considered. And that's what this debate is all about, allowing the recycling of this. And if we don't do this, all our landfills will be filled with coal ash, and then we'll have to build more landfills for municipal solid waste.

So that's why I appreciate my colleague from West Virginia in this great piece of legislation. The administration has not issued a veto threat for this, and I expect it to be well received in the other Chamber once it moves over.

With that, again, I ask my colleagues to reject the Jackson amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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

Today the assault on the environment in this body continues. Two weeks ago the House voted to repeal the health standards in the Clean Air Act and block the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating toxic emissions from power plants. Earlier

this week, we voted to block EPA from regulating toxic emissions from cement plants. And yesterday we voted to block the EPA from regulating toxic emissions from incinerators. Today we'll vote on whether to stop EPA from regulating toxic coal ash.

On December 22, 2008, a coal ash impoundment in Kingston, Tennessee, burst, releasing 5.4 million cubic yards of toxic sludge, blanketing the Emory River and the surrounding land and creating a Superfund site that could cost up to $1.2 billion to clean up.

Last year, EPA proposed regulations to ensure stronger oversight of coal ash impoundments in order to prevent disasters like the one in Kingston and to prevent groundwater and drinking water from the threat of contamination. Today we are voting to stop EPA from acting.

The agency had proposed two alternatives for regulating coal combustion residuals: One proposal was to regulate these wastes under subtitle C of the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, or RCRA, as a hazardous waste. The other proposal was to regulate under subtitle D of RCRA as a nonhazardous solid waste.

Under both proposals, there would be a minimum Federal standard developed to protect human health and the environment. Those standards would address wet impoundments, like in Kingston, and would also ensure that basic controls like the use of liners, groundwater monitoring, and dust control meet a minimum level of effectiveness.

But the legislation that is being brought to the floor today blocks both of these EPA proposals. It replaces those proposals with an ineffective program that won't ensure the safe disposal of coal ash.

At hearings in the Energy and Commerce Committee, we heard testimony about the devastating impacts contamination from coal combustion waste can cause. We learned of contaminated drinking water supplies, of ruined property values. We've learned about improper disposal of coal ash presenting catastrophic risks from ruptures of containment structures and causing cancer and other illnesses from long-term exposure to leaking chemicals.

But this legislation does not reflect what we learned about the dangers of improper disposal of coal ash. Under each of our environmental laws--until the Republicans repeal them--Congress has established a legal standard when delegating programs to the States. That was done, by the way, on bipartisan votes.

These standards are the yardstick by which it is determined whether a State's efforts measure up. They ensure a minimum level of effort and protection throughout the Nation. This approach has worked well because it prevents a race to the bottom by the States.

But this legislation does not include any legal standard at all to establish a minimum level of safety. As a result, the public can have little confidence that this legislation, if enacted, will result in increased safety. And to the extent new safety requirements are established, nearly all of them can be waived at a State's discretion.

This legislation appears to create a new program for the safe disposal of coal ash. But the decisions of whether or not to provide a safe disposal or whether or not to protect groundwater or whether or not to protect against toxic dust blowing off disposal sites will remain State decisions. There will be no minimum Federal health standard.

The result will inevitably be uneven and inconsistent rules by the States. Some States will do a good job, others will do a poor job. And when they do a poor job, the public will pay the price--just as they do today.

If this legislation is adopted, no one should be fooled. This bill will not protect communities living near these waste disposal sites. It won't make high-risk impoundments of coal ash safe. It won't stop contamination of drinking water. And it won't create jobs. In fact, it won't do much of anything.

Like the cement and incinerator bills that the House has debated, this bill also violates the discretionary CutGo. CBO found the legislation will cost EPA $2 million over the next 5 years. This cost is not offset in the legislation. So once again, for the third time in 2 weeks, the Republicans are abandoning their discretionary CutGo rule.

This legislation is deficient in both process and substance, and I urge all Members to oppose it.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Chair, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Green).

