Small Business Capital Access and Job Preservation Act

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

I rise today in opposition to H.R. 1105, which will create a gaping loophole for private equity fund advisers and deprive investors and regulators of important information about the risk these funds pose.

The Dodd-Frank Act wisely required that advisers to all hedge funds, private equity funds, and other private funds register and file regular reports with the SEC. It did this for two reasons: one, to help regulators better understand the systemic risks that these funds pose to the overall financial system, and to provide investors in these funds with meaningful information about the funds' governance.

This bill would exempt nearly every private equity fund adviser from these important disclosure requirements. Some of my colleagues who support this bill will argue that because private equity funds were not the cause of the last crisis, we should not subject them to these modest transparency and accountability requirements.

But one of the most important lessons we did learn during the financial crisis is that systemic threats seem to always bubble up from the opaque and unregulated sectors of the market. Giving this exemption will allow threats to once again grow in the dark corners of our financial system, only showing themselves when it is too late to prevent serious harm to the American taxpayer.

Supporters of this bill, while well-intended, will point to the provision that ensures advisers to private equity funds with leverage ratios over 2:1 will still have to register. This may sound attractive on its surface until you realize that every private equity fund is basically within that parameter. Private equity funds invest in companies, and it is these portfolio companies that

load up on leverage and that have the potential to take on outside risk, piling on the leverage while the private equity fund itself appears on its surface to be modestly leveraged. A private equity fund could have a leverage ratio well below 2:1, while its portfolio companies are leveraged in excess of 30:1 masking the actual risk that these funds pose. Nearly every private equity fund in existence today would come in below the 2:1 leverage cap. This is a hollow limitation that provides no protection to the funds' investors or to the American taxpayer.

Mr. Speaker, we learned the hard way after the recent financial crisis that systemic risks grow in the dark corners of our financial markets and that the more information we can gather about how the markets work, the safer we will be. The registration and reporting requirements for private equity advisers are modest and narrowly tailored, but they provide investors and regulators with important information. Rolling back these reforms now moves us in the wrong direction. I urge my colleagues to oppose H.R. 1105.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 1 minute.

I do want to respond to the gentleman's invoking of the SEC chair, Mary Jo White. Judging from the gentleman's remarks, you would think she might be in favor of this bill. Well, let me talk about what she says about this bill in particular:

Our markets would not be well served by narrowing the scope

of the commission's jurisdiction in oversight of these

advisers.

That is with respect to this bill. She also said:

Private equity investors are in need of the same

protections as other private fund investors.

Lastly, she has also said that the commission has brought enforcement actions, talking about the advisability of having oversight over advisers and having these disclosures made:

The commission has brought enforcement actions against

private equity funds and their advisory personnel involving

unlawful pay-to-play schemes, insider trading, conflicts of

interest, valuation, and misappropriation of assets.

I yield myself another 30 seconds.

Now, when you think about the protections that are necessary for pension funds, especially where these workers have invested their whole lives in these pension funds, you understand the need for this disclosure.

At this time I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Ellison).

I yield the gentleman an additional 1 minute.

I yield the gentleman an additional 20 seconds.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 1 minute to respond to some of these allegations.

In respect to sophisticated investors, the Council of Institutional Investors, which is an association representing corporate, union, and public pensions, foundations and endowments, largely very sophisticated investors with combined assets of $3 trillion, opposes this bill. They oppose this bill because of the record of enforcement actions of the SEC to go after risks that do actually exist.

I now yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Connecticut (Mr. Himes), a cosponsor of the bill.

Mr. Speaker, I yield the gentleman an additional 1 minute.

Mr. Speaker, may I ask how much time is remaining for each side.

Mr. Speaker, at this time I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Cooper).

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

I do want to point out, in response to the gentleman from Tennessee's remarks about this bill going on voice vote in committee, I just want to remind the Members and the public that during that debate there was a need for further work on this bill.

I think, in a moment of bipartisanship, we agreed, both Democrat and Republican, to allow the bill to go by voice vote with the promise to work on some of those issues going forward. So it was an agreement to try to continue to agree and to work on the bill. It was

not a vote in favor of any particular provisions within this bill.

There has been a lot of talk here about the risks that don't exist, and I do want to just point out some of those. As a result of this bill, funds investing more than $300 billion a year, much of which is the retirement savings of workers like teachers, firefighters, police officers, they would no longer be required to provide basic investor protections.

Specifically, H.R. 1105 would deprive investors of basic disclosures about an employee of a fund adviser who, for instance, violated securities law, or the adviser's businesses practices, its fees, any conflict of interest on the part of that adviser.

It would also eliminate a compliance program and code of ethics within the bill, within Dodd-Frank, and would eliminate the need for a chief compliance officer for each fund manager.

H.R. 1105, the bill under consideration here, would also prevent the SEC from conducting compliance exams of private equity fund adviser, even though SEC Chairman Mary Jo White notes that the Commission has already uncovered issues such as unlawful pay-to-play schemes, insider trading that we have all read about recently, conflicts of interest, valuation issues, and misappropriation of assets.

I want to talk about some of these since there has been a complete dismissal of any risk here. I think the record speaks to the risk.

The SEC has brought several enforcement actions against private equity firms. While the defendants do not necessarily represent all private equity firms, they do highlight the need for a strong police officer with the authority to examine all private equity advisers.

Capital formation relies on investor confidence in the underlying assets; and without registration with the SEC, investors will no longer have a cop on the beat that can enforce the rule of law, reducing investor demand.

In Knelman, for example here, there have been broad violations related to fraud, custody, compliance, and reporting. In Knelman Asset Management Group, the SEC found that registered private equity fund-of- funds adviser Knelman Asset Management Group, LLC, and Irving P. Knelman, KAMG's managing director, chief executive officer, and former CCO, violated the Advisers Act's custody, antifraud, compliance, reporting, and books-and-records provisions.

In insider trading enforcement, the Gowrish insider trading case involved an individual who allegedly stole confidential acquisition information, TPG Capital, and sold that information to two friends who made $500,000 in illicit trading profits.

Valuation related enforcement actions, the Oppenheimer/Brian Williamson matters concern an investment adviser and portfolio manager who misrepresented material details about his valuation methodology to his investors.

Recently, the Commission filed a case against Yorkville Advisors, where Yorkville allegedly inflated the values of certain liquid assets. While Yorkville managed hedge funds, the valuation issues are very similar to ones we see in private equity.

Finally, the KCAP valuation case involved alleged overstatements of the value of certain debt securities and CLOs held in the investment portfolio, highlighting the division and AMU's emphasis on pursuing valuation cases.

And in the Ranieri Partners case, the SEC also found that an investment manager knowingly used a sanctioned, unregistered broker- dealer to solicit capital for a pooled investment vehicle.

So all of these illegal activities would be made unavailable to private equity investors under this bill. That is what the risk is. That is not fiction. Those are actual cases that the SEC has introduced enforcement actions on. So there is real risk here for investors and for the markets themselves.

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 2 minutes.

We need not worry about small firms in this. They are already exempt under this bill. They are already exempt. So the concerns about small firms being covered by this, they are already exempt, number one.

Number two, the other scenario that has been posited here is that somehow, by allowing private equity firms the right to keep secret--or to refuse to disclose that their employees have been prosecuted for violating securities laws, by allowing that to remain undisclosed, that somehow that is going to help some single mom go to work, I don't think that is a rational assumption.

Mr. Speaker, I will now enter into the Record letters from the following organizations who are all opposed to this bill: Americans for Financial Reform, the Council of Institutional Investors, the North American Securities Administrators Association, and a Statement of Administration Policy from the Obama administration.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Americans for

Financial Reform,

Washington, DC.

Dear Representative: On behalf of Americans for Financial

Reform, we are writing to express our opposition to HR 1105.

Contrary to its title, this bill is not designed to benefit

small business. Instead, it would exempt private equity fund

advisers--who include some of the wealthiest and most

significant entities on Wall Street--from basic reporting

requirements designed to help regulators

monitor systemic risk in the financial system and protect

investors and the public.

Prior to the Dodd-Frank Act, hedge and private equity funds

received almost no regulatory monitoring, despite the fact

that combined they manage some $3 trillion in assets and

played a significant intermediary role in the financial

crisis. Section 404 of the Dodd-Frank Act created more

transparency for this previously dark portion of the markets,

by requiring advisers to hedge and private equity funds to

report basic financial information relevant to systemic risk

to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The

experience of the 2008 crisis--where risks emerged from parts

of the markets not being monitored by regulators--clearly

demonstrates the importance of ensuring that regulators can

track financial risks wherever they originate.

The Section 404 reporting requirements as implemented by

the SEC are far from onerous. All advisers with below $150

million in assets under management are completely exempted,

and advisers with up to $1.5 billion in assets under

management must report only limited and basic information

once per year. Advisers to large private equity funds are

required to respond only once per year (advisers to other

large funds report quarterly).

HR 1105 would exempt almost all private equity fund

advisers from reporting requirements to the Securities and

Exchange Commission. The sole requirement for the exemption

is that the fund must not have outstanding borrowings that

exceed twice the fund's invested capital. But this

requirement places little if any real limitation on the

exemption, since the great majority of borrowing connected

with private equity activity is conducted through portfolio

companies, not at the fund level. (That is, companies owned

by private equity funds borrow large amounts as the direction

of the fund, but the fund itself rarely borrows a great

deal).

It is particularly distressing that Congress would consider

granting this exemption at a time when concern is growing

among regulators and market observers about risks created by

a possible bubble in the leveraged loan market, which is

dominated by loans sponsored by private equity firms. Several

warnings have been issued recently by regulators concerning

the risks being created in these markets. As Moody's

investor's service has stated:

``Private equity firms have been exploiting investors''

willingness to lend to speculative-grade companies . . .

