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Motion to reconsider laid on the table Agreed to without objection.
January 5, 2011 • 2:33 PM
Introduced in House
January 5, 2011
Considered as privileged matter. (consideration: CR H7)
January 5, 2011 • 2:33 PM
Passed/agreed to in House: On agreeing to the resolution Agreed to by voice vote.(text: CR H7)
January 5, 2011 • 2:33 PM
On agreeing to the resolution Agreed to by voice vote. (text: CR H7)
January 5, 2011 • 2:33 PM
Motion to reconsider laid on the table Agreed to without objection.
January 5, 2011 • 2:33 PM
What members said about H.Res. 4 on the floor
Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. (Mr. SHIMKUS asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.) Mr. Speaker, I rise today in strong support of the pending…
Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
(Mr. SHIMKUS asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)
Mr. Speaker, I rise today in strong support of the pending resolution, particularly with respect to the effect on jobs and the economy.
My colleagues on the other side are going to oppose this effort, claiming we are seeking to strip basic public health and safety protections. No one is in favor of hurting those in those areas, but that is not the purpose of us being here today.
We have had numerous hearings over the last couple of days on rules and regulations and how they hurt job creation. This gives power back to the committees to then do that, fine-tooth comb through rules and regulations and address what the President talked about in his State of the Union; where there are rules and regulations that don't make sense, we need to eliminate them, because we need to focus on job creation. We can't regulate existing businesses into the ground on the hope that better ones will come later. We must protect the jobs currently we have and open the doors for new businesses as well.
As the chairman of the Subcommittee on Environment and the Economy, I am particularly interested in the activities of the EPA. I am going to talk about three examples, one we heard yesterday in testimony.
United States Steel came before us and said imagine a regulation where we have to decrease the heat in the preparation of steel to comply with NOX, but as we move to EPA rules and regulations on greenhouse gasses we actually have to use the same process and heat
that process up. So U.S. Steel will be caught in a catch-22. Under one reg, they have to keep the heat low to comply with nitrous oxide regulations; on the other hand, in the same process, they have to heat it up to meet the greenhouse gas rules.
Now, what is a steel company going to do? They are going to move to China. You can't develop rules and regulations that cannot be complied with by existing known technologies, and that was just a perfect example.
Another one that I find, and a lot of these things not only hurt jobs, but they are going to hurt the environment. The example is the redefinition of used oil as a solid waste. Now, this sounds like, what are they talking about?
Many of us, and there are times when many of us, when we were young, we changed our own oil. We would get underneath the car, pull the plug and drain the oil. Fortunately, in today's world, you can take it to an auto repair shop, you can take it to maybe a parts store, and you can then recycle that used oil.
Not if the EPA has its say, because what they do in the redefinition of this is the only way you can dispose of this off-brand, off-used oil is to burn it. Oh, that is real great for the environment, burning the used oil. And what will the home do-it-yourselfer do? They are probably going to pour it on the ground. So EPA regs not only hurt job creation, but they have a great effect in hurting and harming the economy.
The next one, one of the issues we will address next week in the committee is coal ash byproducts. This is another one that is curious in which the EPA is trying to meddle in. Despite EPA's own testing and admittance that these coal byproducts do not qualify as hazardous waste based on their toxicity, EPA wants to label them as toxic material.
What does that mean? Any byproducts used will then be required to be disposed of in special landfills or dumps and not recycled. Coal ash can't go into concrete. Gypsum can't go into wallboard. Wallboard that has to be disposed of or you are going to remodel your home, what happens to that wallboard? The cost of doing business increases, and these all are things that hurt job creation.
We applaud President Obama in his State of the Union when he says there's too many regulations and we need to ease the regulatory burden. That's the importance of what we're doing here--one of the few things we agree on with the administration. And this will allow us committee by committee to go through the process and identify those hindrances and start to move legislation to address those.
With that, Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
I now yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the chairman of the Health Subcommittee, Joe Pitts.
It is business that creates jobs. Easing the regulatory burden helps create jobs.
Mr. Speaker, I would now like to yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from California, Congresswoman Bono Mack, who is the chairman of the Commerce, Manufacturing and Trade Subcommittee.
I yield the gentlewoman an additional 15 seconds.
Mr. Speaker, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the chairman of the Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee, Chairman Stearns.
(Mr. STEARNS asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)
Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
We don't care which administration created all these burdensome regulations. If they do not protect public health and harm job creation, we want to review them. I don't see what's the big damage of that, and every time you hear the word ``incentives'' you know what that means? Tax dollars. That means borrowing money from China to incentivize who knows what.
We want capital formation through the private sector to create jobs. The government can no longer do that.
I now yield 2 minutes to my colleague from Pennsylvania (Mr. Murphy), who is the vice chairman of my subcommittee.
Mr. Speaker, I want to share with my colleagues, we'll have a chance next week to vote on greenhouse gas regulations, which will kill jobs. Those bills are coming.
I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Tennessee (Mrs. Blackburn).
Mr. Speaker, I now yield 1\1/2\ minutes to my colleague from Ohio who is from the largest manufacturing district in the country, Mr. Latta.
Mr. Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentlewoman from Washington, Cathy McMorris Rodgers, the vice chairman of the Republican Conference.
Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Houston (Mr. Olson) the former Navy fighter pilot.
Mr. Speaker, I now yield 2 minutes to one of our new colleagues from Colorado (Mr. Gardner).
Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
I'm glad my colleague talked about the Clean Air Act. The Clean Air Act was passed in the 1990s, and it identified six criteria pollutants. And we know a lot of what those are--nitrous oxide, sulfur dioxide, particulate matter. Carbon dioxide was never identified in the law. In fact, Chairman Emeritus Dingell said numerous times the Clean Air Act was never designed to regulate carbon.
Even as the EPA now moves in the direction of climate, they've changed the rules. They are not complying with the Clean Air Act because of their tailoring rule, thus picking winners over losers.
If we go down the road to regulate carbon, we raise the cost of creating jobs. Jobs move overseas. That's what the Waxman-Markey debate was last year. That's why the majority last year could not pass a bill to regulate carbon, because of the impact on jobs.
So why are we here?
We're not trying to end regulation. We're trying to make sure that there's an economic analysis on what occurs on jobs. What's the job impact?
Administrator Jackson, throughout the entire process, could not tell us. In fact, they only do it in silos and never the cumulative effect of what are the jobs lost based upon regulation.
What is the compliance cost?
We ought to know that because the more there is a requirement to comply with the rules and regulations when we're competing against China, who has no rules and regulations, we are less competitive, we lose jobs.
Is it so harmful to ask where's the benefit, a cost-benefit analysis of all these regulations?
So we'll get a chance. I know I was asked by the other side earlier in the debate, where is the legislation to affect rules and regulations that will create jobs?
Well, it's coming next week, and it's the greenhouse gas rules and regulations, which does not affect the Clean Air Act, which does not change, after all their portrayals on dirty air, it does
not affect a single criteria pollutant in the Clean Air Act.
Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
I was expecting a few Members, but I don't expect them to come now.
Mr. Speaker, I think this has been a great debate. And Diana DeGette is a great friend of mine. We've served here in the Chamber for a long time. And I think it's good for the public to understand that we can have strong disagreements without being disagreeable. And I'm probably one of the strongest, outspoken loudmouths on the committee. And I have been recently. But I think it's also good to know that we can continue, even on very controversial issues on life. She has very strong opinions, and I have very strong opinions. But Congresswoman DeGette has my respect, and she's a friend.
During last fall, businesses kept coming to me and saying, all we want to be is left alone. That's really part of this debate.
The Democrat majority, in fact, in the last 2 years, they had the whole shooting match. These are the same debates you had about us. You could have addressed the regulatory burdens on business, but you didn't. You had the House, you had the Senate, you had the Presidency. Not one bill to ease the regulatory burden.
So now the pendulum has shifted. We're into job creation. One of the burdens of job creation is excessive regulation. Businesses want to be left alone. There's too much uncertainty.
What have we done to bring to the floor to help provide certainty? We voted to repeal the health care law. If you want to talk to businesses, both large and small, one of the biggest things that has created uncertainty is Obamacare. And that was on the floor.
The second thing that created the most uncertainty is climate and a carbon tax, raising the cost. That's going to come to the floor.
So here are two major provisions passed in this Chamber, hurt jobs, we get a chance to address on the floor. And so this is an important exercise. We're going to be doing it in the committee. We've had four hearings in the committee on issues all around the regulatory burdens.
I gave you the example of U.S. Steel. Here they've got a NOX requirement so they keep the burners on low. But a carbon requirement would require that the burners are on high. How do they comply? I'll tell you how they comply. They move the steel mill to a country that does not have those regulations. Or we import it.
Should we look at these and address these? The answer is yes.
I see my colleague from Louisiana has shown up. If my colleague from Colorado doesn't mind, I yield the balance of my time to my colleague from Louisiana (Mr. Scalise).
I thank the good lady for yielding. Mr. and Mrs. America, our economic growth is being stifled by 165,000 pages of regulations; 1.4 million laws were never voted on by this body. They are the law of…
I thank the good lady for yielding.
Mr. and Mrs. America, our economic growth is being stifled by 165,000 pages of regulations; 1.4 million laws were never voted on by this body. They are the law of the land, passed by the bureaucracy. We are to blame for this ourselves.
As you can see from the chart--I venture they will get it up here-- the number of environmental laws and executive orders affecting the construction industry has exploded since 1965. Just take a look at this. Here is where we are. Look at what they have to go through here. All these things have to be met by the construction company. This is why it takes 17 years to build a highway.
I want to keep in mind now--you keep hearing about creating jobs. You do not create a job; you allow a job to be created, and regulations prohibit that. We see regulations every day that prohibit the growth of industry and jobs in this country. You mentioned, Mr. Ranking Member, who was chairman, we can't even mine coal because of regulations.
So let's start thinking about the money. By the way, it costs $1,000,100,000,000 a year to implement these regulations that were never voted on. We can balance the budget in 13 years if we eliminate these regulations.
The agencies keep going forth each day spending more money. Their idea of success is having another law that has never been voted on. It gives an untold power to the executive branch. This is the House of the people, and if we don't address this issue, shame on us. It is absolutely important.
I just got a regulation proposed at Alaskan Airlines. They had to get a permit. By regulation, they are required to apply to the Pipeline Hazardous Materials Safety Administration before they could fly it. You know what it was? It was whipped cream. You can't fly whipped cream without a permit. Another regulation from an agency. Who thought that up?
The second one, the newest one to come out is a regulation by EPA under the oil spill liability clause where the EPA is proposing a regulation to apply to dairies because milk has fat in it. They want to apply the oil spill liability regulation to a dairy. That means each cow costs $600 per life of the cow because they want to clean up milk. The saying ``don't cry over spilt milk'' is now going to cost you money, a regulation by an agency that makes no sense at all.
Wake up, Mr. and Mrs. America. Let's eliminate these regulations that prohibit job creation in this country. That is what we ought to be talking about.
I thank the gentleman.
I have a prepared statement here and I'll probably use some of it. I can't help but answer the gentleman from Massachusetts, who has never supported at any time, has never supported in any way, any energy development in this country. He was against nuclear power many years ago. He is still against it. He was against solar power and then since it is wind power in his State. And he's against, very frankly, any fossil fuel development. And depending on his so-called make-believe wind power, make-believe solar power, in the meantime, we're buying oil from overseas. And you know that.
The EPA, very frankly, is part of the problem. I am the chairman now of the American Indian and Alaska Natives and their lands can't be developed because of EPA. The Navajo Nation had a coal plant. They had the coal. They had the financing. And the Obama administration says, no, you can't do that through the EPA, through the Fish and Wildlife, et cetera, and they lost the financing for a coal project because they don't believe in coal. We have a trust relationship to the American Indians. And to have other agencies within the government say, ``No, you can't do it, you stay right where you are'' is wrong. They have the highest potential of energy of any land mass in this Nation and they're precluded from development because of regulations.
EPA just came out--I mentioned this earlier today--with a new concept of a regulation for dairies. This is your government, the Obama administration. And, by the way, thank God for George Bush. They're still blaming him for everything. But if I remember correctly, Horizon was done under the Obama administration. If I remember correctly, it was his Minerals and Management agency that wasn't doing their job. There were enough regulations in place. They weren't doing their job. If I remember, that's correct. George Bush was out of office.
But EPA now comes out with a new regulation under the oil spill liability where we develop oil that the moneys will be put aside for a cleanup, of which I support, but there are new regulations because they want to regulate the dairies of our Nation today. Mr. and Mrs. America, keep in mind, they want to regulate the dairies today because there's fat in the milk. Fat in the milk. And they want to have each cow be charged $600 per lifetime of that dairy, put aside in a fund to clean up spilt milk. That's your EPA and regulations. Remember, the term ``don't cry over spilled milk'' is going to cost you money now. That's the government regulations. I can go on and on what they've done to American Indians. They don't allow them to develop
their resources. There's a paternalistic type of society they have today. And I'm saying here as chairman, we are going to develop those resources in the nations that they are. That's our responsibility as a Congress. And to preclude that because of actions of regulatory agencies is dead wrong.