Madam Chair, I just want to say to my good friends who feel that we've got to move the bill forward and we've got to get a better bill, I understand that, and this bill is going to move forward. But for those who really want a good bill, we're not getting one out of this House. It's better to vote ``no'' to show that you want a better bill than to vote ``yes'' for the small changes that the Republicans have given to some of our Democrats that may improve the bill on the margins, but the bill is not good enough for an ``aye'' vote.

I still urge Members to vote ``no.''

At this time I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Connolly).

I yield the gentleman an additional 30 seconds.

I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Madam Chair, I just wanted to make a correction for the record.

Some people have suggested that it's going to be considered a hazardous waste site if they dispose of this waste, and we don't believe that's true. We don't want to treat it as if it were household garbage without the guarantees to protect the public health and the environment. It can be something in between. It doesn't have to be considered hazardous waste. And that is exactly the kind of proposal that we ought to be looking at. And to say that we're considering it hazardous waste is an incorrect statement.

May I inquire how much time each side has?

Madam Chair, at this point I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Ellison).

Madam Chair, the supporters of this bill claim that this legislation will save jobs. Their main evidence is a report by the Electric Power Research Institute that claims that regulating coal ash as hazardous waste would lead to the loss of 300,000 jobs, but this claim is wrong.

For example, the EPRI study estimates job loss by assuming that there would be 100 percent reduction in recycling and beneficial reuse. This assumption is based on no analysis whatsoever, and it's at odds with a survey done by the National Precast Concrete Association, which shows that 84 percent of their members would continue to use fly ash even if the waste were to be regulated as hazardous.

In fact, EPA has formally requested that EPRI issue a statement that corrects the misstatement and misrepresentations that were made in this report and which have been repeated here today. The EPRI study is flawed, should not be relied on.

We need to reject these arguments that in order to have jobs we need to allow contamination of our groundwater and allow human health to be jeopardized by coal ash impoundments.

I would now like to yield 2 minutes to the gentlelady from the State of Maryland (Ms. Edwards).

I yield the gentlelady an additional 30 seconds.

Madam Chair, may I inquire how much time we have remaining?

The gentleman from West Virginia, who just spoke, said that I was inconsistent because I voted for the Baldwin amendment in my committee, so I can't have my cake and eat it too. Well, I want to assure you that I don't want a cake made out of coal ash. Coal ash has a lot of chemicals in it that I think most people would understand raise a problem of toxicity--arsenic, antimony, barium, beryllium, cadmium, lead, mercury, hexavalent chromium, nickel, selenium, and thallium. These metals are toxic and pose both acute and chronic threats to human health and the environment. So don't give me a cake to eat made out of coal ash.

It seems to me that what we're hearing, for example, from the gentleman from Illinois, that the waste in Kingston was not disposed of in a hazardous waste landfill, and he offered this as proof that these materials are not hazardous. Well, these materials contain these toxic constituents, and if they're not disposed of properly, they will harm human health and the environment. Proper disposal does not mean disposal in a hazardous waste landfill. It means disposal in dry landfills that have the necessary safeguards.

Those safeguards are not in this bill. We've offered to work with the Republican majority to clarify this issue and to find a middle ground that I think in substance could solve those concerns. But they, again, are not interested in working with us, and so they're moving forward with a bill that does not live up to its billing.

At this point I would like to yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Moran), who is the chairman of the Appropriations Subcommittee that deals with these very issues.

Will the gentleman yield?

Thank you very much.

You've made the claim that we're trying to define this and label it as hazardous, which is a stigma. I understand that and I agree with that point, but I don't think we ought to deny that

there are in coal ash relatively high concentrations that are hazardous and that, if they're improperly managed, they could leach out and pose a substantial present or potential hazard.

If the gentleman will continue to yield, your point is not accurate for existing impoundments; it would apply to future impoundments. And we think for existing impoundments they ought to have the lining and all the other protections as well.