Higher yields are drawing investors to riskier structures at

a time when interest rates remain at historical lows.''

Since leveraged loans are also being sold to small retail

investors, a bubble could impact both the stability of the

broader financial system and the retirement savings of retail

investors. The situation in the leveraged loan market clearly

demonstrates the connection between private equity activity

and important risks to financial stability and to investors.

An additional source of concern is the danger that the

exemption granted in HR 1105 could too easily be exploited to

reach beyond private equity firms alone. The distinction

between a hedge fund and a private equity fund is not a

formal legal distinction, it is simply a differentiation

between general investment strategies. While HR 1105 grants

the SEC the ability to define more precisely what a private

equity fund is, if that definition is at all overbroad then

it could be taken advantage of by a wide range of hedge funds

in order to avoid oversight.

Private equity funds already receive significant subsidies

through the tax system, as they are major beneficiaries of

the favorable treatment for `carried interest', as well as

the general tax subsidy to debt costs. It is totally

inappropriate to also grant such funds a blanket exemption

from even the limited and basic Dodd-Frank regulatory

reporting requirements. Such a blanket exemption would make

it more difficult for regulators to monitor systemic risk and

risks to investors, solely in order to exempt wealthy

managers of large private equity funds from a minor

administrative task. HR 1105 should be rejected.

Thank you for your consideration. For more information

please contact AFR's Policy Director, Marcus Stanley.

Sincerely,

Americans for Financial Reform.

Following Are the Partners of Americans for Financial Reform

All the organizations support the overall principles of AFR

and are working for an accountable, fair and secure financial

system. Not all of these organizations work on all of the

issues covered by the coalition or have signed on to every

statement.;

A New Way Forward; AFL-CIO; AFSCME; Alliance For Justice;

American Income Life Insurance; American Sustainable Business

Council; Americans for Democratic Action, Inc; Americans

United for Change; Campaign for America's Future; Campaign

Money; Center for Digital Democracy; Center for Economic and

Policy Research; Center for Economic Progress; Center for

Media and Democracy; Center for Responsible Lending; Center

for Justice and Democracy.

Center of Concern; Center for Effective Government; Change

to Win; Clean Yield Asset Management; Coastal Enterprises

Inc.; Color of Change; Common Cause; Communications Workers

of America; Community Development Transportation Lending

Services; Consumer Action; Consumer Association Council;

Consumers for Auto Safety and Reliability; Consumer

Federation of America; Consumer Watchdog; Consumers Union.

Corporation for Enterprise Development; CREDO Mobile; CTW

Investment Group; Demos; Economic Policy Institute; Essential

Action; Greenlining Institute; Good Business International;

HNMA Funding Company; Home Actions; Housing Counseling

Services; Home Defender's League; Information Press;

Institute for Global Communications; Institute for Policy

Studies: Global Economy Project.

International Brotherhood of Teamsters; Institute of

Women's Policy Research; Krull & Company; Laborers'

International Union of North America; Lawyers' Committee for

Civil Rights Under Law; Main Street Alliance; Move On; NAACP;

NASCAT; National Association of Consumer Advocates; National

Association of Neighborhoods; National Community Reinvestment

Coalition; National Consumer Law Center (on behalf of its

low-income clients); National Consumers League; National

Council of La Raza.

National Council of Women's Organizations; National Fair

Housing Alliance; National Federation of Community

Development Credit Unions; National Housing Resource Center;

National Housing Trust; National Housing Trust Community

Development Fund; National NeighborWorks Association;

National Nurses United; National People's Action; National

Urban League; Next Step; OpenTheGovernment.org; Opportunity

Finance Network; Partners for the Common Good; PICO National

Network.

Progress Now Action; Progressive States Network; Poverty

and Race Research Action Council; Public Citizen; Sargent

Shriver Center on Poverty Law; SEIU; State Voices; Taxpayer's

for Common Sense; The Association for Housing and

Neighborhood Development; The Fuel Savers Club; The

Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights; The Seminal;

TICAS; U.S. Public Interest Research Group; UNITE HERE.

United Food and Commercial Workers; United States Student

Association; USAction; Veris Wealth Partners; Western States

Center; We the People Now; Woodstock Institute; World Privacy

Forum; UNET; Union Plus; Unitarian Universalist for a Just

Economic Community.

List of State and Local Affiliates

Alaska PIRG; Arizona PIRG; Arizona Advocacy Network;

Arizonans For Responsible Lending; Association for

Neighborhood and Housing Development NY; Audubon Partnership

for Economic Development LDC, New York NY; BAC Funding

Consortium Inc., Miami FL; Beech Capital Venture Corporation,

Philadelphia PA; California PIRG; California Reinvestment

Coalition; Century Housing Corporation, Culver City CA;

CHANGER NY; Chautauqua Home Rehabilitation and Improvement

Corporation (NY); Chicago Community Loan Fund, Chicago IL.

Chicago Community Ventures, Chicago IL; Chicago Consumer

Coalition; Citizen Potawatomi CDC, Shawnee OK; Colorado PIRG;

Coalition on Homeless Housing in Ohio; Community Capital

Fund, Bridgeport CT; Community Capital of Maryland, Baltimore

MD; Community Development Financial Institution of the Tohono

O'odham Nation, Sells AZ; Community Redevelopment Loan and

Investment Fund, Atlanta GA; Community Reinvestment

Association of North Carolina; Community Resource Group,

Fayetteville A; Connecticut PIRG; Consumer Assistance

Council; Cooper Square Committee (NYC).

Cooperative Fund of New England, Wilmington NC; Corporacion

de Desarrollo Economico de Ceiba, Ceiba PR; Delta Foundation,

Inc., Greenville MS; Economic Opportunity Fund (EOF),

Philadelphia PA; Empire Justice Center NY; Empowering and

Strengthening Ohio's People (ESOP), Cleveland OH;

Enterprises, Inc., Berea KY; Fair Housing Contact Service OH;

Federation of Appalachian Housing; Fitness and Praise Youth

Development, Inc., Baton Rouge LA; Florida Consumer Action

Network; Florida PIRG; Funding Partners for Housing

Solutions, Ft. Collins CO; Georgia PIRG.

Grow Iowa Foundation, Greenfield IA; Homewise, Inc., Santa

Fe NM; Idaho Nevada CDFI, Pocatello ID; Idaho Chapter,

National Association of Social Workers; Illinois PIRG; Impact

Capital, Seattle WA; Indiana PIRG; Iowa PIRG; Iowa Citizens

for Community Improvement; JobStart Chautauqua, Inc.,

Mayville NY; La Casa Federal Credit Union, Newark NJ; Low

Income Investment Fund, San Francisco CA; Long Island Housing

Services NY; MaineStream Finance, Bangor ME.

Maryland PIRG; Massachusetts Consumers' Coalition;

MASSPIRG; Massachusetts Fair Housing Center; Michigan PIRG;

Midland Community Development Corporation, Midland TX;

Midwest Minnesota Community Development Corporation, Detroit

Lakes MN; Mile High Community Loan Fund, Denver CO; Missouri

PIRG; Mortgage Recovery Service Center of L.A.; Montana

Community Development Corporation, Missoula MT; Montana PIRG;

Neighborhood Economic Development Advocacy Project; New

Hampshire PIRG.

New Jersey Community Capital, Trenton NJ; New Jersey

Citizen Action; New Jersey PIRG; New Mexico PIRG; New York

PIRG; New York City Aids Housing Network; New Yorkers for

Responsible Lending; NOAH Community Development Fund, Inc.,

Boston MA; Nonprofit Finance Fund, New York NY; Nonprofits

Assistance Fund, Minneapolis M;

North Carolina PIRG; Northside Community Development Fund,

Pittsburgh PA; Ohio Capital Corporation for Housing, Columbus

OH; Ohio PIRG.

OligarchyUSA; Oregon State PIRG; Our Oregon; PennPIRG;

Piedmont Housing Alliance, Charlottesville VA; Michigan PIRG;

Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center, CO; Rhode Island

PIRG; Rural Community Assistance Corporation, West Sacramento

CA; Rural Organizing Project OR; San Francisco Municipal

Transportation Authority; Seattle Economic Development Fund;

Community Capital Development; TexPIRG.

The Fair Housing Council of Central New York; The Loan

Fund, Albuquerque NM; Third Reconstruction Institute NC;

Vermont PIRG; Village Capital Corporation, Cleveland OH;

Virginia Citizens Consumer Council; Virginia Poverty Law

Center; War on Poverty--Florida; WashPIRG; Westchester

Residential Opportunities Inc.; Wigamig Owners Loan Fund,

Inc., Lac du Flambeau WI; WISPIRG.

Small Businesses

Blu; Bowden-Gill Environmental; Community MedPAC;

Diversified Environmental Planning; Hayden & Craig, PLLC; Mid

City Animal Hospital, Pheonix AZ; The Holographic Repatteming

Institute at Austin; UNETO.

Mr. Speaker, could I ask how much time remains on each side.

I yield 2 minutes to the gentlelady from New York (Mrs. Maloney).

I yield the gentlewoman an additional 1 minute.

I yield myself 2 minutes.

Mr. Speaker, I would now like to enter into the Record statements from the following organizations which all oppose H.R. 1105: the AFL- CIO, California Public Employees' Retirement System, and North American Securities Administrators Association.

And regarding reading the bill, I certainly did read the bill, and my point is that the bill does not require public disclosure of those matters, as the gentleman points out. It just goes to the Commission. So it doesn't go to the public. The public doesn't get the information. It stays within the custody of the Commission.

I yield to the gentleman from Texas.

Reclaiming my time, that is right. But those are public investors. They are the ones that need the information.

Mr. Speaker, I yield the balance of my time to the gentlelady from California (Ms. Waters), our ranking member and a real champion of America's working families.