I am asking my colleagues to remember this. Every committee should be looking at every regulation. You want to balance this budget?
By the way, 1,600,000 laws on the books today were never voted on by anybody. Not ever voted on. It costs $1.01 trillion a year to implement those regulations. You want to balance the budget? Eliminate those regulations and you can balance it in 13 years. We could have industry again.
I'm just saying this is a good idea. Let's pass it.
Federal policies and regulations stand in the way of economic progress and free enterprise for all Americans, but the problem is especially bad in Indian Country.
Indian reservations have the highest rates of unemployment and poverty of any comparable areas in America.
These statistics are astounding when you consider that tribes own an estimated ten percent of the Nation's energy potential.
But so many tribal lands lie vacant and unused.
The problem is that development of Indian land is based on outdated, paternalistic Federal laws and policies.
Let me describe a few examples of these laws and policies.
We have the Long-Term Leasing Act . . . a 56-year-old statute that restricts most Indians from leasing their property for more than 25 year terms. In some cases this has prevented tribes from constructing new homes.
There is the National Environmental Policy Act, a law routinely used to delay and stop the use of lands reserved exclusively for tribes under solemn treaties with the United States.
The Endangered Species Act has become the weapon choice by special interests seeking to harm tribal development.
And then we have the Environmental Protection Agency, the Fish and Wildlife Service, and the Bureau of Indian Affairs. One of the first acts of the Obama Administration was to have these agencies stop the Navajo Nation from building and operating a 1,500 megawatt power plant on its reservation.
The project would have created thousands of good jobs on a reservation with 50 percent unemployment, generating $1.5 billion over 30 years for the tribe's treasury.
Thanks to our government, the tribe is not allowed to create jobs for its citizens or produce power for millions of consumers.
This is wrong.
Tribes are caught in a Catch-22. They have over 50 million acres of land pursuant to treaties and Acts of Congress, but the catch is they can't use them without permission of Washington, DC.
Tribes are suffering from 19th-century Indian policies, and the result is a continuing Great Depression across many reservations.
Fortunately, a number of tribes have taken control of their resources from Washington, DC. They have proven to be outstanding stewards of their lands while providing huge energy resources needed by the country.
The Subcommittee on Indian and Alaska Native Affairs is going to study the accomplishments of these tribes. We will consider changing outdated laws and policies that stand in the way of tribal economic development.
I look forward to the Subcommittee making progress--on a bipartisan basis--to create more tribal opportunity, and more tribal freedom from outdated Federal laws.
These sort of harmful regulations are not unique to Indian Country. For example, my Alaska fishermen are faced with similar crippling stupidity.
EPA now requires fish processing vessels operating in the Bering Sea to take water samples which are then tested at such a high resolution level that the tests cannot be performed by any labs in Alaska. The samples have to be sent out of Alaska at great expense.
To make matters worse, the test are required to be so precise and to such an unrealistic resolution level that if a technician has mercury amalgam fillings, his breath could alter the result.
In another instance, EPA is requiring complex seafood processing permits and gear for Alaska's small freezer troll fleet.
These folks only catch about 1,000 pounds of fish a day. They have 45-foot fishing boats and one or two deck hands--they fish with hook and line and clean their fish immediately. They toss fresh fish heads right back into the waters they came from--one at a time, and EPA wants them treated like a big factory ship. This is preposterous!
Again, this Committee will examine these issues and take steps to remove these foolish regulations that are stopping the production of new wealth.
Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. (Mr. BACHUS asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.) Mr. Speaker, I commend my colleague from Texas (Mr. Sessions) and…
Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
(Mr. BACHUS asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)
Mr. Speaker, I commend my colleague from Texas (Mr. Sessions) and Speaker Boehner, Leader Cantor and the House leadership for bringing this important resolution forward.
This resolution represents the opening battle in the fight against the continued expansion and overreach of the regulatory state, that state being the Federal Government.
We have just gone through 4 years of a very liberal Congress and 2 years of a very liberal administration, and working hand in hand, they have passed massive new laws that expanded government and weakened personal freedom. The 10th Amendment says that all powers not specifically granted to the Federal Government are left to the States and the people. But from health care to financial services to other sectors of the economy, Congress has ceded its constitutional responsibility to unelected and unaccountable Federal bureaucrats.
Two years ago, President Obama reminded us that elections matter when he said, ``I won.'' Well, Mr. Speaker, in November, the American people won. In doing so, they made it clear to anyone listening that they strenuously objected to the direction that our country has taken. They object to the limitations imposed on our freedom, on our choices, and on our ability to create jobs. This is not new. In the past as well as in the current administration, liberal Presidents who could not achieve their goals by the consent of the people have resorted to regulatory fiat to give their most extreme supporters what they want.
Under these regulatory regimes, the power of Congress and the people has been reduced to notice and comment, a
notice and comment period in which they can only state their objections. However, as is becoming increasingly apparent to the American people, these comments are regularly ignored by the regulators. The expansion of the regulatory state continues to concentrate power in the executive branch and to marginalize representative government with congressionally enacted legislation being replaced by decrees from regulators who are insulated from the popular vote.
Fortunately, this Congress is committed to doing something about unnecessary and unreasonable regulatory burdens, and the resolution we are debating today is a great start.
Under this resolution, 10 House committees--including the Financial Services Committee--will review pending and existing regulations to determine their impact on our Nation's economy, on its ability to create jobs and, most importantly, our own personal freedoms.
This review comes not a moment too soon. Our job creators struggle under a seemingly endless and constant flurry of mandates pushed out by the administration and initiated under the former majority in Congress. Nothing better illustrates the rule of the unelected in the regulatory state than the Dodd-Frank Act. As a result of this one massive piece of legislation passed in the last Congress, there will be a tsunami of 300 new Washington rules and regulations. The burden of these regulations will almost certainly limit access to credit for small businesses and consumers. They will divert private sector resources that should go to expanding businesses and creating jobs. And they will also limit the owners and the consumers of those firms from making their own choices and decisions.
The Financial Services Committee has heard testimony from many witnesses about the harmful impact of the act. One of them, the Cargill Corporation alone, told us that the act's requirements on derivatives would cost the company $1 billion, funds that otherwise would be deployed for the construction of a new plant in Kansas City, a plant that would create thousands of jobs and put Americans back to work.
That is only one example of the uncertainty our economy faces due to these new Washington regulations. It shows how the expanding regulatory state too often forces U.S. companies to divert resources and time away from job creation and investment and instead toward obeying the ever- growing demands of a bigger and more intrusive government.
In a hearing in my committee only this morning, there was bipartisan agreement and no opposition to a provision in our oversight plan offered by the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Westmoreland) requiring a review of the mixed messages in which we hear Washington regulators calling for increased lending by banks but examiners in the field micromanaging bank activities and stifling lending. These conflicting signals are creating uncertainty that prevents banks from lending to small businesses, and in extreme cases they have caused the failures of those very banks. This uncertainty, in turn, impedes economic growth and costs jobs.
Let me conclude by saying this Congress was elected to limit the scope of the Federal Government, not to expand it. Our forefathers who fashioned the 10th Amendment would be pleased with our debate and our efforts today.
Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
At this time, Mr. Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentlelady from West Virginia (Mrs. Capito).
Mr. Speaker, I would like to yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentlelady from Illinois (Mrs. Biggert), the chairman of the Housing and Insurance Subcommittee.
Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Royce), the senior member of the Financial Services Committee.
Mr. Speaker, what we are talking about is the size of the Federal Government and the size of our regulations.
In the last 4 years of our Democratic Congress, which took power in January of 2007--and I will remind everyone that that was prior to the financial crisis--our national debt doubled in that period of time. In other words, we have incurred more debt in the past 4 years under a Democrat Senate and a Democrat House and in the last 2 years under a Democrat President than we had in the 220 years before. We are talking about a record national debt of
$14 trillion. We are talking about a growth in the size of the Federal Government which in 10 years will absorb every dollar and every dime and every penny generated by our economy.
Now think of such a thing--every dollar being spent by the Federal Government.
You have to ask yourself: With record deficits and record debt, don't we have too much Federal Government? Don't we have more government than we can afford? Don't we have more government than we need?
So I think it is entirely fitting for us to look at each government program and ask ourselves: Is there a benefit from this program? Is there a cost to this program? Does it eliminate jobs?
If you will go through a list of comments that people have made to these regulations, you will see comment after comment after comment: this regulation will cost my business this much money. This regulation will cost this much money. I won't be able to create a job.
So the government is spending record amounts of money. Yet it's adding to the cost, not only to the taxpayers, but to the cost for them to earn a living themselves.
Our Secretary of Defense, a member of the administration, has warned--he said that this country's dire fiscal situation and the threat it poses to American influence and credibility around the world will only get worse unless the U.S. Government gets its finances in order. He actually says that our financial situation is affecting our credibility, and that's absolutely true. Didn't we see Japan's sovereign debt downgraded recently? Standard & Poor's has said, if we don't act, our debt will be downgraded.
We talk about foreclosures. If our credit rating goes down, can you imagine the wave of foreclosures, the wave of job losses? We talk about foreclosures. What causes foreclosures? Most of it is job loss. We have testified here today--and we will tomorrow--that this regulation will cost jobs. You talk about foreclosures. Regulations that cost jobs cause foreclosures. It's that simple. We talk about the State and local governments not having tax revenue. When people lose their jobs, they don't pay the State; they don't pay the city; they don't pay the Federal Government. They can't. Yet we continue to add cost and job- killing regulations.
Admiral Mullen, our own chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said this: Our national debt is our biggest national security threat.
What does it take for us to finally realize that we are putting our country in jeopardy? We for 224 years have lived and enjoyed an independent democracy, a Republic, but we are threatening that by our inability to say ``no,'' by our inability to say ``no'' to more Federal Government.
Ladies and gentlemen, the answer is not growing government. It's turning the private sector loose.
I thank the gentleman for the generous grant of time. So here we are trying to fill up space while America is in crisis. Now, why do I say that? One of the most important and ongoing obligations of…
I thank the gentleman for the generous grant of time.
So here we are trying to fill up space while America is in crisis. Now, why do I say that? One of the most important and ongoing obligations of the United States Congress is oversight. We don't need to pass a meaningless hortatory resolution to tell the committees to do oversight. I've observed a number of the Republican-led committees are already vigorously engaged in oversight. I held dozens of hearings in oversight of the bureaucracy and programs when I chaired the Surface Transportation Subcommittee. That's something we have not done enough of and we should do more of. But spending 10 hours on the floor instead of a few hours marking up some bills that could create jobs in America is a waste of time and meaningless.
We had two commissions that were named when the Republicans controlled the House, the Senate, and the White House in the Bush era. Both of those commissions, Republican-led, Republican-authorized commissions, came to the same conclusion: We are dramatically underinvesting in our Nation's infrastructure. We are becoming Third World: 150,000 bridges on the National Highway System need substantial repair or replacement; 40 percent of the pavement on the National Highway System fair or poor, causing blowouts, axles broken, accidents. It's a mess. Talk to anybody. A $60 billion backlog on capital investment in our transit systems. And you know what? When we make these investments, there's a great thing about it. We have strict buy America requirements--buy America requirements I intended to make more strict, and I hope the Republicans will now that they're in charge, when we reauthorize the Surface Transportation Bill.
You get a phenomenal multiplier of jobs out of those investments. Instead of the stupid stimulus bill we passed, if we had taken one- fifth of the money that went into that stimulus bill and we had invested it in surface transportation in this country, we could have created another couple of million jobs a year; because they aren't just jobs of people out there building the bridges and the highways and those sorts of things; they're the people that make the things that we use to build the bridges and highways--the steel industry. They're the people who make the tires for the buses or the engines for the buses or the streetcars that we now make in Oregon again, made in America for the first time in 70 years. A huge multiplier effect. Inadequate.
So what they said is, the amount of money we're currently investing won't even keep the Eisenhower-era system up. Now the Republicans are refusing to look at enhanced investment in transportation infrastructure, and we haven't even begun a discussion of authorizing that legislation.
As for the Federal Aviation Administration, we are wasting billions of gallons of fuel and people's time in the air because we don't have an adequate aviation system in terms of air traffic control and the tools that our controllers need. They're focused on the controllers: Oh, those controllers, they just earn too much money.
They're working with 1950's equipment. You can't get vacuum tubes anymore.
Let's focus on the things people need in order to do the jobs more efficiently, to get our planes where they're going as safely as we do today but more efficiently. Let's stop the congestion in the skies. Allow our airports to expand. Get the jobs out of construction. Let's talk about those things.