I yield myself the balance of my time.

I just want to point out that neither of us wants the stigma of the coal ash being called hazardous because, in many ways and places, it can be reused, and it would be very important to do that. But we want to make sure that all of these sites have the adequate protections.

I want to read a quote from EPA because people said EPA wants to label it as hazardous. They wrote:

Many of these metals are contained in coal ash at relatively high concentrations such that, if coal ash were improperly managed, they could leach out and pose a substantial present or potential hazard to human health or the environment. The risk assessment that was conducted confirms this finding, as do the many damage cases that have been documented.

I seek to put into the Record a statement of administrative policy. The administration opposes this bill because it is insufficient to address the risks associated with coal ash disposal and management, and it undermines the Federal Government's ability to ensure that requirements for the management and the disposal of coal combustion residuals are protective of human health and the environment.

I yield back the balance of my time and urge a ``no'' vote on the bill.

Executive Office of the President, Office of Management

and Budget,

Washington, DC, October 12, 2011.

Statement of Administration Policy

H R. 2273--Coal Residuals Reuse and Management Act

(Rep. McKinley, R-WV, and 32 cosponsors)

The Administration opposes H.R. 2273, as reported by

Committee, which is insufficient to address the risks

associated with coal ash disposal and management, and

undermines the Federal government's ability to ensure that

requirements for management and disposal of coal combustion

residuals are protective of human health and the environment.

The 2008 failure of a coal ash impoundment in Kingston,

Tennessee, which spilled more than five million cubic yards

of coal ash and will require approximately $1.2 billion for

clean-up, is a stark reminder of the need for safe disposal

and management of coal ash to protect public health and the

environment. The Administration has assessed structural

stability at active coal ash impoundments and has identified

49 units in 12 states as having a ``high hazard potential''

rating should they fail.

The Administration supports the development,

implementation, and enforcement of appropriate standards for

facilities managing coal ash, while encouraging the

beneficial use of this economically important material. Any

approach to managing coal ash would need to include: (1)

clear requirements that address the risks associated with the

coal ash disposal and management; (2) consideration of the

best science and data available; (3) adequate evaluation of

structural integrity; (4) protective solutions for existing

as well as new facilities; and (5) appropriate public

information and comment.

Because H.R. 2273 is deficient in these areas and would

replace existing authorities with inadequate and

inappropriate minimum requirements, the Administration

opposes the bill.

Madam Chair, I claim time in opposition.

I yield myself such time as I may consume.

To be fair, this amendment does make a few positive changes to the legislation. It adds some requirements to recordkeeping, groundwater monitoring, and runoff controls. But as with the underlying bill, this amendment makes a lot of promises and it just doesn't deliver.

Some of my colleagues believe they may have reached a major concession because this amendment adds a groundwater monitoring provision. And I'd agree, adequate detection and assessment monitoring is critically important to ensuring that when coal ash is disposed of we have the opportunity to protect groundwater from toxic contamination.

But Members should be aware that this amendment moves all of the groundwater monitoring provisions from paragraph (c)(1) to paragraph (c)(2). The effect of this change is to allow any State to waive the groundwater monitoring requirements at their discretion.

Fugitive dust has been talked about. This dust can pose a health risk because it is particulate matter that can

lodge deep in the lungs and also because it can contain the toxic constituents of coal ash. The Republicans refused to include a provision to address this issue in committee. So some of my colleagues may be pleased that this amendment includes a provision that mentions fugitive dust from coal ash disposal.

But this provision is almost a tautology. The provision merely states that the States have the authority to require dust control measures if the State determines it to be appropriate. The amendment does not require State permit programs to include dust controls. It does not provide authority for EPA to require dust controls when it is the implementing agency. If a State determines that nothing is appropriate, then nothing is required within that State.

Like the underlying legislation, this amendment is long on appearances but short on substance. Most importantly, this amendment fails to make improvements where improvements are most necessary.