Legislative Proposals to Relieve the Red Tape Burden on Investors and

Job Creators

United States House of Representatives Committee on Financial Services

Subcommittee on Capital Markets and Government Sponsored Enterprises

(Statement of Anne Simpson Senior Portfolio Manager, Investments Director of Global Governance California Public Employees' Retirement

System, May 23, 2013)

Chairman Garrett, Ranking Member Maloney, and Members of

the Committee, on behalf of the California Public Employees'

Retirement System (CalPERS), we thank you for convening this

hearing. CalPERS is pleased to submit testimony for the

record to reassert our strong support for efficient and

effective financial regulation, as enacted by the Dodd-Frank

Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (``Dodd-

Frank'').

This statement includes a brief overview of CalPERS,

including how we benefit from effective financial markets

regulation and the role that shareowner rights and corporate

governance play in building investor confidence. It also

includes a discussion of our views on HR 1135, HR 1105, and

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate you being down with me here tonight. It took me awhile to get my materials over here because the topic I have tonight is the topic of what this House has been doing to make a difference in the life of families across this country. That is the good news. I have to confess, I am here with good news/bad news tonight.

This is the stack of bills that this House has passed, again, to make a difference in the lives of families, to makes a difference in small businesses, to grow the economy, to create jobs, the bills this House has passed collaboratively that sit collecting dust in the United States Senate. That is the bad news part of tonight.

It is fair enough if folks think this process is broken. It is fair enough if folks think there is too much partisanship in Washington, but what we have here are the successes. What we have here are not the hypothetical ``if only'' bills. What we have here are the bills that have actually left this House and sit in the United States Senate. It is 356 bills, Mr. Speaker, 356 bills that have left this House that sit collecting dust in the Senate. We did a hashtag, Mr. Speaker: #StuckInTheSenate. We all remember, ``I am just a bill sitting on Capitol Hill,'' that Saturday morning cartoon. This is not a dictatorship. We had that conversation a little bit earlier this afternoon. It is not a dictatorship. It is a collaborative effort, and the House has collaborated to pass over 356 bills that have gone to the Senate to do nothing.

Now, again, it is good news/bad news day. Let me start with something that is good news, because if folks don't believe there is opportunity for success, I could imagine how folks would give up, not just folks here in this Chamber, but folks across the country, families across the country.

This, Mr. Speaker, you may remember it, H.R. 803, the Workplace Innovation and Opportunity Act. This passed the House. It passed the Senate. It was signed by the President. This has become law. This was a bill to consolidate a variety of workplace training programs. We talk so much about a trained workforce, how it is we get Americans who may be transitioning in their life, are transitioning home from Iraq or Afghanistan, transitioning from an industry that is in decline to an industry that is growing, how do we get those folks trained.

I credit Dr. Virginia Foxx with this. She is one of my colleagues here in the House. I serve with her on the Rules Committee, but she also serves on the Education and the Workforce Committee. She has been working to try to consolidate programs, take money from programs that were not effective and move the money to programs that were effective. Imagine that. Imagine that. Here she is, a conservative Republican, and what she was trying to do was take money from places that weren't working and put it into places where it would make a difference for moms and dads and kids. And she did it. She did it.

Now, what we passed out of the House was strong, Mr. Speaker. We went out and we found every single program that was failing in America and we brought them together and put them into a single pot and sent it over to the Senate. The Senate said: No, we don't think all of those programs are failing. We don't want to move that big of a package. We want to do something smaller. They ended up consolidating about half of what we consolidated in the House.

But guess what. When you elect Rob Woodall dictator, then I get to have it my way every day. Until then, this is a collaborative effort here: the House, the Senate, and the President.

So we worked with the Senate, and we worked out our differences. We found that package of consolidation that we could all live with, and we sent it to the President and we got a signature. That is what the American people expect. That is what my constituents expect. They expect us to work together to get things done, not sacrificing principle, not compromising on values, but finding consensus because we all agree that American workers need help. We all agree that moms and dads in transition need to find a better way to feed their families.

We can spend tax dollars better. We found a way to do that here. I call it common sense, Mr. Speaker. It is not supposed to take a rocket scientist to sort some of these issues out. It is supposed to be common sense.

Did I mention #StuckInTheSenate, Mr. Speaker? If I didn't, I want to mention it right now because here is one that really gets me.

We were just talking about hiring more moms and dads. It is called the Hire More Heroes Act. Do you remember it, Mr. Speaker? We passed it out of this House with over 400 votes. Now, young high school students, middle school students, they might not know how many Members there are in the House. There are 435 Members in this House, and more than 400 of them said we should pass the Hire More Heroes bill, but it is stuck in the Senate. Over 400 folks voted ``yes,'' only one voted ``no,'' so I don't want to hear about bipartisanship in the House. I don't want to hear about Republican this and Democratic that.

Mr. Speaker, 400-plus folks said let's pass this bill. I will tell you what it does. The Hire More Heroes Act says one of the highest rates of unemployment we have in this country are men and women in uniform coming home from overseas. It says that we have small employers in this country, and as you know, Mr. Speaker, most of the employment in this country is not driven by the big guys. It is driven by small employers. We heard from small employers in this country who said: I want to hire those veterans, but I am worried about that 50-employee threshold that throws me into this brand-new round of ObamaCare regulations.

Guess what this House did, Mr. Speaker. More than 400 out of 435 got together and they said, if you are a small business owner in America and you want to put unemployed veterans to work but you don't because you are worried about some Federal Government regulation dealing with ObamaCare, we will waive that regulation for you. Hire all of the veterans you want to, and be not afraid of Federal Government regulation.

Think about that. Think about that. It is what I think about. It is why I ran

for Congress. It is why my friends on the other side of the aisle ran for Congress. We came to make a difference--to make a difference. Who among us doesn't want to see unemployed veterans get a job? Who among us doesn't want to see small businesses succeed? We came together, more than 400 of us, to pass the Hire More Heroes Act, but it is stuck in the Senate.

Why? Why? Over 400 of us, almost every Democrat--we lost one--but every Republican, almost every one of us voted ``yes'' to make a difference for small businesses, get them the labor that they need and make a difference for veterans looking for a job.

That was a good bill, Mr. Speaker, and still is, and it is stuck in the Senate. It is not stuck because we can't come to agreement on it, Mr. Speaker. It is not stuck because Republicans are intransigent. It is stuck because the Senate can't get these bills moving.

Mr. Speaker, I am not asking folks to just come together and do what I want them to do. What I am talking about are things that we are celebrating in this institution. I am not talking about things that squeaked through by the skin of their teeth. I am not talking about Republican proposals that we jammed through with the might of the majority. I am talking about commonsense proposals that make a difference in people's lives.

I will give you another one. How about H.R. 4414, Mr. Speaker? It is the Expatriate Health Coverage Clarification Act of 2014. That doesn't sound very exciting, does it? And you know what, it is not very exciting for about 99 percent of Americans. But for Americans who have to work overseas and who have seen their health insurance policies canceled, quadrupled in price, folks who have struggled to find coverage, what this says is, if you don't live in America but you are working for an American company, really, you can sort out your insurance needs on your own over there. If you don't live in America, you don't have to comply with all these needs because--guess what--if you are doing business in London, the health care system is different in England.

If you are doing business in Paris, the health care system is different in France. If you are doing business in Moscow, the health care system is different in Russia. The rules we passed here won't work in those places. It is commonsense.

Had we not jammed that bill through Congress, that Affordable Care Act, maybe we would have gotten to that, but I don't know. It is a small group of people.

We passed a solution--let's look--269-150. I dare say those folks who voted ``no'' wouldn't say they opposed the policy, they would say they just thought it was a symbol of undermining ObamaCare in some way, they didn't want to undermine the President. I say nonsense about undermining the President. I want to make a difference in the lives of families.

Ninety-two days, Mr. Speaker, 92 days this bill has been sitting in the Senate.

Now, that is a minor piece of legislation, Mr. Speaker, that could make a big impact, but for a small number of people. What about things that make a big impact for a large number of people? What about those things?

The REINS Act, Mr. Speaker, H.R. 367, the REINS Act says--and it is a crazy bill, I will confess--it says before you pass a regulation, you need to consider the economic impact of that regulation. Now, while that is commonsense back home in Atlanta, it may seem crazy here in Washington, D.C.

Before you pass a regulation, weigh the pros and the cons to see if it is a good idea or not, weigh those pros and the cons. It is a REINS Act because we are just out of control here with regulation and we need to have a thoughtful conversation about it.

H.R. 1105, the Small Business Capital Access and Job Preservation Act. Trying to find ways for our small businesses to get access to the capital they need in what have been incredibly tight credit markets.

H.R. 2374, the Retail Investor Protection Act.

Time and time again, Mr. Speaker, we are passing bills--they are all here, they are all sitting on Harry Reid's desk over in the Senate-- passing bills in an effort to make a difference in people's lives. If it didn't matter, we wouldn't be interested in doing it. I don't have a bill in this stack that is about making a political statement. I don't have a bill in this stack that is about trying to be one up on the other guy, trying to embarrass somebody, trying to call somebody out. What I have in this stack--did I mention there are 356 bills in this stack?--what I have in this stack are bills that could make a difference to a struggling economy today--today. I say today. These bills passed a week ago, a month ago, a year ago or more. They could make a difference. They are #StuckInTheSenate--356 bills.

I have got the great honor tonight, Mr. Speaker--I am not alone in this endeavor, haven't been alone in passing 356 bills. It has been a team sport from day one, team sport from day one--Republicans, Democrats, folks from the North, folks from the South, folks representing families from across the country.

Tonight, I have got Mr. Rothfus here, an 18-month Member of this institution, who came, I wager, not to make a point, but to make a difference, and has been doing that every day he has been in this Chamber.