Today, the Democrats introduced a bill, our first major bill, H.R. 11, to authorize more Buy America Bonds. Now, this doesn't cost the Federal Government anything in the end. What we are trying to do is help the local jurisdictions, the States, and others who are strapped now--their bonding authority is either tapped out or they don't have good credit because of other problems--to do needed projects and give it to them at interest rates they can afford. Yeah, there's a little subsidy there in the interest rate--but guess what? With the jobs we generate, we're going to get more than that back in the taxes.
The best way we can deal with the deficit in this country is to put Americans back to work. Thirty to 40 percent of our deficit could be dealt with if we had full employment and reasonable rates of taxation like in the Clinton era. But no. The Republicans want to sit here and pretend they really care about these things.
We're going to get rid of those job-killing regulations and we'll start to do something new--oversight.
Well, good as to the oversight. You're already authorized to do oversight. Don't pretend you aren't, and don't pretend that this meaningless resolution is going to make any difference at all. Why are we wasting this time? Why are we wasting this time? Because you want to put on a show. Well, good for you. You're putting on a show. You're in charge. You can put on a show whenever you want, but someday, you're going to come to account for it, and if you haven't delivered on the jobs, and
you're not doing much so far that I've seen to produce any jobs. You can pretend this is about jobs.
What this is really about is your day-in, day-out agenda, which is big business. This isn't about independent truckdrivers who struggle to make a living. This isn't about small, independent businesses that go out and get contracts through the States with Federal money to build highway projects and some of the paperwork they have to deal with. I'm all with you on that stuff. Let's streamline that stuff. Let's get rid of that junk.
Just today, I had some people in my office who I've helped to get some money to reopen a rail line that was closed by some hedge fund in my district that bought it out, and they're being hung up on getting a Federal grant, which I helped them get one of those horrible earmarks we get around here to further enhance that short rail line, by some paperwork at the Fish and Wildlife. It just happened that the regional guy from the Feds for Fish and Wildlife was there in my office to talk to another staffer. I put them together, and we solved the issue in a couple of minutes, but it shouldn't have happened. We can streamline the paperwork. We can do that in a transportation bill and deal with those sorts of things.
So if you want to do real stuff to help real people, small business, Main Street, I'm with you, but not if this is yet another ruse to either engage in some sort of political, you know, pursuit of the administration, or if it's just something else to help your big business allies or something else to coddle Wall Street. Get rid of those burdensome regulations on Wall Street. Why, they can regulate themselves. Look what a great job they did over the last 10 years in regulating themselves. Well, they did crater the U.S. economy and the world economy and cost a few million people their jobs, but they would never do anything that would jeopardize our country.
Those burdensome regulations on Wall Street. Those burdensome regulations on BP. My God, how can we have those burdensome regulations on those big oil companies? Just free them up. They'll drill safely anywhere and everywhere, and there will never be a problem.
We had crappy regulation. Let's fix that. But we need regulations to avoid abuses. Don't pretend that we don't. Don't pretend that big business won't choose to abuse the privilege if we don't regulate them properly and smartly.
Do you want to have an aviation industry further deregulated? Let's deregulate safety. Let's get rid of those troublesome inspectors and all that stuff that goes on. No one would ever fly a plane that isn't safe. They wouldn't ever engage in cutting corners. Whoops. That already happened a few times in history, didn't it, during the deregulatory binge in the Reagan years.
So if you want to focus on meaningless, bothersome, trivial regulations, things that impede real working people, small businesses, truckers, other people who use our transportation system, the general aviation pilots, you know, and the airlines, great. But if it's just another hortatory thing, which it seems to be, or another gift to your big business allies, forget about it.
I yield myself 5 minutes. Mr. Speaker, Congress needs to get going. We were sworn in over a month ago now, when the highest priority in this country, everybody agrees, is creating jobs. And, frankly,…
I yield myself 5 minutes.
Mr. Speaker, Congress needs to get going. We were sworn in over a month ago now, when the highest priority in this country, everybody agrees, is creating jobs. And, frankly, with unemployment still hovering around 9 percent, we have no time to waste dithering around arguing about what we should do.
This resolution does not do one thing to create one job. So, once again, what are we doing? We're standing on the House floor debating for 9\1/2\ hours, wasting the American people's time, which is time we could be using to sit down on a bipartisan basis and bring jobs, investment, and growth to this country. What we're doing here is time- consuming, but it really means nothing in the end. It's a resolution. It's a resolution that directs certain standing committees to look at regulations and to decide if they think that it has some impact on jobs. It lists a number of matters for consideration. It gives no deadline by which the committees have to investigate these issues. It gives no standards for the various matters for consideration, including impede private sector job creation, et cetera. So you can bet we'll have long debates over each one of those criteria.
But, then, what is most unbelievable about this resolution, it really doesn't say what we should do about it. Let's say all the committees meet month after month determining day after day, hearing after hearing that there's some impeding on business. Then what do they do? And that's what's so frustrating, because the American people don't want more review, inventory, or compilation of regulations. They want their families to have jobs. And so that's why we really need to sit down and talk about how will we create jobs.
This resolution won't save one home from foreclosure, it won't help repair one crumbling bridge or potholed road, it won't extend a mile of broadband. It wouldn't ensure one school lunch for our children or provide a patient greater access to hospitals or doctors. It won't do any of that.
What's worse, Mr. Speaker, is that, as we take this debate on today, we need to remember the committees are already bound by the rules of the House to provide proper oversight. We don't need 2 days to debate a resolution that tells the committees what they already have a constitutional duty to do.
Frankly, I am concerned, too, because there is nothing this Congress has done today to give us any indication that the majority intends to spend any time creating jobs. We had 7 hours of debate on a bill to repeal health care, which everybody knows is not going anywhere in the other body and which doesn't create one job. This week, today--it's Thursday--we passed exactly one piece of legislation, and we are done voting for the day.
While this resolution does nothing to create jobs and nothing, frankly, to make Congress expeditiously use its already existing regulatory oversight, at the same time it neglects the fact that laws and regulations can be important to protect our constituents' health.
For example, when we had insufficient laws and regulations to deal with outbreaks of foodborne illness, we acted on a bipartisan basis to reduce 76 million foodborne illnesses, 300,000 hospitalizations, and 5,000 deaths a year in the United States. This type of regulation and oversight is important. It keeps Americans safe. It reduces the cost to our economy, and it ultimately helps save jobs. There are billions of dollars of lost productivity for workers, damage to our economy, and lost profits due to foodborne illnesses, which this Congress acted on a bipartisan basis to reduce.
Mr. Speaker, I've also introduced legislation to foster the development of a clear and predictable regulatory pathway that enables better approval of safe and effective products and the support of regulatory research to promote the understanding of regenerative medicine. These types of regulatory initiatives can actually help create jobs in the future and are a critical part of our work in this body.
I yield myself 1 additional minute.
Look, there is nobody on either side of this aisle who thinks we should have an unnecessary or overly burdensome regulation, but that's not what this is about. We have a long history of regulatory review, and we can do that without spending 9 hours debating a resolution like this. A few hours ago, we all stood here and read the Constitution aloud together. I am sure everybody remembers that the authority for committees in this Congress to review and inventory regulations is already provided.
So I would suggest, Mr. Speaker, that what we do is bring this debate to an end, that we focus on the regulations that we can repeal, and that we really focus on what the American people want us to talk about, which is creating jobs for the American public.
I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pallone).
Mr. Speaker, I would just say that in this hearing with Professor Sunstein, the evidence was that the regulations that came out in the first 2 years of the Obama administration were less than the regulations that came out in the last 2 years of the Bush administration.
With that, I yield 5 minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Matsui).
Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Vermont (Mr. Welch).
Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Mrs. Capps).
Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Inslee).
(Mr. INSLEE asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)
I continue to reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. McNerney).
Mr. Speaker, I would like to inquire if the gentleman has any further requests for time.
I yield myself the balance of my time.
Mr. Speaker, it has now been 36 days since we were sworn in in the 112th Congress. Yet, in the Energy and Commerce Committee, which I know Mr. Shimkus and I will both agree is the most illustrious and powerful committee in the U.S. House of Representatives, the committee with broad-ranging jurisdiction, everything from energy policy to food safety to health care, even to national league sports, we have not passed one legislative bill in those 36 days. We haven't passed one bill to repeal an onerous regulation. We haven't passed one bill to create one new job.
In fact, the first subcommittee markup in the Energy and Commerce Committee is tomorrow. This markup is of an extreme bill which will restrict a woman's right to choose. This is a divisive bill that has nothing to do with repealing one onerous regulation, and, in fact, it doesn't create one job, except maybe a job for lawyers who, if this actually became law, would have a field day litigating the legislation.
Look, Mr. Speaker, we all agree that if there are burdensome regulations, they should be repealed. But let's not let this discussion devolve into a partisan debate under the guise of regulatory reform.
So we know our colleagues on the other side of the aisle don't like the new EPA greenhouse gas regulations. We know that they don't like the new health care bill. But just because those bills have been passed and are being implemented does not mean that the regulations, per se, cause a loss of jobs.
So what I would suggest the American people would like us to see, what they told us in the election, what they've told us since the election, what all of my constituents told me when I was home last week is, when are you going to stop the partisan bickering? When are you going to create jobs?
I believe that if my colleague from Illinois and I, and all of the rest of us got together, we could identify a number of regulations, regulations passed under Democratic and Republican administrations that are burdensome, that are outdated, and that we could repeal. But in the meantime, let's just call it what it is. Let's have the debate if we're going to have it. But let's not call it a debate about burdensome regulations. Let's create jobs.
Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, gasoline prices are rising, and we have near double- digit unemployment. The Obama administration should be doing everything within its power…
I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Speaker, gasoline prices are rising, and we have near double- digit unemployment. The Obama administration should be doing everything within its power to spur economic growth and to create new jobs. Unfortunately, they have not.
This administration has chosen to impose regulation after regulation and policy after policy on American businesses that impede their potential growth and thus impede our economic recovery. Many of these regulations delay or flat out prevent Americans from responsibly developing our own natural resources. They block access to American energy; they block access to American minerals; they block access to American water supplies; and they block access to American forest products.
By their actions, this administration is jeopardizing our economic competitiveness. This jeopardy is making America more reliant on foreign countries to meet our everyday needs.
Mr. Speaker, I don't believe Americans are content with locking up our valuable resources.
I don't believe Americans are content with sending American jobs overseas, but that's exactly what these regulations and policies are doing.
President Obama says that he wants to eliminate regulations that are strangling businesses. That's noble, but this appears to be one more example of his rhetoric not matching his actions. The rules and regulations imposed by the Obama administration have allowed the Federal Government to insert itself in places that it's never been and, frankly, doesn't belong. Let me give you several examples.
First, burdensome regulations are being used to restrict access to American energy production on public lands, both onshore and offshore. Last year, new rules were imposed for onshore lease sales that have significantly decreased energy production throughout the intermountain West. Offshore, the administration continues to impose a de facto moratorium on drilling in the gulf and has yet to issue a single deep- well permit since last April. President Obama's de facto moratorium has put thousands of Americans out of work.
These regulations are not only impeding oil and natural gas production but also renewable energy such as wind and solar. Why? Because these regulations will restrict renewable energy development to only a tiny, tiny fraction of our public lands.
Second, the Obama administration is aggressively pursuing sweeping new changes to mining regulations. These regulations--Mr. Speaker, let me repeat this--these regulations, by their own admission, will cost thousands of American jobs and decrease American energy production in 22 States.
Third, the Obama administration has reversed a long-standing legal agreement and moved to establish a new ``wild lands'' policy that will further restrict public access to multipurpose public lands. This backdoor approach will prohibit many popular forms of recreation and severely restrict job-creating, energy-producing activities. By creating de facto wilderness, the administration is circumventing Congress' sole authority to establish wilderness areas.
Fourth, the President has signed an Executive order establishing a new National Ocean Policy and Council that could severely restrict recreational and commercial use of our oceans. This policy establishes mandatory marine spatial planning, otherwise known as ocean zoning. The reach of this policy may stretch far inland, extending to potentially all rivers, tributaries, and lands that drain into the ocean.
Fifth, the Environmental Protection Agency has allowed questionable science to be used to impose regulations that could end the use of vital farm crop and tree protection products. This will cost jobs and adversely impact trade of our agricultural products.
And last, Mr. Speaker, but certainly not least, the Obama administration has supported withholding valuable water from communities in California's San Joaquin Valley, prioritizing the needs of a 3-inch fish over thousands of workers and their families. This Government and manmade drought caused hundreds of thousands of acres of fertile farm land to dry up, and that has resulted, Mr. Speaker, in an unemployment rate that exceeds 40 percent in that area.
So this is just one example of how the implementation of the Endangered Species Act, which I might add hasn't been reviewed for almost 20 years, is being used to block or delay job-creating projects. Mr. Speaker, the goal of the ESA was to conserve key domestic species, but today, unfortunately, it's being used by special interest groups to file lawsuits and drain resources away from the real recovery efforts of those species.