First, the amendment fails to establish a legal standard that the coal ash permit program has to meet.

Second, the manager's amendment fails to ensure the structural integrity of wet impoundments. The amendment makes clear that wet impoundments can be used to hold storm water by exempting them from run-on control requirements, but it falls short of requiring that they be designed to safely hold that storm water. EPA has concluded that this legislation excludes several key design requirements that relate to long-term structural stability of the surface impoundment.

Third, the manager's amendment fails to ensure appropriate criteria for the disposal of coal ash. Rather than addressing the concerns raised by EPA about the agency's ability to revise and tailor disposal criteria to address the risks posed by coal combustion residuals, the amendment further limits EPA's potential role in helping the State by preventing EPA from offering technical assistance to States without a request from the head of a lead State agency.

And, lastly, the amendment does nothing to authorize meaningful review of State programs. EPA has raised extensive concerns about their ability to review State programs under this legislation to ensure protection of human health and the environment, and this amendment does not address those concerns.

The administration has announced its opposition to the legislation, stating that this bill is ``insufficient to address the risks associated with coal ash disposal and management, and undermines the Federal Government's ability to ensure that requirements for management and disposal of coal combustion residuals are protective of human health and the environment.''

Nothing in this amendment fixes those concerns. Madam Chair, I'm willing to accept this amendment. It doesn't address the problems with this bill, but it doesn't make the bill appreciably worse. So I wouldn't oppose the amendment, but I don't want people to think that this amendment lives up to the billing that it really makes this bill good enough.

So I will not oppose it, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Chair, I have an amendment at the desk.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

The Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, or RCRA, was passed to protect the public health and the environment from unsafe disposal of solid waste. It created duties reserved to the EPA and programs that could be delegated to the States. Like other environmental statutes, RCRA sets a legal standard of protectiveness for State-delegated programs. These standards are the yardstick by which it is determined whether a State's effort measures up, and they ensure our consistent level of effort and protection throughout the Nation.

This approach has worked well because it prevents a race to the bottom among the States in which a State willing to have the laxest protections becomes the dumping ground for the Nation. Congress has taken this approach for 40 years. We create a Federal floor of protection and allow States to go further as necessary. H.R. 2273 turns this approach on its head by saying that each State must have a program but that program can offer as little protection as the State chooses. Well, that's essentially the status quo.

The authors of this bill are attempting to model coal ash disposal on disposal of municipal solid waste. That's

what they claim. In the case of municipal solid waste, however, the legal standard is that the program must protect human health and the environment from the risks associated with municipal solid waste. But under this bill, this standard does not apply to coal combustion residuals.

If we want to hold State coal ash permit programs to that standard, the same standard to which State municipal solid waste permit programs are held, my amendment is the way to do it. Without this amendment, nothing in the bill ensures that permit programs, whether administered by the States or the EPA, will protect human health and the environment. They will not even have that as a goal.

Under the existing language, a State could put in place an insufficient program, one that threatens human health, and so long as they follow the required certification, they will meet their legal requirements. There would be no way for the public, for affected communities, or for the EPA to intervene to ensure the necessary safeguards. If we adopt this amendment, State plans will have to protect human health and the environment from the risks of unsafe coal ash disposal.

These are serious risks that this legislation should address. For example, groundwater has been contaminated from coal ash disposal in Virginia, South Carolina, Michigan, New York, Massachusetts, Indiana, North Dakota, and the list goes on. Fugitive dust from coal ash disposal has impacted neighboring communities; for instance, toxic dust has blown through people's homes in Gambrills, Maryland, harming the respiratory health of the public, and risks from the catastrophic failure of wet impoundments as serious as we saw in Kingston, Tennessee.

When EPA issued its proposed rules in June 2010, they cited more than two dozen proven cases of damage from coal ash disposal. Three of those sites are now on the national priority list for cleanup under Superfund, and the number of these incidents may be much higher. These risks are real and they are significant. If this legislation is going to address them, it needs to include a legal standard of protectiveness.