I would be happy to yield to the gentleman.

Will the gentleman yield?

I may have misunderstood what you said, because what my constituents believe is that it is partisanship that has shut this down. That it is Republicans fighting with Democrats and Democrats fighting with Republicans.

We are talking about over 350 bills that are sitting in the Senate that have passed this House, that we have come together on this House, you are saying 60 of those were introduced by Democrats?

I thank the gentleman.

I would like to ask the gentleman if he would stay just 1 more minute. I see you are down here with three lovely young women from the next generation of Americans. When they grow up, they are going to be the leaders of this country.

You mentioned energy in your presentation. I have got to be honest with you, I didn't come to deal with those big issues that are sometimes amorphous. I came to deal with the issues that make a difference in families' lives today, tomorrow, and in the next generation.

We talk about energy, we talk about streamlining production, we talk about the Keystone pipeline, but I live in Georgia. We are not drilling any wells in Georgia. I can't tell much of a difference at the price of the pump. I don't have that many families who say: This is going to make a difference in my pocketbook, this is going to make a difference for a job right here in Atlanta, Georgia. But you come from a different part of the country.

Can you see the difference that these bills make, not from a Republican/Democrat partisan perspective, but from a real world difference, real dollars in families' pockets back home?

I am looking at the Northern Route Approval Act poster you have got behind you, and I am

looking at the ``days in the Senate'' column. It says it has been 434 days that that bill has been in the Senate.

You are a new Member in this body. I have only had a voting card for 3 years. I know it is a collaborative process, but as I look at that 434 days in the Senate, does it mean that we have sent over a proposal to expand energy production to make those family-providing jobs that you mention and the Senate didn't like our idea, and so they sent us back a different proposal, and we have dropped the ball? Is that a possibility?

The gentleman said it so well. This isn't about one person. This isn't about one Chamber. This isn't about one part of the government. We are all in this together. Families in western Pennsylvania and families in north Georgia are in this together. We will rise or fall as a Nation together.

I go back to what you said when you first took the well. There are so many awful stories about Washington, D.C., and the way that we work together. Some of them are true, and many of them are just lore, but I believe you said--and my staff handed it to me after you said it--that about 254 of the 356 bills that are stuck in the Senate passed this House either unanimously or with more than two-thirds of the Members voting in favor of them.

I don't know everything about western Pennsylvania, but I know you don't get elected to Congress there because you are interested in propounding wild views that make no difference to people. You get elected there because you care about people and you want to do the things that matter. You know who the boss is, and it is those folks back home.

When I think that about this stack of bills, it would be so easy for people to dismiss it as: well, those are those crazy Republican ideas, and this is just some sort of political stunt.

How many times have we heard that it is a political stunt? Why are those guys talking about those bills? It is because of what you said. Sixty of these bills introduced by Democrats passed this Chamber, and 254 of these bills stuck in the Senate passed with two-thirds of us coming together--or more--to send them over to the Senate.

We have an obligation to work together. The answer to the question is that, after 434 days, the Senate hasn't said no. The Senate hasn't said: we have a better idea, so we will send this back to you. The Senate didn't say: you are focused on the wrong pathway; let's look at a different route approval.

The Senate did nothing.

I think about those seven appropriations bills you talked about. I want to remember the numbers. We have gotten 12 out of committee. We passed seven on the floor of the House. We have sent those over to the Senate.

Again, I don't know if the Senate is going to take our ideas or reject our

ideas or come up with their own ideas, but they have done none of those things. They haven't taken our ideas, they haven't rejected our ideas, and they promulgated absolutely no ideas of their own.

I don't enjoy being down here. This is not #kickthesenate. This is #StuckInTheSenate. It is not that there is not a way forward. You have described the way forward. It is not all my way. It is not all your way. It is not all anyone's way. It is a negotiated pathway forward.

When I ran for Congress, that is what I expected. When my constituents sent me here, that is what they expected.

I thank my friend for focusing on those commonsense points.

Again, when I open up the newspaper, what I hear is it is about partisan nonsense and it is about election-year politics. When we are talking about over 350 bills and we are talking about 60 of those bills being introduced by Democrats, but passed with Democrat and Republican support here in the House, when we are talking about 250 of those bills being passed with more than a two-thirds vote--many of those unanimously--what it tells me is we are not in the business of trying to make a point.

We are in the business of trying to make a difference, and if we had a willing partner in the Senate, we could absolutely make that difference.

I yield to my friend from Indiana, a former secretary of State, which has you in the executive side of things. You actually had to be responsible for getting things done. I guess that is my frustration with the Senate.

I just need somebody to stand up and be a partner and take responsibility for moving a few of these things forward, trying to make a difference in people's lives.

I would just like to ask my friend because, in serving on the committee, you have an insight that most of us don't have.

I am looking at those numbers, at 360 Members of this House voting ``yes.''

That is more than you need to pass a constitutional amendment, for Pete's sakes.

That is about as close to unanimous as we generally get. I am looking, and it hasn't been at the Senate for 1 week or 2 weeks. It has been there for almost 3 months so far.

What have they said? Have they said, We have got a better idea, and they have sent back an alternative to the committee? What have you heard?

These are not partisan issues. Education is not a partisan issue. Children are not partisan issues. We have votes with 360 Members of this body. Again, this is the hyperpartisan House--so the news tells me--and two bills right there in front of you are making a difference in people's lives. They could make that difference today, and yet the Senate does nothing.

I have been preaching the ``Stuck in the Senate'' hashtag message, I will say to my friend, because I still believe. I told folks when we started this hour tonight that this is a good news/bad news hour. The good news is I am sitting on top of a stack of 356 bills that this House has passed in a bipartisan way, and the bad news is that they are stuck in the Senate.

I believe that perhaps you and I, as young Congressmen, can't move the Senate, but I believe the American people still can move the Senate.

It is a ``we'' question. I thank my friend. There are folks who get wrapped up in the partisan issues of the day, and there are those folks who have committed themselves to finding willing partners wherever those partners may be.

What I have seen of you in our 3 years of working together is that you came here to do things that mattered, and whoever you have to partner with and however late you have to work and however early you have to get up--whatever you have to do--if this job is worth doing, it is because it is making a difference in people's lives, and I am grateful to you for that.

It may be a Midwestern values night. I have got the gentleman from Indiana, and I have been joined by a gentleman from Illinois, who has also been a true champion, Mr. Speaker. You didn't have the great pleasure of coming in with this big freshman class of 2010, but what was so neat about it to me was that, in showing up to freshman orientation, I met these two guys for the very first time, and I met my new Democratic colleagues for the very first time.

Truthfully, when we talked about why we came here, I couldn't tell the difference between the two because the American people sent a crowd of folks here to do the things that mattered, and we have partnered to do those.

The gentleman from Illinois is one of those great partners, and I would be happy to yield.

I thank my friend. It is exactly that commitment to working together to make a difference that I think folks long for in this place. And it is exactly what you have there, H.R. 803, the Workplace Innovation Act. It is true. That is one of our success stories.

But you first came to the floor to support that in March of 2013. The reason we are able to call this a success is because the Senate finally got around to dealing with it in June of 2014--over a year. It could have been making a difference in people's lives.

I am thrilled that now we are making that difference, but we wasted a year. And the family that you talked about, a family struggling to try to decide what tomorrow is going to look like, doesn't have a year to wait.

The Internet Tax Freedom bill you discussed just came out of this body this summer. That is something the Senate could take up immediately. As you said, it came out of here with wild bipartisan support. It could begin to make a difference tomorrow--tomorrow.

I am happy to yield to my friend.

I thank my friend. He is such a great leader. Bringing voices together is that skill set that sometimes this institution lacks, and he has it in spades.

As I close tonight, Mr. Speaker, I just want to make it clear, this isn't a partisan stunt. This isn't Republican machinations. 356 bills sit in the Senate right now that, if the Senate moved them, could begin to make a difference in the lives of American families.

I want to tell you about those bills: 98 percent of them passed with a bipartisan vote. 98 percent of these bills passed with a bipartisan vote. 254 of these bills passed with either no opposition or two-thirds support. Almost 200, no opposition at all; 60 introduced by my Democratic colleagues.

Making a difference for America is not a partisan exercise, Mr. Speaker, but it is a sacred trust. I am so proud of this House for moving forward on these bills to make a difference. I know that we can work together to encourage Harry Reid to do the same. I know our friends across the country, the bosses of the United States Senate, can encourage the Senate to do the same.

This country is thirsty for leadership. I am proud of my colleagues on both sides of the House for providing it. I look forward to partnering with the Senate and the President to move these bills into that difference-making position for those families across this country.

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

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

There are many things that my good friend from Florida said that I agree with. I will be discussing some of the merits of these bills, but it is worthwhile to bring forward before discussing what these bills are, what these bills are not.

It has been 159 days and 14 hours since the Senate passed a comprehensive immigration reform bill. This body's failure to act on immigration reform has already cost our economy nearly $6 billion. Each additional day, each day that we delay action costs $37 million in revenue; hundreds of thousands of jobs lost; failure to secure the border; failure to restore the rule of law to our country; countless families torn apart.

While the Judiciary Committee has found the time to move asbestos bills and patent reform bills to the floor with ease, immigration reform remains stagnant. The Judiciary Committee has reported out four immigration reform bills: the Legal Workforce Act, the Agricultural Guestworker Act, the SAFE Act, and the SKILLS Visa Act. They reported these four bills out prior to the asbestos bill which was rushed immediately to the floor and prior to the patent bill which was rushed to the floor after a hearing in the Rules Committee yesterday.

My question to the gentleman from Florida--and I will be happy to yield for a moment--is why we are giving such treatment to asbestos and patent reform when immigration reform would create so many more jobs and reduce our deficit by so much more?