The National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA, and other environmental regulations are going far beyond their original intent, and they, too, are being used to place unnecessary and costly burdens on economic development projects throughout the country. NEPA has become a tool for litigation, sometimes resulting in decades worth of delays before a project can move forward.
The list of burdensome regulations and policies go on and on, and what I have described just scratches the surface. American businesses are struggling to keep their doors open. Rural communities who depend on these resources are feeling their livelihoods threatened. And American families, many of whom are already finding it difficult to make ends meet, are paying more for everything from gasoline to fruits and vegetables.
A clean, healthy environment is a priority for all Americans. But an equal priority is a Federal Government that sets sensible rules that provide clarity, certainty, and allow job-creating initiatives to move forward in a timely, efficient manner.
The Obama administration needs to exercise common sense. Spending more money and imposing new rules will not lead to economic recovery. Businesses and communities need relief from these top-down policies that are costing American jobs.
The Natural Resources Committee and all of its subcommittees will be conducting thorough oversight of the Obama administration policies, taking a close look at how and why decisions are made. So, Mr. Speaker, I fully support this resolution, and Republicans on the Natural Resources Committee are committed to promoting policies that will reduce spending, strengthen the economy, and create American jobs.
I reserve the balance of my time.
I do not.
Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield 3 minutes to the chairman of the Indian and Alaska Native Affairs Subcommittee, the gentleman from Alaska (Mr. Young).
(Mr. YOUNG of Alaska asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)
I yield the gentleman an additional 15 seconds.
Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Utah (Mr. Bishop), the chairman of the National Parks, Forests and Public Lands Subcommittee.
I yield the gentleman 15 seconds.
Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Lamborn), the subcommittee chairman of the Energy and Minerals Subcommittee.
Mr. Speaker, after hearing the last gentleman, I yearn for these open rules we're going to have.
Mr. Speaker, the rapidly expanding Federal regulatory burden is a bipartisan problem, and I commend the chairman of the committee, my friend from Missouri, for his efforts in working, not just in his…
Mr. Speaker, the rapidly expanding Federal regulatory burden is a bipartisan problem, and I commend the chairman of the committee, my friend from Missouri, for his efforts in working, not just in his time as chairman, but working with the committee in the previous years.
And I know that he understands that this is not a Republican or a Democratic problem, because the regulatory burdens on small businesses increased by $30 billion from the years 2001-2008, and Federal regulations now cost Americans $1.75 trillion each year, which is up 50 percent from the $1.1 trillion in annual costs just in 2005.
And last year, the Federal Register contained 80,000 pages. In its first year in print, the Federal Register contained 2,355 pages. And each year, Federal agencies continue to release thousands of pages of new regulations and accompanying information. And I know that the gentleman understands that, and we share the goal of reducing this burden because the burden is detrimental, and it affects small businesses.
In fact, Mr. Speaker, studies indicate that adhering to Federal rules cost $10,585 per worker for small businesses with 19 or fewer workers, but only 78 percent of that amount for businesses with 500-plus workers. It affects small businesses disproportionately.
Overall, on a per-employee basis, it costs $2,400, or 45 percent, more for small businesses to comply with Federal regulations than their larger counterparts.
Small businesses face the greatest disadvantage in complying with environmental and tax regulations. Compliance with environmental regulations cost 364 percent more in small firms than large, and 67 percent more for the cost of corporate tax compliance.
So we agree on the problem. The question is, Where do we go from here?
And this is where I have a concern with what Chairman Graves is putting forward. What does H. Res. 72 call for that we're not already doing?
The Committee on Small Business has been reviewing regulations in a bipartisan fashion for years. The gentleman has been involved in that. And as a result of these examinations, it's called on Federal agencies to modify or alter regulatory requirements that impose costs on small firms. This has included regulations pertaining to medical equipment at CMS, accounting requirements at the SEC, real estate procedures at HUD, environmental regulations at the EPA, and on it goes.
So the reality, Mr. Speaker, is we've already done, as a committee, what this resolution calls for. And I will include in the Record the 112th Congress Small Business Committee's Oversight of Federal Regulatory and Paperwork Burdens administrative plan, what the committee has already passed.
So my question for the gentleman from Missouri to answer during the course of the debate is: What exactly does this resolution do for small businesses that we're not already doing? Is there anything in this that's not already being done now? Does it actually reduce any real regulatory burden on small businesses? Does it reduce paperwork? Does it limit government requirements on the small business community?
I would submit that this particular resolution does not. It sets up a bureaucratic process here in the Congress with a goal of inventory of regulations, a long list of inventory regulations. But this list will be submitted as part of an administrative reporting process. It does nothing for small businesses.
So I would suggest, Mr. Speaker, in closing, that instead of approving this bookkeeping resolution, what Congress really needs to do is strengthen the tools it already has available to reduce regulatory burdens. This includes the Regulatory Flexibility Act, which mandates that Federal agencies consider the potential economic impact of Federal regulations, strengthening the requirements and increasing agency reviews and regulations, regulatory relief that we passed here in the Congress during the 110th Congress, reported out by the Small Business Committee related to bipartisan regulatory reductions.
And as we continue to revisit these issues here in the 112th Congress, we must remember that small businesses are who we're trying to help.
So, in closing, I'm concerned, Mr. Chairman, that what this legislation does is add an unnecessary step to getting down to the business that we can all agree on, which is actually reducing the regulations that we all agree are a problem.
oversight of federal regulatory and paperwork burdens
The Committee will conduct hearings and investigations into
unnecessary, burdensome, and duplicative federal rules,
reporting and recordkeeping requirements affecting small
businesses that may include any or all of the following, as
well as matters brought to the attention of the Committee
subsequent to the filing of this Report:
Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
Consumer Safety Products Commission.
Department of Agriculture.
Department of Energy, particularly the Office of Energy
Efficiency and Renewable Energy.
Department of Interior, particularly the Bureau of Land
Management and Minerals Management Service.
Department of Labor, particularly the Occupational Safety
and Health Administration.
Department of Homeland Security, particularly the
Transportation Security Administration.
Department of Transportation, particularly the Federal
Aviation Administration and Federal Motor Carrier Safety
Administration.
Environmental Protection Agency.
Federal Communications Commission.
Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council and its
constituent agencies.
Food and Drug Administration.
Office of Federal Procurement Policy.
Securities and Exchange Commission.
The Committee will identify specific rules and regulations
already issued or at the proposed rule stage to assess the
impact on small businesses. The Committee will pay close
attention to the effect that regulations have on the
implementation of advanced technologies including, but not
limited to, the deployment of broadband communications
(either by wireline or wireless services) throughout the
United States. Oversight of the regulatory process also will,
to the extent relevant, examine the work of the Office of
Information and Regulatory Affairs at the Office of
Management and Budget. Special attention will be paid to the
work performed by the Chief Counsel for Advocacy at the
United States Small Business Administration to ensure that
Office is fulfilling its mission to advocate vigorously on
behalf of America's small business owners in regulatory
matters at federal agencies. Finally, this oversight will
entail an examination of compliance by federal agencies with
amendments to Executive Order 12866 and memoranda on
regulatory flexibility and regulatory compliance issued by
the President on January 18, 2011.
Mr. Speaker, before I give my opening remarks, I yield 3 minutes to my good friend from North Carolina (Mr. Coble). I do not, Mr. Speaker. I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr.…
Mr. Speaker, before I give my opening remarks, I yield 3 minutes to my good friend from North Carolina (Mr. Coble).
I do not, Mr. Speaker.
I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Duncan).
I yield the gentleman an additional 30 seconds.
Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the former chairman of the Transportation Committee, the gentleman from the great State of Alaska (Mr. Young).
I yield the gentleman 30 additional seconds.
Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Speaker, the American voter spoke loud and clear in November. They said they are tired of business as usual in Washington. They want less government intrusion and more freedom to prosper. This resolution begins that journey. It ensures freedom from government overregulation.
The buck stops here in this Chamber. The Transportation and Infrastructure Committee alone, in this committee there are overregulations in every mode of transportation and in every area of infrastructure.
Specifically, our committee is going to look at a recent rulemaking by the National Mediation Board; arbitrary revocation of environmental permits by the EPA; new hours of service regulations for truckers by DOT; costly implementation of positive train control by DOT; the overly broad lithium battery rule; an extremely burdensome EPA rule to comply with the Cotton Council versus the EPA decisions; EPA's regulation of leaded general aviation fuel and airport de-icing fluid; EPA's expanded regulations of storm water discharge; and EPA's jurisdiction grab while they claim to implement the Clean Water Act.
An issue of particular concern to me and others are the actions taken over by the National Mediation Board.
Mr. Speaker, under the current administration, unelected and unaccountable political appointees at the National Mediation Board have been bullying hardworking airline employees. As many of us know, Delta Airlines merged with Northwest Airlines in 2008. Northwest employees were represented by unions and traditionally most Delta employees were not. To complete the merger, employees have to decide whether they will elect union representation or not.
Beginning in 2008, Delta repeatedly urged the unions to seek elections so that the issue could be resolved one way or another. The only way to start that process was for the employees who wanted a union to call for an election. Many of the merged Delta working groups had already made their decision about representation. Pilots, mechanics, dispatchers, and meteorologists had all chosen, and the mediation board affirmed those decisions promptly.
In August of 2009, everything was in place to allow votes to proceed for the remaining work groups. The mediation board, however, dragged its feet and did not act on these requests, despite receiving and acting on three other requests from three other employee groups at other airlines in the intervening time.
The reason became clear in September of 2009, when the AFL-CIO asked the mediation board to change the rules in the middle of the merger. With no consultation or transparency, the mediation board rushed through new rules which makes it much easier to join a union. The new rule does so by only requiring a majority of those voting--not the majority of the work group, as required under the Railway Labor Act--to decide whether or not employees would be represented by a union. This meant that if, of a workforce of 20,000 people, only 1,000 people voted and 501 wanted a union, the entire 20,000 would be then represented.
At the same time, the new rule, while making it easier for unions to gain a foothold among employees who might not want them, didn't provide any mechanism for decertifying the union. In other words, the mediation board made it easier to get the union in and nearly impossible to get it kicked out.
With these new rules proposed, the unions which represented Northwest employees withdrew their request for votes while they waited for the new, easier rules to be finalized. The rules change was then finalized. They refiled for elections under the easier rule, and the mediation board promptly acted on those requests.
So what the unions wanted and got was the chance to have their vote under the new, more favorable rules. It begs the question, Mr. Speaker, of how much the mediation board is mediating on behalf of workers as opposed to coordinating with special interests.
If the mediation board were reasonable, it would have allowed Delta and Northwest flight attendants and airport workers to decide whether or not
they wanted union representation as soon as the unions filed. The NMB let three other airline elections go forward under the old rules but not Delta.
I would hope that the mediation board is watching out for workers' rights and not just union dues. Nothing appears to have been done to enhance worker rights and protections, and many feel that their rights are being trampled on by the very agency that is supposed to be looking out for them.
Despite the rule change, Mr. Speaker, when votes were eventually held late last year, a majority of the employees in fact voted not to join the union. The unions now have filed a complaint with the mediation board, asserting that Delta interfered with these elections and asking for new elections under--guess what?--another new set of rules. The National Mediation Board has not yet responded, but there are rightfully concerns with how it will proceed based on its past behavior.
It should be up to the employees and no one else to decide whether or not they will have a union--not the company and certainly not the Federal Government. Forcing employees to unionize through regulation is not why the National Mediation Board exists.
Mr. Speaker, at this time I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Gibbs).
Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Hanna).
Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlelady from Washington State (Ms. Herrera Beutler).
Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the good gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Bucshon).
Mr. Speaker, I believe I have my last speaker. I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Manzullo).
Mr. Speaker, in closing, I just want to say I look forward to working with the gentleman from West Virginia and all in this House to make our America a better place to live, work, and raise a family.
I yield back the balance of my time.
I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, as ranking member of the Subcommittee on Capital Markets and Government Sponsored Enterprises, I am extremely concerned about the impact of the…
I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Speaker, as ranking member of the Subcommittee on Capital Markets and Government Sponsored Enterprises, I am extremely concerned about the impact of the Republicans' continuing resolution on the ability of the Securities and Exchange Commission, the SEC, to police our capital markets, thereby preventing another financial crisis.
To be clear, the Republican continuing resolution, with its $100 billion in proposed cuts, is an assault on job creation, vulnerable populations and our communities. However, it is also an assault on our financial markets. If the Securities and Exchange Commission is level- funded or funded at 2008 levels, we risk defunding the main agency with oversight over the risky financial products that started the 2008 financial crisis. The SEC is supposed to be our Wall Street cop. It is supposed to make sure that the brokerage firms are obeying the law. It is supposed to protect the investors. It is supposed to make sure that those people who work every day having their money invested by institutional investments like the pension funds are not losing their investments in their 401(k)s.