If my amendment is adopted, State programs will be required to protect human health and the environment. And if a State refuses to do so, when EPA steps in, the agency will have to implement a program that protects public health and the environment. It's a simple amendment, but it's the difference between trying to protect health and the environment and trying to protect the status quo.

I heard from my colleague and good friend from Texas saying the bill was better and the legislative process is not always to get to the perfect but to get a better bill. Well, it depends on what you consider good enough. This bill is not good enough. With this amendment, it will definitely be improved.

But it's not good enough to vote for a bill because it's better than it was when it wasn't good enough then. It's better to vote ``no'' and say ``no'' to a bill that's not good enough so you can get a better bill. And I think in the other body we'll get a better bill if we are willing to vote against this bill, say ``no'' until we get not the perfect bill, but a much better bill than what the proponents of this bill are saying is good enough, because I don't accept that conclusion.

I urge support for this amendment.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Madam Chair, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Virginia, the majority leader, for the purpose of inquiring as to the schedule for the week to come.

I thank the gentleman for his information.

Before I talk about the American Jobs Act, does the majority leader have an estimate from either CBO or any economist on how many jobs over the next 24 months might be created as a result of the passage of those bills, the bills to which you refer as the House Republican plan for America's job creators?

I thank the gentleman for that answer.

What I took from that answer is there is no estimate of jobs that might be created in the next 24 months. That's what I took from your answer.

In terms of not creating jobs but creating an environment, I agree with the gentleman that we need to create an environment for jobs, but I don't believe that I've seen any estimates that your agenda will create jobs. As a matter of fact, I've seen the opposite.

Mr. Bruce Bartlett, the former adviser to President Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, was quoted just a few days ago. I know the gentleman is smiling because he knows this quote:

``Republicans have a problem. People are increasingly concerned about unemployment, but Republicans have nothing to offer them,'' Mr. Bartlett said, not me. ``The GOP opposes additional government spending for jobs programs and, in fact, favors big cuts in spending that,'' Mr. Bartlett said, ``would be likely to lead to further layoffs at all levels of government.''

He goes on to say:

``Republicans favor tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations, but these had no stimulative effect during the George W. Bush administration''--of course, we lost 8 million jobs, as the gentleman will recall, during that period of time--``and there is no reason to believe that more of them will have any today.''

He goes on to say: ``And the Republicans' oft-stated concern for the deficit makes tax cuts a hard sell. On August 29, the House majority leader, Eric Cantor of Virginia, sent a memorandum to members of the House Republican Conference telling them to make the repeal of job- destroying regulations.''

This is Mr. Bartlett, former Reagan aide and former aide to George H.W. Bush, both Republican Presidents. Mr. Bartlett goes on to say: ``Evidence supporting Mr. Cantor's contention that deregulation would increase employment is very weak. As one can see, the number of layoffs nationwide caused by government regulation is minuscule and shows no evidence of getting worse during the Obama administration.''

Mr. Reagan was quoted, we have a nice quote, I am sure you have seen it, that indicates that people ought to pay their fair share of taxes as well.

The President has offered the American Jobs Act. He has offered the American Jobs Act and economist after economist after economist says that it will create jobs. It will create jobs by creating an environment, by giving more money to small businesses, giving more money to consumers in their pocket.

I know your side has talked a lot about that and that as a result of both businesses having more money in their pocket and consumers having more money in their pocket, that that environment of which you speak will be created, and a number of people think that they will create significant numbers of jobs as a result.

As a matter of fact, the macroeconomic advisers projected the plan would add roughly 1.25 percentage points to GDP, to gross domestic product, and create 1.3 million jobs.

JPMorgan Chase estimated the plan would increase growth by almost 2 points and add 1.5 million jobs. Moody's Analytics forecast the package would add almost 2 million jobs, 1.9 million jobs, cutting the unemployment rate by a point and increase growth by 2 percentage growth points. Now, I know my friend may disagree with those figures, and may disagree with Mr. Bartlett's comment, I am sure you do.