I would like to know if the gentleman from Florida has an answer to that question.

I yield to the gentleman from Florida.

Reclaiming my time, 68 Members of the Senate, including

many Republicans, including former Presidential Republican nominee John McCain, supported the Senate immigration reform bill.

I certainly understand the desire to get it right, but bills don't get right by themselves. These are four bills that have passed in the Judiciary Committee. We in Rules like to make them right by allowing good, thoughtful amendments from colleagues on both sides of the aisle. I hope that next week or when we are back, we will be able to move forward the immigration bills with the same alacrity that we have moved forward asbestos and patent reform.

I hope the same thing happens that as these bills move through Judiciary that we do see them in the Rules Committee and that they ultimately come to this floor for debate.

Mr. Speaker, I do support the underlying bills that are contained under this rule. I support H.R. 1105, the bipartisan Small Business Capital Access and Job Preservation Act. It exempts private equity funds which are very lightly leveraged in helping to grow companies and jobs from costly and unnecessary SEC registration and reporting requirements like venture capital firms that are already exempted and substantially have very similar business models to private equity firms. These registration requirements are an impediment to business and an impediment to job growth and have nothing to do with creating systemic risk in our economy.

Importantly, this bill would only exempt private equity firms with low debt-to-equity ratios leveraged at a ratio of less than 2 to 1. Once you get to talking about much higher debt-to-equity ratios, there is potentially systemic risk if you are talking about funds in the multi-billions of dollars that are highly leveraged. It is still hard to see how that could happen. It had nothing to do with the financial meltdown of '08-'09. But in this case, we are being extremely safe in saying if they are leveraged 2 to 1, they are no systemic risk to the economy.

My State and my district know firsthand the benefits that private equity provides to employees, to companies, to investors, including pensions, and our economy. There are nearly 500 private equity-backed companies headquartered in Colorado, many more that operate with employees, more than 124,000 workers in Colorado facilities. In 2012, there were 67 private equity investments in Colorado totaling over $26 billion that were brought to our State because of this investment mechanism, placing Colorado third in the States receiving the most private equity investment.

The underlying rule also makes in order H.R. 3309, the Innovation Act, which I also support. In 2011, ``patent assertion entities,'' some of whom are bad actors which are sometimes referred to as ``patent trolls,'' who often produce little or nothing and derive their revenue from litigation and licensing, cost significant overhang to other businesses and to consumers for whom many of these costs are passed along in the products or services that we all enjoy. The majority of the targets of patent trolls were start-ups--hospitals, restaurants, retailers, hotels, and other important job-creation engines in our economy.

The reforms made in the America Invents Act, enacted 2 years ago, went a little ways in this regard, but did not do much to halt or put a stop to or reduce patent troll litigation or improve the quality of patents. In the case of software patents, growing patent backlogs, lack of training and resources available to PTO examiners, and ambiguity regarding patentability standards have led to approval of low-quality software patents that have not even stood up when brought to litigation.

Thankfully, the momentum is growing to address patent reform. I want to be clear--and I discussed this with Chairman Goodlatte in the Rules Committee yesterday--this bill is not patent reform. I believe the gentleman, Mr. Goodlatte, agrees this is not patent reform. It may be a few steps in the right direction. It may be a good start. It doesn't fundamentally create an intellectual property protection system for the digital era in the 21st century.

It continues to put, constructively, Band-Aids on a 1913 system, which I do believe it is high time to rethink. I look forward to an upcoming symposium in my district at the University of Colorado this Friday that we will be having on sort of ``blue sky'' intellectual property protection mechanisms for the 21st century in the digital economy to encourage growth and to protect inventors. This bill does not do that. However, it is a step forward in many regards.

While I strongly support many of these patent system improvements, it won't fix our patent system. Patent trolls have targeted every form of business. It should come as no surprise that the Innovation Act enjoys support from Members from both sides of the aisle, from companies, from academics. I submitted a letter from 67 professors at law universities who practice in IP from a broad ideological perspective into the record in our Rules Committee yesterday expressing their support for this bill.

This bill maintains protections for inventors' rights to enforce their patent claims. Specifically, this bill allocates the burden of patent litigation more fairly. It includes a provision that restores financial accountability to the patent system by making it easier for courts to impose sanctions on anyone who brings a frivolous patent suit.

The bill also requires the disclosure of critical details when a patent-holder files a suit, such as what patent and claims are being infringed, so the person or entity receiving the letter can know what is being discussed so that defendants don't need to guess the nature of the allegations against them.

The underlying legislation further requires patent-holders to disclose additional information to the PTO, the court, and the accused infringer, including the patent ownership, who owns the patent, and parties with financial interest in the patent. These provisions will help stop patent trolls who engage in illegitimate litigation campaigns and extortion against start-ups and small businesses.

While I strongly support these patent reforms that are a modest step towards improving our patent system, the litigation reforms alone don't have enough to benefit start-ups and small companies that are targeted by patent trolls who send pre-litigation demand letters. I am very appreciative of the chairman's effort to allow, and the Rules Committee's effort to allow, for the discussion of my amendment, along with Mr. Chaffetz, Mr. Connolly, and Mr. Marino, who have been working in this regard to see stronger language on the issue of pre-litigation demand letters. And I am grateful that we have made in order an amendment to increase accountability in the demand letter process.

We will be discussing that amendment in a more thorough basis shortly; but, in brief, the problem is that before a patent troll even files a suit, it typically sends a demand letter, or many demand letters, demanding some form of payment. Under current law, the sender does not even have to disclose even the most basic information. As such, entities often hide behind numerous shell corporations or send vague or overbroad letters that don't even identify the owner of the patent or the basis of their legal claim, essentially leading particularly small companies to have to hire lawyers or attorneys at great expense. When you have a company that is a $300,000-a-year company, a $500,000-a-year company, and you receive one or more of these notices, you can imagine how that takes away from your growth, your margins, your ability to hire more people, if you have to retain professional counsel to even understand what is being alleged that your company did.

Importantly, the underlying bill requires patent-holders seeking to bring willful infringement claims to provide their targets with a minimum level of disclosure information. The amendment enhances that and builds upon the language and would mandate that demand letters include information identifying the parent entity of the claimant. This language will help ensure that patent trolls can no longer hide under shell companies to conceal their true entity and their legitimacy from the demand letter recipient.

I look forward to discussing these bills further, and I reserve the balance of my time.

And I certainly wish that we had acted on immigration reform. We did pass under Democratic control a DREAM Act, if the gentleman will recall, in the waning days of the 111th Congress, and did take at least one constructive step with an immigration bill that we brought to the full floor of this House and passed.

I would like to yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Perlmutter), a member of the Financial Services Committee and a former member of the Rules Committee.

I yield an additional 30 seconds to the gentleman.

I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Chu), a member of the Judiciary Committee, one of the key architects and somebody who worked very hard on this bill.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Cardenas).

Mr. Speaker, I would like to inquire if the gentleman has any other speakers.

Mr. Speaker, I am prepared to close, so I yield myself such time as I may consume.

The gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Collins), rightly asserted that the Democrats did not, in fact, when they were in charge of the legislature in both Chambers, fix our broken immigration system. However, we did pass the DREAM Act. And given that this is football season and I think that my friend, the gentleman from Georgia, perhaps shares affinity for football, that while we did not in fact score a touchdown and fix our broken immigration system, at least the Democrats got a field goal when we were in charge. We are still waiting for the Republicans to match our field goal here if we can't score a touchdown with comprehensive immigration reform, and we look forward to improving these bills that have passed out of the committee before the asbestos bill, before the patent reform bill, and need the work of the full membership of this body to improve them.

Legislation is not like a fine wine, that when it sits in a barrel it improves itself. It needs to be actively worked upon to improve it, and I hope that it is a matter of days or hours or minutes until we can dust off these immigration bills that Chairman Goodlatte and the Judiciary Committee have worked on and improve upon them so that this body can actually move forward and score a field goal, a touchdown or more, and finally replace our broken immigration system with one that reflects our values as Americans, restores the rule of law, reduces our deficit by $200 billion, creates 6 million jobs for American citizens, secures our borders, and implements workplace enforcement of our immigration system. I am confident that we can do that working together, just as we are working together on these bills that are before us today.

As I indicated earlier, that while the patent bill does harvest some low-hanging fruit, there remains a lot of work to be done to create a 21st century intellectual property protection system for our country.

One such effort was an amendment that I offered, Polis amendment 5, that was not allowed under this rule. This amendment reflects a bill that I sponsor with Mr. Marino that regards the Demand Letter Transparency Act. Depending on a start-up's resources, even the recipient of one demand letter can even be a death sentence for a small one-, two-, three-person company. The threat of a demand letter alone can jeopardize a company's ability to raise funds, can scare away potential customers, and, God forbid, actually defending a patent lawsuit can cost hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars in legal bills, which to a one-, two-, or three-person company is simply a matter of shutting the doors because they cannot afford to do that.

At the Rules Committee yesterday, I offered my bipartisan amendment based on legislation that I introduced with Representative Marino and Representative Deutch that would provide a comprehensive approach to increasing transparency and accountability in the demand letter process. While our amendment was not made in order, I am grateful we did include at least some slight provisions regarding who owns shell corporations, amendment 4 was allowed. We plan to continue to press forward on the need to address this issue through meaningful legislation.

Our bill would require certain entities to provide additional disclosure information to the PTO and to the demand letter recipient so that these start-ups and mom-and-pop restaurant owners and stores will know who is sending these demand letters and whether the claims they are making are truthful or grounded at all or just a scam.