Let's talk about what happened in 2008. In 2008, our financial markets collapsed. In 2008, it was clear that the SEC didn't have the tools or the resources it needed to monitor or police those markets. So, frankly, I don't understand why Republicans would want to underfund the SEC with the same amount of funding it received in the year that it lacked the resources to monitor financial markets that were spinning out of control.
From 2005 to 2007, during the buildup to the crisis that imploded in 2008, the SEC lost 10 percent of its staff. In addition, from 2005 to 2009, the SEC's investments in information technology declined by 50 percent. During this time period, trading volume doubled, the number of investment advisers has increased by 50 percent, and the funds they manage have increased 55 percent to $33 trillion.
Let's put these numbers into perspective. The SEC's 3,800 employees currently oversee 35,000 entities--including 11,450 investment advisers, 7,600 mutual funds, 5,000 broker dealers, and more than 10,000 public companies. Furthermore, these staff police companies that trade on average 8.5 billion shares in the listed equity markets alone every day.
The Dodd-Frank Act will prevent the next crisis by authorizing the SEC to regulate derivatives, provide oversight of investment advisers and broker dealers, and rein in credit rating agencies. In order to do this, the SEC needs additional funding. The Securities and Exchange Commission that is our Wall Street cop to protect us all needs additional funding. Unfortunately, House Republicans don't want the SEC to staff up or to even maintain their current staffing levels. Why? If funded at fiscal year 2008 levels, the SEC would have to lay off hundreds of staff and cut its IT budget down to $86 million, its lowest level of IT spending since 2003.
At this level, the SEC would not be able to implement the new systems it needs to protect the Nation's securities markets.
We have all said to the public in so many ways, and certainly through Dodd-Frank, that we are going to change the way the SEC has been working; we are going to make sure we have some protections for consumers and investors. Yet we know it can't be done without the resources, without the money. You can tell where your priorities are based on where you put your funding. This attack on the SEC is more disturbing because the agency's funding will be deficit-neutral. Beginning in fiscal year 2012, fees collected by the SEC will match its congressional appropriation. The critical role that the SEC plays in our Nation's financial markets is precisely why Wall Street, the very entity that the SEC regulates, is asking for Congress to fully fund this agency.
According to a February 7 article in The New York Times, 41 prominent securities lawyers and professionals have already written to Congress to ask for full funding for the agency. Why do we have to beg for funding for the SEC if we are truly about the business of protecting our consumers?
Mr. Speaker, the SEC needs a sufficient level of funding. If Wall Street's cop on the beat is unavailable, we risk another financial crisis and loss of more jobs.
I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Perlmutter).
I yield the gentleman an additional 30 seconds.
I yield 3 minutes to the gentlelady from New York (Mrs. Maloney).
Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Al Green).
Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to another member of the Financial Services Committee, the gentleman from North Carolina, Mr. Mel Watt.
Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Meeks), who also serves on the Financial Services Committee.
Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Connecticut (Mr. Himes), who also serves on the Financial Services Committee.
Mr. Speaker, I would like to engage my colleague, Mr. Himes, in a colloquy for the balance of our time.
I appreciated the comments that you made just a few minutes ago, but you alluded to the length of time that we have organized the SEC and some protections and what happened, the kind of growth we had, but now things have changed somewhat and the oversight responsibility is a little bit more complicated and a little bit more difficult.
What did you mean by that?
I want to ask you, is it true that the average investor-- I'm not just talking about the big institutional investors, but the average investor understands the complication of this? Do they expect that we understand it and we're going to regulate it, we're going to watch out for them? What does the average investor know about the system?
We heard on several occasions here today the tremendous oversight responsibility given all of the capital markets that have to be monitored, that have to be regulated. What do we need to do to make the SEC stronger? We've gone through this meltdown. We've have gone through this crisis. The American people expect something to happen. What do they need in order to be good overseers, good cops?
Thank you very much.
Mr. Speaker, at this point I would yield the balance of my time to the gentlewoman from New York (Ms. Hayworth).
Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I rise in strong support of H. Res. 72. Under both Democratic and Republican administrations, Federal agencies can, and do, abuse their…
Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
I rise in strong support of H. Res. 72. Under both Democratic and Republican administrations, Federal agencies can, and do, abuse their regulatory powers.
For the last 2 years, in my own district, coal miners in communities that depend on coal have been struggling with the uncertainty created by the Environmental Protection Agency that has pushed its regulatory authority to extremes.
As a result of EPA's extensive intervention in Clean Water Act section 404 permitting for service mines, miners in my district and their families are in an untenable limbo, wondering from week to week whether their mines will get a permit and whether their jobs will end.
EPA is setting new timelines and new criteria for permits, timelines and criteria that differ from what is in statute and regulation. And they are doing so not through the proper regulatory procedure, but through interim guidance, skirting the rulemaking process that would provide for greater transparency and public comment.
The agency is setting a terrible precedent that opens the door for further abuses in future administrations. So I stand here today supporting the contention that Congress ought to check overzealous executive agencies. We ought to be conducting rigorous oversight and siphoning off regulations that hamstring our economy and the wellbeing of Americans. And I fully expect our committee, the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, to soon review the EPA's actions with respect to coal mining permits throughout central Appalachia.
But I also remind my colleagues that this is not a new responsibility. It is the duty placed on Congress, the people's branch, by the Framers of the Constitution, who knew firsthand the abuses of an all-powerful executive.
Nothing in this resolution changes or enhances that responsibility. Rather than expending so much time, energy, and taxpayer dollars in a display on this floor that provides the Members of this body and the American people not a single ounce of new or enhanced benefit, we ought to be concentrating on the real work. We ought to be moving legislation that creates jobs, good family-wage jobs.
There is no better way to create family-wage jobs than investing in our Nation's transportation and water resources infrastructure. These investments create and sustain millions of American jobs and generate billions of dollars of economic activity.
According to the Federal Highway Administration, for example, each $1 billion of Federal investment creates or sustains 34,799 jobs and $6.2 billion of economic activity. Moreover, these investments strengthen our ability to compete in the global marketplace.
It is for these reasons, creating family-wage jobs and strengthening our global competitiveness, that the presidents of the Chamber of Commerce and the AFL-CIO have linked arms in support of increased infrastructure investment. Yet, in the first six weeks of this Congress, the only action to date has been to wipe away the legacy of former Republican Chairman Bud Shuster, the budgetary firewalls that ensured that we invest the revenues of the Highway Trust Fund in highway and transit infrastructure. We have abolished the ``trust'' in the Highway Trust Fund.
In the last Congress, the House passed a Federal Aviation Administration reauthorization bill that significantly increased airport investment, including runway, terminal, and tarmac construction. The bill also authorized and accelerated the FAA's next- generation air transportation system, which will be an engine of economic growth. It will benefit airlines, workers, the traveling public, and the FAA over the long term, providing greater job security and opportunities for the Nation's 567,000 airline workers and the 624,000 employees that work for companies that manufacture aircraft and components.
We also passed a bill to help cash-strapped States and communities invest almost $14 billion in wastewater treatment facilities and sewer lines.
In addition, the committee, on a bipartisan basis, approved a $500 billion Surface Transportation Authorization Act to significantly increase investment in highway transit and rail infrastructure. The bill would create and sustain an estimated 6 million jobs.
Finally, our committee on T&I approved a water resources development bill to invest in our Nation's water resources infrastructure and an Economic Development Administration reauthorization bill that provides grants to economically distressed communities to help them build the necessary infrastructure to foster business investments and create jobs.
Mr. Speaker, these are the bills that we should be debating on the floor today. These are the bills that make a difference in people's lives.
We cannot wait. The construction season is upon us, and 1.9 million construction workers are still out of work.
They need a job, not another feel-good resolution from this Republican majority.
Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all time on the resolution be yielded back and that H. Res. 72 be adopted so we can move to consider legislation creating jobs.
I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. Speaker, I reserve my time.
Mr. Speaker, I continue to reserve.
Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to our distinguished leading Democrat on the Subcommittee on Highways and Transit, the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. DeFazio).
I yield the gentleman an additional 3 minutes.
Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to a valued member of our Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, the gentlewoman from Hawaii (Ms. Hirono).
Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, small businesses are central to the economic recovery currently underway. Unfortunately, there are many obstacles for entrepreneurs to overcome…
I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Speaker, small businesses are central to the economic recovery currently underway. Unfortunately, there are many obstacles for entrepreneurs to overcome in order to be successful. One of the most notable is regulatory burden, the hours upon hours it takes an entrepreneur to navigate and complete Federal, State, or municipal government paperwork.
This impediment has grown dramatically in recent years. According to the SBA's Office of Advocacy, rules imposed from the Federal Government now cost Americans some $1.75 trillion each year. This is 50 percent higher than the $1.1 trillion in costs reported in 2005. We know that this burden falls heaviest on small firms. Research shows that small businesses face an annual regulatory cost of $10,585 per employee, an amount that is 36 percent higher than those facing large firms. And Federal agencies continue to release tens of thousands of pages of regulations each year.
With this problem getting worse, it is certainly worth Congress' time and attention. In the Committee on Small Business, we have been reviewing regulations in a bipartisan fashion for years. As a result of this examination, we have called on Federal agencies to modify or eliminate regulatory requirements that adversely affect small firms, whether they are related to medical equipment at CMS, accounting requirements at the SEC, real estate procedures at HUD, or environmental regulations at the EPA.
The reality is that we already do what this resolution calls for. As a result, today's resolution does not help one small businessperson. It sets up a bureaucratic process here in Congress with the goal of producing a list of regulations. How does a ``list'' help small businesses? It doesn't. Anyone that has spent 5 minutes with a small business owner knows that this is a top problem for them. This resolution is nothing more than a vehicle to rehash old politically motivated fights and just creates more paperwork here in Congress.
Instead of approving this green eyeshade bookkeeping resolution, what we need to do is make sure that the actual tools already available to reduce regulatory burden are effective. This includes the Regulatory Flexibility Act, which mandates that Federal agencies consider the potential economic impact of Federal regulations as well as conduct periodic reviews of rules that have a significant economic impact on businesses. Making these laws work better--or expanding them further-- is what we should be doing instead of passing this resolution. Requiring tougher and more agency reviews of regulation as well as considering broader economic effects of regulations are necessary. Here in the House, our committee reported bipartisan legislation in the 110th Congress to do just that.
As we navigate this issue over the next 24 months, we cannot lose sight of who we are trying to actually help. It is the small business owner that needs our assistance. Unfortunately, if this resolution is the best we can do, small businesses may have to wait a long time for real and meaningful relief.
Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all time on the resolution be yielded back and that H. Res. 72 be adopted so we can move to consider legislation creating jobs.
Mr. Speaker, we will continue this debate that will end up not creating one single job.
I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Altmire).
Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from New York (Ms. Clarke).
Mr. Speaker, I would like to inquire as to how much time each side has.
I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Chu).
Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time.
Mr. Speaker, the resolution that we are considering today will not help one single small business. It will not reduce paperwork for entrepreneurs nor will it result in a less intrusive government.
This resolution will do none of this.
The previous speaker was talking about the fact that yesterday we held a hearing in the Small Business Committee discussing the burden of 1099s. We know that there is bipartisan agreement on this issue, so let's fix it instead of wasting time, hours here that will take us nowhere. Why can't the Republican leadership bring the issue of the 1099, where there is bipartisan agreement, and get it done? That will help small businesses, and it will create jobs. But this resolution will not achieve that.
What it does do is create bureaucratic bookkeeping requirements for House committees. I guess for some this might be a good sound bite, but this does not provide any concrete solutions for our Nation's small business owners who are drowning in government regulations.
If we want real change, we have to transform how executive branch agencies create and approve regulations. This means ensuring that businesses are given meaningful involvement in the process, not just a token role. It also means that agencies should consider the impact on the business community before they begin writing the regulation, not when it is nearly complete.
Changes like this are long overdue. The reality is that the regulatory burden has grown dramatically under both Republican and Democratic administrations, rising by over $30 billion under George W. Bush's administration alone.
This is a bipartisan problem that needs a bipartisan solution. With this in mind, I look forward to working with anyone that is interested in bringing real regulatory relief to small businesses.
I yield back the balance of my time.
Mr. Speaker, we have on this side spoken tonight at some length about a dangerous and poorly thought out effort on the part of the majority to underfund and gut the financial services regulatory…
Mr. Speaker, we have on this side spoken tonight at some length about a dangerous and poorly thought out effort on the part of the majority to underfund and gut the financial services regulatory apparatus that was established in the 1930s, which, yes, failed us in the last couple of years. And let's be clear: There is a legitimate tension between the amount of regulation which creates stability and confidence in a system and that which puts undue burden on the vigor of the private market. But this effort is wrong-headed.