My point is this, we don't have any bill on the floor that we have had over the last 9 months or that is projected, that is projected to increase jobs in the short term. The gentleman knows he and I agree on the trade bills. I think long term that's correct; but the American people, as President Obama observed, can't wait 14 months for the next election. They are struggling, in pain, and at risk today.

And the gentleman last week, or 2 weeks ago, in our colloquy said that there are a number of things, items in the jobs bill on which the gentleman agrees or his party agrees: bonus depreciation, incentives for veterans jobs training programs, infrastructure, small business tax cuts, unemployment insurance reform. The gentleman referenced those on the floor. Clearly there ought to be some areas where we can get agreement.

Yesterday, as the gentleman may have noted on the floor, in the debate I stated that we were debating a regulatory bill that would have no immediate effect on jobs. Your contention is it would depress jobs in the future if that rule were adopted, but I don't think there was any contention during the time of the debate that that would create jobs.

Having said that, I am wondering whether the gentleman has any intention of bringing either the President's jobs bill or a jobs bill that your side would offer, or a jobs bill that the President has offered, to the American people and to this Congress which would be open for amendment and change by your side and by our side in an effort to respond to the American people's great concern that we are not taking actions which are effectively growing jobs in this country.

I yield to my friend.

I knew you would be happy to receive it.

I thank the gentleman for his comments.

First of all, let me say that the gentleman knows full well that the President's jobs bill does not include revenues. The President suggested in the short term--and we ought not to raise revenues, as a matter of fact. In the short term, what we need to do is put more money back into people's pockets.

The jobs bill, he did suggest ways to pay for that. And he suggested, as did Bowles-Simpson and Rivlin-Domenici, that that be paid for in the coming years so we do not dampen down the economy at the same time we are trying to stimulate the economy.

The gentleman says that the bill, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, didn't work, and his comment was that the economy is in bad shape. Yes, the economy is in bad shape. It started being in bad shape in 2007, as the gentleman knows, when we went into the deepest recession he and I have experienced in our lifetime. And it remained in place, and the year that this President took office, we lost 786,000 jobs that month. After we passed the Recovery Act, as the gentleman knows, I'm sure, we created 2 million jobs over the last 24 months. The fact of the matter is it worked. Unfortunately, almost no economist understood the depth to which the recession had taken us.

The gentleman didn't support the Recovery Act--I understand that--nor did his party. Perhaps those 2 million jobs would not have been created. In fact, there was another bill, of course--the gentleman hates history, I know--that was passed that created 22 million jobs that no Republican supported. So I tell you, my friend, that when we compare economic performance of policies, one has created a lot of jobs and one lost a lot of jobs in the last decade.

And I will tell my friend when he says that the American people don't support the jobs bill, in fact, I want to tell my friend The Washington Post-ABC news poll says 52 percent of Americans support the American Jobs Act, and 58 percent of Americans believe the American Jobs Act will improve the jobs situation, including in that number 52 percent of Independents. In a Gallup poll, Americans support Obama's plan to pay for the American Jobs Act, 70 percent of Americans support increasing taxes on some corporations by eliminating certain deductions. I think some of your Republicans have said the same thing. Sixty-six percent support increasing revenues on individuals earning at least $200,000. Now, again, the President did not suggest doing that now, as the gentleman knows, just as the commissions did not suggest doing that now.

But what I have said to the gentleman and what I believe to be the case, and he says the Ways and Means Committee had a hearing today, that hearing was not on a comprehensive jobs package. It was on an important issue, no doubt about that, but there has been no comprehensive effort to put together in the short term a bill which will bring jobs to Americans that they need now.