Our bill would establish a searchable and accessible public registry of demand letters and clarify that the Federal Trade Commission could use its authority to impose civil penalties to go after patent trolls. While the FTC has announced its intent to investigate PAEs, our bill would clarify the FTC's role to use its enforcement powers against PAEs who engage in unfair and deceptive trade practices to find as a violation the provisions of our bill.

Our amendment would prevent patent trolls from hiding behind anonymous shell companies and empower defendants to take collective action and share information and increase reporting so that the regulatory authorities and the PTL are on alert as to which patents are being frivolously asserted by whom.

In conjunction with litigation reforms that are proposed in this underlying bill, our proposal would produce a more robust patent market and a more productive and predictable and competitive economy.

Our proposal is supported by a diverse group of individuals and organizations, including DISH Network, Public Knowledge, the National Restaurant Association, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the National Retail Federation, the Direct Marketing Association, the Mobile Marketing Association, the Association of American Advertising Agencies, and the Hotel & Lodging Association, among many others.

Mr. Speaker, for once, this body is moving forward on bipartisan legislation that will help spur innovation and economic growth. The first bill that we are considering with regard to private equity will help increase job growth and job creation in our country by removing a regulatory burden that was put in without the proper justification. Private equity funds had nothing to do with the meltdown in 2008 and 2009, nor do they represent any systemic risk to our economy. They simply allow people to aggregate their resources to buy stock equity in companies. We have a cap on the debt equity ratio of two to one, and they do what they do. People earn money and people lose money, and that is how the economy works, but there is absolutely no systemic risk.

Some of these dollar amounts sound high, but what we talked about in the Rules Committee yesterday is that you might have a private equity fund that is $300 million. That sounds like a lot of money. That is the amount of money they have to invest over a period of years. With $300 million, they invest that over 5, 6, or 7 years. That is not their operational budget. Their operational budget is 2 percent or less of that every year. So a $300 million private equity fund might have an annual budget of $6 million.

Again, $6 million sounds like a lot of money. It certainly is. But when compliance with the SEC reform is $500,000, as has been estimated, you are talking about a sizeable percentage of your annual operating budget. So that means you have to hire a couple of people less. You might not be able to do that extra investment that you didn't have the ability to do the diligence in. You might not be able to invest in that additional company and help it grow and create jobs because of regulatory compliance that has nothing to do with systemic risk.

Mr. Speaker, as this session of Congress comes to a close, the first session of the 113th Congress, there is much that this body has left undone. While the other Chamber across the way has acted on overwhelmingly bipartisan measures that help fix our immigration system, saving $200 billion, creating over 6 million jobs, securing our borders, restoring the rule of law, and uniting families, this body has not passed a single bill in that area.

While the other body has passed a bill that would prevent companies from discriminating against gay and lesbian employees with strong bipartisan support, this body has not even brought such a bill to committee or the floor.

While I am pleased to see the bipartisan Innovation Act and Small Business Capital Access and Job Preservation Act come to the floor today, although I would like to see them with a more open process that allowed more ideas from both sides of the aisle to be introduced as amendments, I only hope that a majority of this body sees fit to hold votes on other issues such as immigration reform and employment nondiscrimination, which I am confident would pass the floor of the House today.

As I talk to many tech companies and small businesses in my district, many of the purported beneficiaries of this modest patent reform bill, they support it, but they support immigration reform more. They say, Good job. Now get immigration reform done. That is what I am hearing from employers and businesses in my district. I hope that my colleagues on the other side of the aisle are hearing the same.

Our Nation cannot afford to maintain a 20th century intellectual property protection system in a digital and biological era. This bill does not correct that. It does not change that. It is a modest step forward and an important part of reforming parts of the process that Democrats, Republicans, and many stakeholders can agree are broken.

The measure contains bipartisan balanced proposals, just as H.R. 15 does, the comprehensive immigration reform bill in the House, with over 190 bipartisan sponsors. And just as this bill will continue to incentivize entrepreneurship, so too--times 10, times 100--would comprehensive immigration reform, which includes a start-up visa that allows entrepreneurs who have already received commitments of investment to come to this country and create their jobs here. We are turning jobs for Americans away every day we fail to act on immigration reform. We can bring H.R. 15 to the Rules Committee and to the floor of the House next week or we can stay the following week and give this body the opportunity to send a bill to President Obama's desk to finally replace our broken immigration system with one that works.

Mr. Speaker, if we defeat the previous question, I will offer an amendment to the rule to bring up House Resolution 424, Ranking Member Slaughter's resolution, that prohibits an adjournment of the House until we adopt a budget conference report. This body should not adjourn until we have completed a budget conference report that could help prevent a second government shutdown and prevent a fiscal crisis.

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

Mr. Speaker, while I am actively encouraging Members on both sides of the aisle to get behind the Innovation Act and the Small Business Capital Access and Job Preservation Act, I must urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' and defeat the previous question, as well as a ``no'' vote on the restrictive rule.

I hope that we can send the message that we need to bring immigration reform to the floor of this House, rather than let the four bills that have already emerged out of committee stay sitting and aging and not getting any better while we fast-track asbestos and while we fast-track modest patent reforms.

The time has come to act on immigration reform. Please join me on voting ``no'' on the previous question and ``no'' on the rule.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Will the gentleman yield?

It seems more like we have been in a timeout for 3 months since these bills have passed committee.

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

Mr. Speaker, pursuant to House Resolution 429, I call up the bill (H.R. 1105) to amend the Investment Advisers Act of 1940 to provide a registration exemption for private equity fund advisers, and for other purposes, and ask for its immediate consideration in the House.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks and submit extraneous material for the Record on H.R. 1105, currently under consideration.

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

Mr. Speaker, since Congress was not in session last week, perhaps some of my colleagues missed the front page headline from The Washington Post. I read: ``Among American Workers, Poll

Finds Unprecedented Anxiety About Jobs and Economy.''

According to the report, American workers are living with ``unprecedented economic anxiety.'' More than six in 10 worry that they will lose their jobs. Nearly one in 3 say they worry a lot about losing their jobs.

The article goes on to mention an American named John Stewart who wakes up every morning at 1:30 a.m. for a 2-hour commute to catch two different buses in Philadelphia so he can get to work on time. In the newspaper, he said: ``I can't save money to buy the things I need to live as a human being.''

Mr. Speaker, we don't have to read The Washington Post. All we have to do is listen to our own constituents, since even today millions-- millions--of our fellow countrymen remain unemployed and underemployed.

I hear these stories every week myself. Recently, I heard from Ida in Wills Point, Texas, in the Fifth Congressional District that I represent. She and her 79-year-old husband own a small trucking company. She wrote me that ``because of increasing regulations in taxes in the past 4 years, we have lost all but two of our trucks.'' She goes on to write me: ``My husband is the only driver right now because I can no longer drive. He drives full-time 3,500 miles a week most weeks because we can't live on his Social Security.'' She says: ``We are really stuck in a hole.''

Millions, Mr. Speaker, are ``stuck in a hole.''

Today, we have an opportunity, Mr. Speaker, to do something to help raise many of our fellow countrymen out of that hole of economic anxiety and economic hardship. Today, we have the opportunity to pass H.R. 1105, the Small Business Capital Access and Jobs Preservation Act.

I want to commend the bipartisan group of Members--two Republicans and two Democrats--who introduced the bill: Mr. Hurt of Virginia, Mr. Himes of Connecticut, Mr. Garrett of New Jersey, and Mr. Cooper of Tennessee.

As chairman of the Financial Services Committee, Mr. Speaker, I want to thank all the members of the committee who came together across party lines to approve the bill. Mr. Speaker, nearly one-third of the Democrats who sit on our committee joined with 30 Republicans in supporting H.R. 1105. In short, Mr. Speaker, this is, indeed, a bipartisan jobs bill.

We know that small businesses face an incredible red tape burden. In fact, a recent survey of the National Federation of Independent Business said that ``government regulations and red tape are the single most important challenge that small businesses face in creating and preserving jobs.''

Mr. Speaker, I heard from another small business person in Grand Saline, Texas, in my district. He said because of overregulation ``our business has devolved from one that provides a service for a customer into one that provides that same service as an afterthought while our real efforts go into paperwork.''

Mr. Speaker, we can debate the relative merits or demerits of the Dodd-Frank Act; but even the primary author himself, former Chairman Frank, admitted that perhaps not every aspect of Dodd-Frank achieved perfection. And many of us would argue on a bipartisan basis that the part of the act that requires small business investors who are private equity advisers to register with the SEC is perhaps one of those provisions that is in need of reform.

This is a provision, Mr. Speaker, that many of us believe was aimed at Wall Street, but ends up hurting Main Street. Because of this provision embedded in Dodd-Frank, smaller firms that invest in entrepreneurs and in small businesses face yet one more significant regulatory cost, regulatory burden, more red tape.

As one of the small business investors testified before our committee, it is going to cost his company $200,000 every year to comply with the regulation. He went on to say:

While for some larger firms this is an insignificant cost,

for a medium-sized firm such as ours that offers capital to

small businesses, it is a significant expense.

And pay attention to this, Mr. Speaker. He said:

This money comes directly out of our funds intended for

investment into Main Street.

In today's economy, to help pull these people out of this hole of economic anxiety, we need more private sector, more private equity investment into Main Street. Private equity equals small business jobs.

In fact, Mr. Speaker, between 1995 and 2010, 23,000 different companies across our Nation benefited from private equity investment, employing 3 million different people, and the investments that are made by private equity historically have grown jobs at three times the rate of other companies.

And so what does this look like? I have to tell you, Mr. Speaker, it look likes an outfit called New Mountain Capital that invested in a company named Inmar, a national coupon and reverse logistics processing company. By helping them update their IT with a $100 million investment, they now support 4,200 different employees.