Let's look at the SEC. The mission of the SEC is to protect investors. The notion that we should gut the funding of the SEC is anti-free market, it is anti-jobs and it is anti-growth, because we must protect those investors who take their savings and write a check and put it in the mail to a company in some town they have never visited, in a fund that they don't fully understand, because they know that there is a cop on the beat.
The families who write those checks, that is not just money. That money is a college education, it is a secure retirement, and they do it because they have faith. They have faith that there is a cop on the beat, that whoever takes that check is closely watched, that they are responsible and prudent. This is the fundamental aspect of our vigorous economy--that families and pension funds invest. We have efficient and vigorous capital markets because of faith.
Let's look at the lessons that have been learned in the last couple of years. It wasn't that the SEC was somehow complicit in what happened.
Yeah, they fell asleep at the switch. They didn't perform any better than a myriad of other organizations. But, if anything, the lesson is that the SEC was outgunned, underfunded, and needed help. And the effort of the majority now is to further underfund and gut that agency. It's particularly wrongheaded because the SEC pays for itself. In fiscal year 2012, the SEC will be budget-neutral. Why do this? Why risk the faith of the investors that are at the very heart of our system?
We hear a lot about uncertainty; there's so much uncertainty. Imagine the uncertainty for American families and pension funds and savers and small businesses if they need to send that check without knowing that there's a cop on the beat.
Mr. Speaker, we've seen this movie before. When the SEC was established in the 1930s, the Republicans at the time said this would be the end of capitalism. It would be the end of the free market. It would crush the U.S. economy. Instead, putting in place a well-balanced and vigorous regulatory apparatus led to 60 years of the most aggressive and intense economic growth human history has ever seen-- because people had faith in the system.
I thank the gentlelady from California for that question.
If you look at when these regulatory bodies were established in the 1930s and you look at the volatility and the growth that happened in the next 60 years, volatility was way down and growth was way up, and the American middle class took hold because they had confidence in the system. They knew that their investor dollars would be protected.
Then we began in the early nineties, policymakers from both sides of the aisle, to dismantle that regulation, to take the referee off the field. And so we find ourselves where we are today--uncertainty, a financial crisis meltdown--at the very moment when the technology, the flash trading, the complicated securities are bewildering in their complexity.
Now is exactly the wrong time to be gutting the SEC. We do that and people lose their confidence.
The average investor, the mom and pop, the widows and orphans funds, they're not necessarily financially sophisticated. They need somebody looking over the shoulder of those that are selling them stock, selling them bonds.
The institutional investors that you're talking about, of course, in many instances, are exempt from regulations by the SEC. They're deemed to be sophisticated, so they can participate in private placements. They can use 144(a) or reg D to make investments.
But our individual investors who are so important to this economy need somebody looking over their shoulder and protecting them from snake oil salesmen and deception and poor disclosure.
In a more complicated and sophisticated financial world, the SEC must be faster. It must be more efficient. It must hire people who really understand the markets. It must be more robust, and it should be held accountable. One thing it should not be and cannot be is underfunded and weak, which is what the proposal of the majority would do to it.
As I listen to this debate this evening, Mr. Speaker, I find myself wanting to focus on jobs, but what I just heard makes my blood boil. I was the Deputy Secretary at the Department of the Interior…
As I listen to this debate this evening, Mr. Speaker, I find myself wanting to focus on jobs, but what I just heard makes my blood boil.
I was the Deputy Secretary at the Department of the Interior while the rapers and pillagers of the public land wanted all regulations to disappear. They wanted to have open hunting for minerals, for oil, for gas and coal on all public lands.
And you talked a moment ago about the pulling of that permit for that coal mine. They would, in that permit, level the hills of Appalachia, flatten them, ruin the streams, destroy, destroy, destroy.
The regulations are there for a reason. They are there to protect the precious environment of America. And if it is your intent to do away with those regulations, then know this: You will have a fight on your hands.
You will have a fight on your hands when you try to do away with the regulations that protect the men and women on those drilling rigs from the extraordinary accidents that happen in deepwater drilling.
But, my purpose here tonight is different. My purpose here tonight is to ask why it is that the Republican majority has spent 5 weeks, 5 weeks leading this Congress, and not created one bill that creates one job, not one. Five weeks, zero jobs. You ran on jobs. Where are your job bills?
Your regulations are hiding--this whole debate is hiding something, because, as we speak, here you are in the process of figuring out how to cut $100 billion out of the Federal budget for the next 7 months.
What does that mean? It means that national parks will close. It means that the clean water people that came to my office today will have no money, no money to build the sanitation systems and provide clean water for their citizens in the rural communities that you were just talking about.
What is this about? This is about hiding the ball. This is about wasting our time. When we ought to be talking about jobs, instead, you are hiding a $100 billion cut that will displace hundreds of thousands of workers in the next 7 months. That's what this is about.
We're talking about hiding the ball when it comes to the men and women that maintain those very places you talk about out there in the great western lands.
You're hiding the bill about the cuts you are going to make to education, for the teachers that will lose their jobs, for the janitors, for the bus drivers, for those people that are now employed that will lose their jobs as you attempt to put those cuts in place.
This is about jobs. The Democrats are talking about jobs. We're talking about making it in America. We're talking about those solar projects. Yes, we're talking about who's going to win the next energy, the next energy systems for this world. It's not coal. It's not oil. It's the green renewable energy and nuclear. That's what we're talking about on our side. We're talking about how we can do that.
And you're talking about wasting 9 hours of precious time on this floor doing what you've already done. You've already issued the edicts of what you are going to do in this committee. I received it 2 weeks ago. You're going to explore this; you're going to review that. Two weeks ago you told me, a new member of this committee, what you intend to do, and now you're wasting our time on this floor when we ought to be talking about jobs.
We ought to be talking about China getting ahead of us on tomorrow's energy, wind, solar, solar thermal, all of those things. But no, no, we're going to talk about what you've already done. You did it 2 weeks ago.
Why are you wasting our time when Americans want jobs, when Americans want solid legislation like Make It In America, using our tax money to buy solar and wind equipment that is manufactured in America? Why don't we talk about that?
Why don't we talk about using our money, our tax money that we pay every day at the gasoline pump, about American-made buses and trains?
But no, we're going to talk about regulations. You already have told us what you're going to do.
Let's talk about creating jobs. That's what we ought to be doing here. We ought not be wasting our time doing what you've already done. You've told us what you're going to do.
And, by the way, if you think for a moment you can do away with those regulations that are protecting America's precious resources and lives, know this: You've got a fight. You've got a fight that you lost in the 1990s. You lost it in the 2000-2008 period, and you will lose that fight because we are about creating good, healthy jobs in America that do not destroy the American environment.
Mr. Speaker, I am a small business owner. I own and operate a business. I employ just under 100 people. For me, that is 100 families. One of the reasons that I am here today is I decided the…
Mr. Speaker, I am a small business owner. I own and operate a business. I employ just under 100 people. For me, that is 100 families. One of the reasons that I am here today is I decided the government was making it harder and harder for me to put the key in the door and open up my business every day, and it should be quite the opposite.
We need regulation. I am going to agree with my colleagues on the other side. We need regulation, but it has to be smart regulation. H. Res. 72 finally gives the American public, employees, consumers, businesses, and families a bright light at the end of what is a very dark and long regulatory tunnel. And while we agree that many regulations are there to safeguard the American public, this resolution will simply require that House committees review these government regulations.
While doing so, each committee will identify each regulation's effects on jobs and economic growth, and, more specifically, ask certain sets of fundamental questions, including, will the proposed regulation impede private
sector job creation? That is the number one goal right now, to try to create jobs. Will the proposed regulation discourage innovation and the entrepreneurial spirit? Will the proposed regulation harm economic growth and investment? Will it harm America's global competitiveness? Will the proposed regulation limit access to credit and to capital? Will it create economic uncertainty?
Unfortunately, for years, many in the Congress and regulators have simply ignored these questions, with devastating results for job creation.
Mr. Speaker, in our global marketplace we must ask, analyze, and debate the questions contained in this resolution if we are serious about creating an environment where private sector jobs are created.
Unfortunately, in the past we had multiple massive bills with thousands of pages of legislative text written and jammed through the Congress without meaningful debate, without transparency, and without opportunity for most Members to actually read and to analyze the mountain of legislation, creating countless regulations, rules, studies, and commissions. How can we possibly expect businesses to invest scarce capital in new equipment, in new research, in development, in new product lines, in new marketing programs, maintaining existing jobs and new initiatives, when our regulations are paralyzing businesses and entrepreneurs with a tremendous amount of uncertainty?
I hear back in my district all the time from those that are trying to create jobs. A good example of the regulatory environment is a small business in the 10th District back in Illinois, Learning Resources, whose sole mission is to provide better resources for teachers and students to learn more easily.
Learning Resources has suffered along with its current employees, and I would argue potential employees and their families, because of undue burdensome regulations. Their regulatory compliance costs have increased ten times, 1,000 percent, in just the last 5 years, even though the company has not had any safety issues or any problems during that time or the years prior to. With unduly burdensome regulations, jobs have been lost, business expansion opportunities have been cut short, employee benefits have been shaved and consumer prices have been artificially inflated.
The Small Business Administration estimates that a total regulatory compliance cost imposed on American businesses amounts to over $1.75 trillion each and every year. This is nearly twice as much as all individual income taxes collected each year. This takes away from productive investment and growth.
We live, Mr. Speaker, in a global marketplace where businesses and capital are mobile, where businesses and jobs gravitate to where they are most welcome, where customers can easily choose to buy goods and services from businesses based anywhere in the world. We want those businesses and those jobs here in the United States. We want businesses to innovate. We want them to make sure they are welcome here in our borders. We have to create, however, an environment where they can grow and they can thrive.
H. Res. 72 is good for individuals, for families, for employees, for businesses. It is good for our government, and it is good for our Nation, and I would respectfully urge my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to support its passage.
Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks. I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, as chairman of the House…
Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all
Members have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks.
I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Speaker, as chairman of the House Small Business Committee, I often see the impact that regulations have on small businesses. Harmful Federal regulations can put serious hurdles in the way of entrepreneurship, making it difficult to create jobs and expand businesses. As we try to encourage a lasting, stable economic recovery, it is critical we review and analyze the impact of proposed and existing regulations on small businesses. We must make sure regulators are not making irreversible decisions that could strain the competitive ability of small businesses, prevent expansion, reduce access to capital and harm the overall growth of the American economy.
Not only are regulations potentially harmful to small businesses, there are simply too many regulations for businesses to follow. In 2010, the Federal Register, the daily digest of the Federal agency regulatory announcements, contained about 82,000 pages, in comparison to the roughly 42,000 pages in 1980.
President Reagan and every President since ordered Federal bureaucrats to review regulations. Despite this, very few rules are ever repealed. President Reagan and every President since has ordered the Office of Management and Budget to review new regulations. And despite this review, Federal agencies continue to issue new regulations. President Reagan and every President since has issued an Executive Order mandating that agencies only promulgate rules in which benefits exceed the costs. Despite this, agencies continue to issue regulations imposing undue costs on small businesses. President Reagan and every President since has sought to strengthen the enforcement of the Paperwork Reduction Act. But despite this, reporting and record keeping requirements continue to bury small business owners.
Ultimately, what is at stake is whether small businesses will succeed in the free market or have their success determined by the whims and dictates of Federal bureaucrats. If the President and agencies are unable to stem this tide and allow small businesses to do what they do best--that is create jobs--then Congress has to act. The resolution before us today is just that, a call for Congress to act.
I strongly endorse this resolution and look forward to the Committee on Small Business reviewing agency regulations that are duplicative, unnecessary, or otherwise inhibit small business expansion.
With that, Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
No.
Mr. Speaker, at this time, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlelady from North Carolina (Mrs. Ellmers), the chair of the Subcommittee on Health Care and Technology.
(Mrs. ELLMERS asked and was given permission to revise and extend her remarks.)
Mr. Speaker, I yield the gentlewoman an additional 30 seconds.
Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. Landry).
(Mr. LANDRY asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)
Mr. Speaker, I yield the gentleman an additional 15 seconds.
Mr. Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Colorado, the chairman of the Subcommittee on Agriculture, Energy and Trade, Mr. Tipton.
Mr. Speaker, I yield the gentleman 30 additional seconds.
Mr. Speaker, at this time I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Fleischmann).
Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Colorado, the chair of the Subcommittee on Investigation, Oversight and Regulations, Mr. Coffman.
Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. West).
Mr. Speaker, in closing, I just want to say that this resolution before us, as has been said, it is not a Democratic or a Republican issue; rather, it is an issue of good government and it identifies those irrational rules that represent barriers to job growth.
Mr. Speaker, the last Congress and this administration passed bill after bill after bill that either taxed or regulated businesses and small firms right out of business, and it is going to take time to unravel that mess. With this bill, again, we are going to identify a lot of those irrational rules that represent those barriers.
With that, I would strongly urge my colleagues to support this resolution.
Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
I yield myself 5 minutes. This is a very important debate because it goes right to the very heart of what is needed in order to ensure that we provide the proper protections for families across our…
I yield myself 5 minutes.
This is a very important debate because it goes right to the very heart of what is needed in order to ensure that we provide the proper protections for families across our country, from the despoliation of the environment and all the public health and safety and environmental catastrophes that then can affect American families.
I have here a picture of the Deepwater Horizon in flames as it's about to go to the bottom of the ocean. This is what happened because of deregulation. This is what happened when regulations are not applied and enforced in a way that ensures that the public health and safety is protected, the greatest environmental disaster in the history of the United States, devastating the lives of 11 men and the livelihoods of millions of people in the Gulf of Mexico. This is the legacy of what happened during the Bush administration, a ticking timebomb that exploded across our country, leading to this environmental catastrophe.
The same thing, by the way, is true in our financial marketplace where, in the Bush years, they turned a blind eye to obvious problems with derivatives, obvious problems with chicanery inside of the financial marketplace, a ticking timebomb that exploded, that has wreaked havoc on millions of Americans, losing their home, their jobs.
When George Bush left office, the Dow Jones industrial average at 6,400, 6,400, after 8 years in office. That's what George Bush left in office, by turning a blind eye to the kinds of regulations that it needed there to protect the lives of families. Today, with Barack Obama on the job, with a Securities and Exchange Commission doing its job, the Dow is now over 12,000, almost doubled, because people have confidence in the regulations. They can trust their money in the stock market once again. That's what happens when regulations are there to protect ordinary people.
Now, what is their proposal? Their proposal is to take the Environmental Protection Agency and to turn the Environmental Protection Agency into every polluter's ally. They're going to bring a bill out here onto the House floor that says they're going to repeal the ability of the EPA to improve the fuel economy standards of the vehicles which we drive, to ensure that regulations are on the books that we have renewable fuels that we develop here in the United States, not imported from OPEC.
The result of that bill that they're going to bring out here on the House floor in the next 2 weeks? Some 5 million barrels of oil per day that otherwise would be backed out, that we would not import from the Middle East, will now have to be imported. At $100 a barrel with 365 days in a year, we're talking about $162 billion a year that the American consumer will have to send to the Middle East because they do not want to regulate.
They do not want to ensure that the efficiency of the cars which people drive, the amount of pollution that comes out of those cars, they say, is too high a price to pay. While here as we watch Egypt explode, Tunisia explode, other countries in the Middle East on the verge of having the same kind of explosions, this kind of environmental, this kind of safety protection that we put on the books enforces the need for us to ensure that we do not allow for the repeal of these environmental and safety protections. That's what this debate is all about.
This is the same kind of war on the environment that we saw during the 8 years of the Bush administration. This is the result of that, ladies and gentlemen. And that's where they're going to take us if we have this wholesale destruction of this environmental and safety regime which has been put on the books in order to protect the American public.
At this point I ask unanimous consent that all time on the resolution be yielded back and that H. Res. 72 be adopted so that we can move on to consider legislation to create jobs in our country, which is really what we should be debating out here on the House floor.
Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentlelady from California (Mrs. Napolitano).
Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Grijalva).
Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Garamendi).
Mr. Speaker, let me thank our ranking member, Mr. Markey, for the opportunity. This resolution is, quite frankly, an unfortunate use of our time. Rather than discussing jobs proposals, we are…
Mr. Speaker, let me thank our ranking member, Mr. Markey, for the opportunity.
This resolution is, quite frankly, an unfortunate use of our time. Rather than discussing jobs proposals, we are discussing a resolution that is telling ourselves to do something we are already doing, which is the regulatory review. The majority is intent on talking about what they perceive the unemployment problem to be while spending no time at all attempting to work on some real solutions.
In the New West--and the chairman of our subcommittee, Mr. Bishop, mentioned that--there is high unemployment. I would suggest that we need to look deeper than the regulatory issues that he pointed out. The West leads the country in foreclosures. Those were the manipulations of banks and mortgage companies and shenanigans that Mr. Markey called. And as a consequence of that, we lead the Nation in unemployed construction workers. We lead the Nation in unemployed labor. And that is a deregulated industry. So I would suggest that if we are going to use unemployment as an example, we look at the root problem of where our unemployment is in the West.
The Republican majority on the Natural Resources Committee seems to think that American people have to choose between healthy, vibrant national parks, forests, and public lands or jobs. If you ask them for their ideas regarding job creation, what you hear is that we have got to roll back existing environmental protections and open up the ever- expanding areas of public lands to unregulated, destructive resource extraction. This is a horribly false choice created by those who care more about increasing the profits for oil, timber, and mining companies than really about creating jobs. This is a false choice because with a little bit of forward thinking, we can create jobs that will not only provide people with paychecks but will actually improve our environment and the economy and at the same time take care of our public lands.
We have heard many examples from Members on this side of the aisle, and we will continue to hear that today, and I am proud to try to do my part as well. Yesterday I reintroduced, with the senior member of our committee, Mr. Markey, the Public Lands Service Corps legislation, H.R. 587. This legislation passed the House last Congress, and I am pleased to reintroduce it.
At the same time that we are facing high unemployment, we also face huge backlogs of labor-intensive work needed on national park lands, forests, wildlife areas, historic sites, and Indian lands. Years of inadequate funding have put land management agencies far behind on the vital maintenance work while infrastructure continues to crumble.
Our legislation would provide opportunity through three Departments: Interior, Agriculture, and Commerce; provide service learning opportunities on public lands; help restore our natural, cultural, and historic resources; train a whole new generation of public land managers; and promote the value of public lands. This legislation will modernize the scope of the corps projects to reflect the new challenges, such as climate change and adding incentives to attract new participants, especially from underrepresented populations.
By providing job training, by providing opportunity, we are providing people with a chance to succeed. I would suggest that as we talk about legislation and we talk about jobs, that we talk about job creation and not merely talk about the need for jobs but talk about the specificity, what are going to be the mechanisms and the techniques to put people back to work.
To use the misery of unemployment in this community as a reason to give away our natural resources is cynical at best. It doesn't create jobs; it doesn't protect Americans; and it doesn't empower our communities or protect our very valuable and cherished public lands.
And to do so, this bill begs the question. It does not talk. It does not specify what we need to do. It merely reiterates an ideology that says, no regulation. We've seen that history. We have seen its consequences, and I urge a ``no'' vote on this.
I thank the gentlelady for yielding. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in opposition to House Resolution 72. This resolution does nothing to actually create jobs and is a distraction from what should be our…
I thank the gentlelady for yielding.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today in opposition to House Resolution 72. This resolution does nothing to actually create jobs and is a distraction from what should be our focus: creating jobs here in this country. Instead of spending time debating and creating legislation that would create jobs and further our economic recovery, we are here debating legislation that basically reiterates what the Energy and Commerce Committee is currently doing.
In contrast, I believe that the American people have been clear. They want this Congress to focus on jobs, and that should be our number one priority. In fact, I recently sent a survey to my constituents asking them what they thought should be the top priorities of this Congress. Not surprisingly, 81 percent responded that creating jobs should be our top priority.
Mr. Speaker, I routinely hold clean energy roundtable forums in Sacramento with CEOs and with other local leaders, including one just last week, and they consistently tell me that they need real incentives and assistance in expanding their manufacturing base and finding new markets abroad for their products and services. In doing so, they recognize that new jobs will be created. They will have additional revenues to purchase new equipment, invest in R&D, and benefit our economy. Perhaps, instead of debating today's resolution, we could instead be focused on debating legislation that would create jobs.
Mr. Speaker, we need to be focussing on moving our economy forward by creating new jobs in different sectors of our economy. Just as the President emphasized in his recent State of the Union address and announced in his Startup America initiative, America must continue to lead the way in innovation in order to both rebuild today's economy and bolster the industries of tomorrow.
The clean energy manufacturing sector is a critical area where most leading economists believe our Nation can
experience the highest job growth potential. In fact, the Department of Energy has found that continued investment in the U.S. clean energy sector could create more than 750,000 jobs over the next decade. However, it is one area where the U.S. is unfortunately falling behind many of its competitors, including China and Germany. Mr. Speaker, we must change that.
America has an historic opportunity to become a leader in clean technology manufacturing and creating new, good-paying jobs in this country. That is why I, along with Congressman John Dingell, recently introduced legislation to bolster the U.S. clean energy and manufacturing industry with the goal of creating jobs and advancing our Nation's standing in the ever growing clean energy economy.
As part of the Make It In America agenda, this legislation, H.R. 502, the Clean Energy Technology Manufacturing and Export Assistance Act of 2011, would help boost U.S. innovation and competitiveness by promoting the manufacturing of clean energy technology at home and supporting its exports abroad. The bill helps strengthen America's domestic clean tech manufacturing industry by directing the Commerce Department to provide specific tools and resources to those companies that need it most: America's small and medium-sized manufacturing businesses.
Mr. Speaker, manufacturing jobs are the fabric of our country that could put millions of Americans back to work. But we must manufacture the products that are in demand and that have an exponential potential to grow, and the clean energy sector is that ever growing industry. But in order to create those jobs, this Congress must pass legislation that will help us do just that.
Mr. Speaker, this bill passed the House last Congress with bipartisan support, and it is my hope that it will be considered again soon during this new Congress so we can move our Nation's clean energy economy forward and create new, good-paying jobs here in this country. Unfortunately, H. Res. 72 fails that test.
I urge my colleagues to vote against the resolution before us.
I thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Speaker, under normal circumstances, the programs under the jurisdiction of the Energy and Mineral Resources Subcommittee bring in the second-highest revenue to the…
I thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Speaker, under normal circumstances, the programs under the jurisdiction of the Energy and Mineral Resources Subcommittee bring in the second-highest revenue to the Federal Treasury, provide opportunities for American job creation, and contribute to our Nation's economic and national security. However, the Obama administration is crippling American energy and mineral production through restrictive new policies, rules, and regulations.
President Obama's de facto moratorium on offshore drilling in the Gulf of Mexico has left many thousands of people out of work. Since last spring, the administration has issued only a handful of new shallow water permits, and they have issued no new permits for deepwater leases. Why are no new permits being issued? The reason is simple: it's regulatory confusion. The administration is attempting to create new rules for oil and gas permitting and has repeatedly changed the rules and moved the goal posts on companies operating on both Federal lands and waters. Instead of thoughtful, reasoned
rulemaking that seeks public comments and engagement, the administration unilaterally directed the change of over 14,000 engineering requirements.
The Louisiana Secretary of Natural Resources has said the changes would not enhance safety but, instead, ``creates a regulation with increased safety risks, mandates that cannot be met, and too many ambiguous and unenforceable requirements to count.''
This same regulatory uncertainty is happening all over the country. Take the Western United States. While the administration has announced that solar energy is one of its highest priorities, it has once again created tremendous regulatory confusion.
The new solar energy zones proposal, while potentially helping some solar development, has left dozens of major energy projects and many jobs with no regulatory path forward.
The regulatory confusion on Federal lands is even worse for onshore oil and gas production. Rule changes and regulations have cost billions in lost investments in the West. In my home State of Colorado, there's been nearly a 90 percent drop, a 90 percent drop in new leases on Federal land.
A recent study by the respected Western Energy Alliance has documented $3.9 billion in investment that was diverted from the West in 2010 because of red tape and overregulation by the Department of the Interior. The Western Energy Alliance estimates this lost investment could have helped create upwards of 16,000 jobs in the West. And these are high-paying jobs.
The administration is now examining how to impose Federal regulations for the first time on hydraulic fracturing on Federal lands. This proposal would duplicate State permitting and create an unnecessary obstacle for American energy development.
Finally, no discussion of burdensome regulations would be complete without addressing the administration's war on coal. Nowhere is this effort more evident than their effort to rewrite current surface mining rules. The current rule was the result of years of environmental review, public comment and hearings, and responsible rulemaking. The administration is now purposefully limiting public comment opportunities and rushing forward with a rule that, by its own admission, will cost thousands of jobs.
Even worse, the Obama administration recently pulled a permit 3 years after it was approved for a coal mine that was already hiring people. What sort of confidence can anyone have in an administration and its regulatory environment when issued permits can be stripped away at whim?
Mr. Speaker, to conclude, this resolution asks us to focus on the impacts of restrictive regulations just like these, and that is what we plan to do. We will focus on how we can clear away these regulatory hurdles to create a path for energy security, lower energy prices, help for balancing our budget, and, most of all, more high-paying energy jobs for Americans.
Mr. Speaker, this resolution being offered by my colleagues on the other side of the aisle is a simple waste of time, and it doesn't address job creation, which must be the number one priority of…
Mr. Speaker, this resolution being offered by my colleagues on the other side of the aisle is a simple waste of time, and it doesn't address job creation, which must be the number one priority of this Congress.