The President's bill, we believe, will do that. We understand that there may be opposition. We also understand that there may be change. But there has

been no vehicle brought to this floor since the President spoke over 2 weeks ago to allow this House to work its will. You may have the majority of votes on it, but let the American people see who wants to create jobs. The gentleman says we don't create jobs. He is exactly right in a certain sense; but in another sense, as he says, we create an environment in which jobs are created, in which the economy grows, and in which people feel comfortable.

One of the things I want to say to my friend that I hope he would be for, my own belief is that one of the things that will most raise confidence will be to have the select committee of 12 come to an agreement on cutting $4 trillion over the next 10 years so that we can get the fiscal house in America in order and to do so by a balanced approach with everything, all of our expenses and revenues, on the table. I would hope my friend would join me in urging the select committee to do that, because I frankly think that is the one thing we could do that will raise the most confidence--not only here at home among Americans, but around the world--in America's ability to address tough questions.

So I would urge my friend to, one, try to come to an agreement with his committee chairs to have a comprehensive jobs bill brought to the floor, whatever you think that jobs bill may be, and then allow us to offer amendments, have the House of Representatives work its will on that; and then, secondly, to join in urging the select committee to work on getting us back to where we were in 2001 with a projected surplus in this country.

Reclaiming my time, is there anything I said that you believe is factually inaccurate?

I yield to my friend.

I'll take that as a ``no.''

I thank the gentleman.

Mr. Speaker, we have seen, I think, in that last discussion a very significant discussion between our two parties. Indeed, the Republicans did offer a budget bill which privatized Social Security. They call it a premium support program. It eliminated the guarantee that people would have access to affordable health insurance coverage.

We don't agree with that. The gentleman is absolutely correct. We've rejected that. I would suggest the voters have rejected it. But I will tell the gentleman that we also reject the notion that you can spend great sums of money, as we did in the last decade when your party was in control of the House, the Senate, and the Presidency, and not pay the bill. That's why we went from $5.6 trillion of projected surplus to a $10 trillion debt when this President took over.

I will tell the gentleman that paying for what we buy is the right thing to do for our children and grandchildren. And the way you pay for that is called taxes. And we're not for raising taxes. However, we are for paying our bills. And if we want to buy stuff, if we want to confront terrorists in Iraq--which I supported--and if we want to confront terrorists in Afghanistan--which I supported--and if we want to make sure that seniors have prescription drugs, we ought to pay for those, not pass those along to my grandchildren. And you don't have grandchildren yet, but at some point in time you may well have them. And I hope you do have grandchildren. It's a wonderful joy. But we're simply passing the expenses along to them.

As the gentleman knows, we're now collecting somewhere in the neighborhood of 15 percent of revenues, 3 percent below average for the last 40 years. But we continue to buy things. And we bought things at a greater rate in the decade that has just passed than we did in the 1990s. We increased spending at a greater rate. The gentleman knows that. That's not history; those are facts, maybe historical facts, but they're facts.

What I'm telling the gentleman is, with respect to a balanced approach--he then says, well, all that means is you want to raise taxes. No. What it means is I want to make sure that we put everything on the table that is giving us the challenge that we're seeing all over the world of balancing our budget, getting our expenditures in line with our revenues, and that we do so in a way that does not undermine America's national security, its economic well-being, and the welfare of our people. That's what we believe in, that's what we hope this select committee will do, and, yes, we believe that everything needs to be on the table.

If that is not consistent with what your view is, it is consistent with the views of every bipartisan group, the Big Three, if you will-- Pete Domenici, former Republican chairman of the Budget Committee in the United States Senate; Alice Rivlin, former CBO director; Erskine Bowles, former

chief of staff for the White House; Alan Simpson, former U.S. Republican Senator from Wyoming; and the Gang of Six that now has over 18 or 19 Republicans and 18 or 19 Democrats saying we need to do.

I hope we can join together to do that. I personally believe that is the most important effort that we could make in bringing confidence back to America and to the perception of America around the world.

I yield back the balance of my time.