The face of private equity looks like Capital South Partners that invested in a North Carolina firm, Vita Nonwovens, and now they have 95 employees in High Point, North Carolina, and I should add parenthetically, another 55 employees in my native Texas. This is the face of private equity. These are some of the small business jobs that are being created.

Now, we may hear from some that this is needed to somehow battle Wall Street, but let me tell you what private equity is not. Private equity it is not Wall Street. It is not complex derivatives trading. It is not currency swaps. Mr. Speaker, it is not about systemic risk. That is not what this is about. And so, again, this was a provision aimed at Wall Street that, unfortunately, is hitting Main Street.

It is time to make sure that Americans like John in Philadelphia can live like a human being. It is time to make sure that constituents like mine, Ida and her husband, don't have to drive 3,500 miles a week just so they can put food on the table.

Mr. Speaker, it is time, again, for this institution to put jobs first, not regulators first, but jobs first. I urge all of my colleagues to adopt H.R. 1105.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I am now privileged to yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Hurt), the primary author of this legislation, a real leader on our committee and in this Congress in creating jobs.

Mr. Speaker, at this time I am very happy to yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Garrett), a coauthor of the legislation and the chairman of the Capital Markets and GSE Subcommittee.

Mr. Speaker, I am now pleased to yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Hultgren).

Mr. Speaker, I now yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentlewoman from Missouri (Mrs. Wagner).

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 30 seconds to say that the gentleman from Massachusetts sets up a straw man and then knocks it down. The activities that he describes as illegal continue to be illegal, and I would say that private equity funds provide extensive reporting to investors, including audited annual financial statements.

Private fund equity advisers are subject to the antifraud provisions of the Investment Advisors Act of 1940, whether they are registered or not, and fund offerings are subject to the antifraud provisions of the Securities Act of 1933.

The real choice becomes, are we going to get even greater protections for millionaire investors, or are we going to help struggling single moms trying to find a job in this economy?

Mr. Speaker, at this time I am happy to yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Stivers).

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased now to yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Fincher).

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 1 minute.

Again, I want to address the gentleman from Massachusetts who, again, I believe, sets up a straw man only to knock it down.

I would urge all Members to actually read the bill. I know that many of my Democratic colleagues now have buyer's remorse from not reading the 2,000-page ObamaCare bill, but, Mr. Speaker, this is a two-page bill, 36 lines.

And I would say to my friend, the gentleman from Massachusetts, that on page 2, that the SEC can ``require investment advisers described in paragraph (1) to maintain such records and provide to the Commission such annual or other reports as the Commission taking into account fund size, governance, investment strategy, risk, and other factors, as the Commission determines necessary.''

So to make the assertion that these records of foul play could never exist is simply not true.

I yield myself an additional 30 seconds.

I would say to my friend, the gentlelady from New York who made the assertion that the SEC is opposed to this bill, that the SEC has not opposed this bill. One member, Mary Jo White, has issued an opinion that she does not support the legislation, but the SEC has taken no official position.

With respect to a threatened veto, I don't recall that when my Democratic colleagues had the majority here that they refused to pass bills simply because President Bush threatened to veto. But I must admit, our committee has produced, I believe it is, at least 10 or 11 bipartisan bills which all received veto threats from a President who says he wants to work on a bipartisan basis. This is most regrettable.

Will the gentleman yield?

By definition, it is private equity. It is not a public fund.

Mr. Speaker, I am very happy to yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Garrett), a coauthor of the legislation and the chairman of our Capital Markets and GSE Subcommittee.

I yield the gentleman an additional 30 seconds.

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

Mr. Speaker, listening to some of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, it is hard not to conclude that some of them have never met a regulation that they didn't like, regardless of what it does to the hopes, dreams, and aspirations of the unemployed and underemployed in America.

As I look over your chair, Mr. Speaker, and see the words, ``In God We Trust,'' I sometimes question whether some Members would like to take down the word ``God'' and replace it with ``regulators'': In Regulators We Trust.

The question has never been, Mr. Speaker, the question between regulation and deregulation. The question is between smart regulation and dumb regulation; and in order to make that determination, one needs to see what cost is being imposed, again, on the hopes and dreams and aspirations of the unemployed and the underemployed.

Why does this underlying regulation need to be there in the first place? Is it systemic risk? Well, even the chairman of the SEC has admitted that private equity played no role in the financial crisis.

We know in terms of the economy, private equity may represent somewhere on the order of 1.5 to 2 percent of GDP. There is no evidence of interconnectedness, which many maintain is at the root of systemic risk.

So what are they trying to protect? Well, investor protection. This is all about giving additional protection to millionaire investors at the expense of single moms trying to make ends meet. I am not really sure that meets the test of smart regulation.

We know already that private equity fund advisers are subject, as they well should be, to the antifraud provisions of the Investment Advisers Act of 1940, whether they are registered or not. Fund offerings are subject to the antifraud provisions of the Securities Act of 1933. The SEC still has the ability to ensure that proper documentation is maintained.

No, we do not want to see any investor, regardless of sophistication or income, be subject to coercion or fraud. But, at the same time, we don't want to deny small businesses--the job engine in America--the funding they need to put America back to work.

There are many companies today that we recognize--Dunkin' Donuts, Baskin-Robbins, Petco, Skype, J.Crew--that all have benefited from private equity. Where would the tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of jobs they represent be today if private equity had to face yet another burden that is going to cost these small investment firms half a million dollars, a million dollars?

Today, we haven't really heard that much about company likes Entrust or Universal Smart Comp, but maybe they are tomorrow's Petco or tomorrow's Toys ``R'' Us.

And so it really comes down to this, Mr. Speaker, again: Are there going to be additional protections for multimillionaire investors, or are there going to be additional protections and opportunities for unemployed single moms trying to make ends meet?

Our side of the aisle said, Let's help the single mom. Let's pass H.R. 1105, and put America back to work.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to the amendment.

I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, the amendment, regardless of how well-intentioned it may be, functionally guts the bill and is essentially redundant of current law in Dodd-Frank.

And I grant the gentlelady, who is a very senior and thoughtful member of our committee, that her provision is perhaps more articulate than the underlying law, but section 408(n) of Dodd-Frank already says:

In prescribing regulations to carry out the requirements of

this section with respect to investment advisers acting as

investment advisers to mid-sized private funds, the

Commission shall take into account the size, governance,

investment strategy of such funds.

It goes on to say:

The Commission shall provide for registration and

examination procedures with respect to the investment

advisers of such funds which reflect the level of systemic

risk.

So, again, it is essentially redundant of what is already in current law.

According to the Private Equity Growth Council, on average it is taking $1.8 million for the initial Dodd-Frank compliance cost and an additional $1.3 million each year in Dodd-Frank compliance costs. All for what? We already have underlying investor protections in place.

There is no evidence presented whatsoever that this has anything to do with systemic risk, all at the cost of jobs, at a time when, again, Mr. Speaker, tens of millions of our countrymen are struggling. They are underemployed, unemployed.

Again, who are we going to help? Are we going to help regulators? Are we going to help millionaire investors? Are we going to help struggling Americans trying to pay the bills? We should oppose this amendment, Mr. Speaker.

At this time, I would be very happy to yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Hurt), again, the author of H.R. 1105.

Mr. Speaker, how much time do I have remaining?

I yield myself the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, again, historically, private equity has invested in tens of thousands of small businesses, and it has helped create millions of jobs in America.

The question today is: Are we going to put a roadblock in place of private equity--the small business investment engines--so that we can somehow help regulators?

With all due respect to our regulators--and there are many good ones and many great ones at the SEC--I have never met a regulator who turned down the opportunity to regulate more. I have never met him.

So the question is: Are we going to grant an even greater ability to take funds away from small businesses to create a work product that doesn't meet the commonsense test, the jobs test, the smell test--or any other test--at a time when people are still suffering and wondering how are they going to put gas in the tank; how are they going to take their kids to school; how are they going to afford their health care bills since, clearly, they cannot keep their health insurance even if they want to.

How are they going to do this?

We need private equity to fund small business to get America back to work. We need to defeat this amendment. We need to pass the underlying bill. It is time to be pro-jobs.

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

Mr. Speaker, I thank Mr. Rangel for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, I rise to oppose H.R. 4, the so-called Jobs for America Act.

Six years ago this week marked the collapse of Lehman Brothers. That bankruptcy on Wall Street quickly spread across our country, bringing small business lending to a halt, causing a devastating number of foreclosures, and pushing far too many of our fellow Americans into personal bankruptcy.

In the wake of this devastation, Democrats in Congress worked diligently to put in place serious and comprehensive safeguards to prevent another collapse. And, today, my Republican colleagues continue their hard work to thwart that effort and roll back meaningful reform.

Indeed, this bill, H.R. 4, places significant additional administrative hurdles on our Federal regulatory agencies, particularly on our independent financial regulators, like the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

Certain provisions of this bill would impose requirements on our financial regulators to conduct onerous cost-benefit analysis, to submit their rules for review to the Office of Management and Budget, and to delay effectiveness of major rules until Congress enacts an unprecedented joint resolution.

Not only would these provisions limit the independence of our Wall Street sheriffs, it would also tie up their already insufficient resources and put them at even greater risk of litigation for every rule. In fact, this bill would create a constitutional crisis by allowing the ``do-nothing'' Republican Congress to intervene in the actions of our executive branch, which is diligently trying to implement critical portions of the Wall Street Reform Act.

The effect of this legislative effort would be to grind to a halt all meaningful regulation on everything from payday loans to mortgage services to the types of risky trading that caused the 2008 crisis. And, ironically, it would stop JOBS Act implementation dead in its tracks. Worst, this comes at a time when House Republicans want to hold funding for our financial regulators flat, despite their new responsibilities, the increase in the number of entities they oversee, and the growth in the complexity and size of U.S. financial markets.