Today, we are literally coming to the floor to spend nearly 10 hours of debate telling the committees of the House to do what they already should be doing. Since January 5, when this Congress was sworn in, we have not voted on one bill that will strengthen our economy or create jobs--not a single one. While we're doing this, the Republican leadership is putting together a spending bill that will cost our economy jobs. The bill makes sweeping cuts in research and development, cuts that will jeopardize America's position as a world leader in innovation.
In the State of the Union, the President set the right priorities with his focus on job creation, economic recovery, debt reduction, and economic opportunity for all Americans.
I am here with my Democratic colleagues from the Energy and Commerce Committee where we worked over the last 4 years to keep America at the forefront of the world in clean-energy technologies and quality health care, so I am trying to understand why our committee is down here today, wasting our time, when we could be having hearings to generate new ideas on how to create jobs and strengthen our economy.
Republicans simply don't get it. They don't have a clue. Democrats have lots of ideas. Investments in clean energy will not only reduce greenhouse gas emissions and keep our environment healthy, but they will also create countless new jobs.
I am encouraged by the President's announcement this week that he is going to prioritize offshore wind development in areas off the Atlantic coast, including in my State of New Jersey. This is exactly the type of clean energy America should be investing in, which will reduce our dependence on foreign oil and gas and create jobs. That's why I oppose the Republican plan to cut almost $900 million from energy efficiency and renewable energy programs that create jobs and move America towards a more self-efficient energy market that doesn't rely on foreign oil from volatile places like the Middle East.
Another important issue that we could be discussing in our committee is health science and innovation. The health science industry, which includes pharmaceuticals, medical devices and biotechnology, plays a critical role in our national economy as well as in New Jersey's economy. A recent report by Research America noted that New Jersey is the third largest research and development employer in the U.S., with more than 211,000 jobs supported by health R&D, including 50,000 direct jobs in health R&D.
Federal R&D investments are critical for continued economic growth. For example, the National Institutes of Health award many grants to universities, which, in turn, bring money and jobs to States. In 2007, New Jersey received $280 million in research grants from NIH, which helped create and support 3,738 new jobs.
We need to continue to make smart, disciplined, forward-looking investments in innovation. Unfortunately, my colleagues on the other side of the aisle have proposed cutting $1 billion from NIH funding in the spending bill they plan to bring to the floor next week. This is not the solution to keeping America at the forefront of R&D in the world, and it is going to hurt our ability to create high-quality high- tech jobs.
Mr. Speaker, last year the Senate and House Western Caucus produced a document that was entitled the War on Western Jobs, in which we discovered 10 areas in which regulations from this administration…
Mr. Speaker, last year the Senate and House Western Caucus produced a document that was entitled the War on Western Jobs, in which we discovered 10 areas in which regulations from this administration and past administrations have created specific problems and specific loss of jobs to the West.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics has said that the West has the highest regional unemployment for the past year; that, indeed, six of the top 12 States that had the largest decline in employment-to-population ratio since the recession began were found in the West. Three of the top five States showing the most stress were found in the West, and Washington's misguided policies were making the matter worse. Whether it was in the areas of energy
use, takeover of water, domestic energy mandates, prioritization of species, multiple use on national forests, overregulating, seizing Western lands, bureaucratic overreach, all 10 of those areas illustrate the problems that we face in the West.
In Western public lands, it is essential to have a resource management plan. It is an effort where professionals on the ground were able to come up--in the case of Utah after 6 to 10 years of planning-- following the law, including the public process to come up with a policy and procedures for our plans, all of which have been turned upside down by arbitrary regulations coming out of the Interior Department here in Washington.
Let me give you simply two examples: an arbitrary decision that made a restrictive new regulatory framework for U.S. oil shale. The U.S. Geological Survey said in a 16,000-square-mile area of Utah, Wyoming, and parts of Colorado, they estimate at least 2 trillion barrels of oil shale--that is equal to what Canada is enriching themselves through their tar sands proposal--were available and experimental programs were moving forward until a regulation stopped it. The estimate: a potential loss of 100,000 jobs and $1.9 trillion to the GDP of this country was lost in that particular project.
The day after the last day of our lame duck session, the Secretary of the Interior, using questionable authorities, created a new or announced a new wild land policy which, once again, stopped those management plans in their tracks.
The result of that, let me simply give you one example: one company in two counties of my State, having 300 high-paying jobs, that had been working for 3 years with leasing and environmental review process with the BLM, within hours of that wild lands announcement, special interest groups recommended the area they were working being managed as wild lands; and their leasing process was delayed indefinitely for a potential wild lands inventory, despite the fact that this entire area consists of 800 drill holes with cement casings, roads, man-made Earth berms, and every other sign of man that would be prohibited if it was a wilderness designation.
Local governments desperately need those management plans because they provide the consistency for business to understand that.
Once again, in the West, thousands of jobs have been lost. Millions of dollars that should be going to schools on trust lands have been lost. Billions in capital investment have been lost because of this war on the West through regulation. It's time to end the war. It's time to help the people out. I look forward to this process.
Mr. Speaker, I came in in the middle of this debate, and I have been trying to figure out if the American people who may be watching this, and even my colleagues here on the floor, may even…
Mr. Speaker, I came in in the middle of this debate, and I have been trying to figure out if the American people who may be watching this, and even my colleagues here on the floor, may even understand what this debate is about.
The original resolution talks about inventorying and looking at and evaluating regulations. I think that's a substitute for trying to figure out how to cut back on various agencies and their authority and what they are doing, and we don't want to lose sight of that. I think that is an honorable objective.
The problem is that this debate has wandered off into a discussion about whether the SEC effectively did what it was supposed to do with respect to Bernie Madoff. And when I hear my colleague, Mr. Miller, say, well, this is about holding the SEC accountable for what they did not do, I don't know how you hold the SEC accountable for what they did not do by decreasing their ability to regulate an industry and by decreasing their budget. Those two things don't compute with me. I just am having a big problem internalizing this.
You have an agency here that has a $1 billion annual budget. It has responsibility for policing and monitoring all of the things that Mr. Green talked about in his debate. But on a gross level, 8.5 billion shares of stock are transferred every day, so $1 billion a year. We are supposed to monitor and control 8.5 billion shares a day transferred and transacted, and here we are talking about, well, let's take authority from the SEC and let's take money away from the SEC to do what it's supposed to do.
Friends, that does not compute, and the American people know that it does not compute.
Now, the underlying resolution says that you are supposed to find ways to identify how these regulations impact and limit access to credit and capital. Well, imagine what is going to happen with investors in this country if the SEC isn't available to regulate the transactions, 8.5 billion transactions a day. And you are going to say, Okay, we want your capital, but we are not going to do anything to protect you as an investor. We are going to let Bernie Madoff do whatever he wants to do, because we are getting ready to limit the number of regulations the SEC can impose on Bernie Madoff, and we are getting ready to limit their budget to enforce the regulations that they have.
Friends, that does not compute. It does not compute with Members of this House, and, I will tell you, it will not compute with the American public.
This is a simple debate: Do you allow the private sector to do whatever they want to whenever they want to in whatever circumstances they want to so that we can be back in another economic chaos like we had for the last 2 or 3 years, or do we have some reasonable regulations and reasonably fund the ability of the regulators to enforce those regulations? That's what this debate is about.
I don't know what Mr. Miller was talking about. I don't know how this relates to Fannie and Freddie. It doesn't. Everything in our committee seems to relate to Fannie and Freddie. But this is about how we are going to regulate these stock transactions. And if you reduce their budget and reduce their ability to regulate, I guarantee you, we will be out of control. It does not compute.
Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Our highest priority should be to put America back to work. We need jobs, investment, and growth; but that's not what we're doing in Congress.…
Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Our highest priority should be to put America back to work. We need jobs, investment, and growth; but that's not what we're doing in Congress. Yesterday the Energy and Commerce Committee held one hearing attacking women's reproductive rights and another promoting legislation to roll back the Clean Air Act. And today we're spending all day debating a meaningless resolution no one disagrees with. None of this will create any jobs or make our economy stronger.
The resolution we're debating directs several committees, including my committee, the Committee on Energy and Commerce, to conduct oversight of government regulations. Well, I support oversight and reforming unnecessary or outdated regulations. That's part of our job. We don't need a resolution to do our job.
But we need to be honest with American families. Our economy is not in a recession because of regulations. We are in a recession because Wall Street ran amok and Federal regulators were asleep on the job. It is too little regulation of Wall Street--not overregulation--that caused our economic woes. And that's why this resolution is going to do nothing to get our economy growing again.
I ask my colleagues to remember the collapse of Wall Street in 2008. This meltdown in the financial markets threw our economy into the deepest recession since the Great Depression. Millions of Americans lost their jobs, and it cost U.S. taxpayers billions of dollars to bail out AIG and Wall Street banks. The cause wasn't regulation. As Alan Greenspan, the head of the Federal Reserve Board, testified before me and other members of the Oversight Committee, he had ``made a mistake'' in promoting deregulation. He said he had ``found a flaw'' in his free- market ideology and was in ``a state of shocked disbelief.''
The Deepwater Horizon oil spill wreaked havoc on the economies of the Gulf States. It wasn't caused by too little oversight and too much regulation. It was because there wasn't enough oversight and regulation. Thousands of jobs were lost in the gulf because Deepwater Horizon was not subject to proper safety and environmental regulations.
No one disagrees that ongoing oversight of regulations is necessary. In his address to the Chamber of Commerce on Monday, President Obama said that Federal agencies are already conducting a comprehensive review of existing regulations to identify and fix those that are outdated and unnecessary. As the President said, we should design regulations intelligently and ``get rid of regulations that have outlived their usefulness or don't work.''
But this isn't going to create new jobs, reduce our deficit, or make the middle class stronger. To grow our economy, we need to invest in new clean energy jobs; we need to bring broadband connections to all parts of America; and we need to continue to make health care more efficient. That's what we should be talking about on the floor today.
Mr. Speaker, I yield the balance of my time to the gentlewoman from Colorado (Ms. DeGette), and I ask unanimous consent that she be allowed to control the time for the Energy and Commerce Committee.
I thank the gentlelady from Ohio for yielding me this time. Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of H. Res. 72. I thank the Speaker and the House leadership for giving us this time to help call to…
I thank the gentlelady from Ohio for yielding me this time. Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of H. Res. 72.
I thank the Speaker and the House leadership for giving us this time to help call to the attention of the Nation something that has become a very serious problem, and that is the explosion of rules and regulations and red tape that has taken place over these last several years at a very rapid pace.
In 2005, a study by the Small Business Administration found that businesses spent approximately $1.1 trillion to comply with Federal Rules. Confirming that, another study in 2009 by the Competitive Enterprise Institute said Federal regulatory compliance had reached $1.2 trillion for businesses.
The annual outflow of rules has meant that nearly 60,000 Federal rules have been issued just since 1995. Regulatory agencies issued over 3,500 final rules in 2009. Today's Code of Federal Regulations contains an astounding 157,974 pages. They haven't designed a computer that can keep up with all of that, much less a human being. And the average family, according to another study by the SBA in 2010, they said the cost of Federal rules and regulations now costs the average family over $15,000 a year, and that has increased by more than $4,000 just in the last 5 years.
George Mason University put out a report earlier this year which said that U.S. regulations ``are now more onerous than those in other countries, particularly countries that offer similar property rights and infrastructure,'' and that ``the United States risks losing investment capital and jobs.''
Speaking more specifically about the Transportation Committee, according to a GAO report the typical transportation project now takes between 9 and 19 years to plan, gain approval of and construct a new major federally funded highway project.
Let me give you two examples. Several years ago when I chaired the Aviation Subcommittee, we had a hearing in which they said the main and newest runway at Atlanta airport at that time took 14 years from conception to completion. It took only 99 construction days. They were so happy to get all the
final approvals they did those in 33 24-hour days. It was all environmental rulings and regulations and red tape.
Four years ago, we had a hearing in the Highways and Transit Subcommittee, and they said that a highway project in Southern California, a 9-mile project, took 17 years from conception to completion, from 1990 until 2007.
What these delays and rules and regulations have done is driven up the cost. We now take on average three times as long and three times the cost of any other developed nation.
What this does is it hurts the poor and lower-income and working people of this country because it destroys jobs, it drives up prices, all these regulations. It even kills people, when you delay for years widening and improving highways and making them safer. So it is causing problems for everything that comes out of our committee.
This is a very important resolution, and I urge my colleagues to support it.
Latest available legislative text
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IV
112th CONGRESS
1st Session
H. RES. 4
In the House of Representatives, U. S.,
January 5, 2011
RESOLUTION
That the Clerk be instructed to inform the President of the United States that the House of Representatives has elected John A. Boehner, a Representative from the State of Ohio as Speaker, and Karen L. Haas, a citizen of the State of Maryland as Clerk, of the House of Representatives of the One Hundred Twelfth Congress.
Lorraine C. Miller,
Clerk.