With our economy still recovering from the $14 trillion financial crisis, we simply cannot, under the guise of so-called ``job creation,'' afford to destroy crucial reforms and hamstring our financial regulators.

I enter the following letter of opposition from Public Citizen into the Record.

Public Citizen,

Washington, DC

A Vote for the ``Jobs for America Act'' Is a Vote Against Public Health

and Safety

Republicans will have you believe that a vote for H.R. 4,

the ``Jobs for America Act,'' is not a vote against clean air

and water, against food safety, against safe consumer

products, against safe workplaces, and against a stable

financial system less prone to excessive risk-taking. But

that is false. The Impact of the ``Jobs for America'' Act is

clear and simple: it will lead to more polluted air and

water, more dangerous workplaces, more tainted and

contaminated food, more dangerous workplaces, and a

deregulated Wall Street allowed to gamble our economy into

the next financial crash. By taking regulators ``off the

beat'' and preventing them from updating and modernizing

basic health and safety protections, the public is once again

dependent on Big Business to ``self-regulate.'' Our public

has seen the disastrous impact of letting industry regulate

itself whether it's the BP Gulf Oil Spill, the West Virginia

Chemical Spill, The Upper Big Branch Mine explosion, oil

train derailment explosions, or the Wall Street financial

meltdown. The solution is not to make our public even more

vulnerable to deregulatory disasters that put Americans in

harm's way and damage our economy as the ``Jobs for America

Act'' would do.

The enormous costs of deregulation

a. West Virginia Chemical Spill: those who were hurt by the

damage caused by the spill are claiming 160 million in

damages from the spill. These include small businesses in

Charleston who were forced to shut down for days and the many

thousands of residents who were forced to buy bottled water

because of the severe water contamination. http:// www.insurancejournalcom/news/southeast/2014/08/12/337282.htm

b. Lake Erie Algae Bloom: a half million Ohio residents

were forced to buy bottled water because their water had

become so badly contaminated from algae. In 2008, the

government estimated algae blooms resulted in 82 million

dollars annually in economic damages: http:// www.cop.noaa.gov/stressors/extremeevents/hab/current/ econimpact 08.pdf the damage to Lake Erie can be directly

traced to successful attempts to roll back the Clean Water

Act by special interests. http://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/ blogs/the-toledo-water-crisis-wont-be-the-last/ c. Oil Freight Train Explosions: Trains carrying highly

explosive crude oil are traveling through communities every

day without most of those communities even aware of the

threat. A massive oil train derailment and explosion in

Canada killed 47 people and will cost 2.7 billion in economic

damages over the next decade. http://bangordailynews.com/ 2014/04/17/news/state/after-end-of-the-world-explosion- Quebec-town-tries-to-find-hope/ d. Preventable Workplace Deaths and Injuries: Every day, an

average of 150 workers die from job injuries or occupational

diseases. Every year, the lack of effective workplace safety

protections costs our country 250 billion to 330 billion in

injuries and illnesses. http://www.aflcio.org/content/ download/126621/34645631/DOTJ2014.pdf

e. Climate Inaction: Blocking or delaying new carbon

emission rules from the EPA and other climate change measures

will cost our country up to 150 billion dollars annually in

economic damage in the future. http://fortune.com/2014/07/29/ white-house-in-action-on-climate-costs-150-billion-a-year/ f. BP Oil Spill: This massive environmental disaster in the

Gulf ended up costing more than 42 billion dollars. The oil

spill harmed thousands of Gulf Coast residents and destroyed

many local small businesses. BP has now been found ``grossly

negligent'' in causing the disaster and faces up to 18

billion in fines, some of which will go to Gulf Coast

restoration projects. http://www.edf.org/blog/2014/09/05/bp- oil-spill-ruling-could-jumpstart-gulf-coast-restoration-work

g. 2008 Wall Street Crash: The rampant deregulation that

led to the crash cost our economy anywhere from 6 trillion to

14 trillion dollars or 50,000 to 120,000 for every US

household. In addition, 8.7 million Americans lost their jobs

during or immediately following the crisis. http:// ourfinancialsecurity.org/blogs/wp-content/ ourfinancialsecurity.org/uploads/2012/09/Costs-of-The- Financial-Crisis-September-20142.pdf

The ``Jobs for America Act'' will not create a single job

The bill trades on the fallacy that deregulation leads to

job growth by freeing up capital to invest in labor. There is

simply no neutral, non-partisan empirical evidence to back

this up. In fact, journalists and academics who have

thoroughly studied this claim have concluded that regulations

have no overall effect on job growth. The claim that

regulations kill jobs is the very definition of a baseless

and fabricated talking point.

A thorough investigative report by the Washington Post

concluded that regulations

have no effect on jobs (highlights below): http:// www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/does-government- regulation-really-kill-jobs-economists-say-overall-effect- minimal/2011/10/19/gIQALRF5IN story.html.

Conservative thinker Richard Morganstern (Resources for the

Future): ``Based on the available literature, there's not

much evidence that EPA regulations are causing major job

losses or major job gains.''

Mike Morris, CEO of AEP, one of America's largest coal-

based utilities even admitted EPA regulations will create

jobs: ``We have to hire plumbers, electricians, painters,

folks who do that kind of work when you retrofit a plant''

Morris said. ``Jobs are created in the process--no question

about that.''

A recent and exhaustive exploration of the ``job-killing

regulation'' claim by Academics from across the political

spectrum concluded that regulations have no net impact on

jobs: http://www.upenn.edu/pennpress/book/15183.html

The editors of ``Does Regulation Kill Jobs?'' Cary

Coglianese and Christopher Corrigan conclude: ``the empirical

work suggests that regulation plays relatively little role in

affecting the aggregate number of jobs in the United

States.''

Big business ``job-killing'' claims are always wrong

Big Business groups have been making hyperbolic claims

about regulations killing jobs for decades and it never comes

true. Not only is this talking point patently false, but it

also never dies despite being proven wrong every time. The

following examples are from Public Citizen's recent report,

``It's an Outrage: Regulations are Entirely to Blame for

Unemployment and a Leading Cause of Death, According to

Industry and Allies'' http://www.citizen.org/documents/ regulations-are-to-blame-unemployment-death-report.pdf

1974: OSHA bans the carcinogenic vinyl chloride. The

plastics industry claimed that the OSHA regulation would kill

2.2 million jobs. Those claims were proven completely false

and a new way manufacture vinyl chloride was developed within

a year without any jobs lost.

1975: NHTSA increases fuel efficiency standard. Industry

reports warned of 1.5 million jobs lost. By 1985, auto makers

had met the higher standard without losing any jobs.

1990: EPA sets new pollution standards under the Clean Air

Act. In response the Business Roundtable (BRT) and National

Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) responded with

doomsday hysterics, claiming up to 2 million jobs would be

lost. Those were proven entirely wrong. Instead, according to

the Investor's Business Daily, ``Pollution has been falling

across the board for decades, even while the nation's

population and economy have expand

1995: EPA removes lead from gasoline. A Monsanto official

testified to Congress that the regulation would cost up to 43

million jobs. The removal of lead is now considered one of

the biggest public health success stories while gas prices

did not dramatically increase and no jobs were lost.

The new industry-funded study on regulations doesn't pass the laugh

test

The study just released by the National Association of

Manufacturers (NAM) is not worth the paper it is printed on.

NAM turned to discredited economists whose last study was so

poorly done and inaccurate that it was roundly criticized by

observers in bipartisan fashion, including by the CRS,

Republican economists, and then OIRA Administrator Cass

Sunstein. The study brought so much negative attention that

the agency which commissioned it, the Small Business

Administration, had to formally and publicly disavow it.

Business Media Push Industry-Funded Study On Federal

Regulations Experts Call ``Bogus'': Reuters and CNBC

uncritically promoted a new report claiming that government

regulations cost the economy over $2 trillion each year,

ignoring any benefits of regulation. But the study uses the

same flawed methodology as an earlier report by the same

authors that was so widely panned that even the organization

that commissioned it distanced itself from it. http:// mediamatters.org/research/2014/09/11/business-media-push- industry-funded-study-on-fe/200732

NAM's ``Cost of Regulations'' Estimate: An Exercise in How

Not to Do Convincing Empirics: The bulk of these costs (75

percent) are estimated using a cross-country regression

analysis. This cross-country analysis, however, is completely

unconvincing and should be ignored. http://www.epi.org/ bloginams-cost-regulations-estimate-exercise/

The ``Jobs for America Act'' is a Broken Record

The ``Jobs for America Act'' is just a re-packaging of the

same old and tired legislation that the House has already

passed. Each of these bills, if enacted, will significantly

exacerbate the current problems in our regulatory system.

Collectively, these bills amount to a virtual shutdown of our

system of public protections by blocking federal agencies

from responding to public health and safety crises and

putting forth strong new safeguards to prevent the next one.

1. Regulations from the Executive in Need of Scrutiny Act

(REINS, HR): This bill is a blatant power grab by the House

GOP. Requiring Congressional approval of regulations before

they take effect means, in practical terms, that the House

GOP can unilaterally veto any regulation it opposes. Even

Congressional inaction would kill a regulation. This is a

recipe for extending the same paralysis and dysfunction that

has plagued our lawmaking process to the regulatory process.

2. Regulatory Accountability Act (RAA, H.R. 2122): This

bill would re-write dozens of critical public health and

safety laws, including the Clean Air Act, to require agencies

to choose safety standards not based on whether they are the

most effective but on whether they are the least burdensome

to regulated special interests. This bill is a backdoor way

of gutting laws that the GOP knows are too politically

popular to overturn directly.

3. Regulatory Flexibility Improvements Act (RFIA, H.R.

2542): This bill is a small business bill in name only. It

does nothing to help small businesses directly. Instead, it

would delay or block rules that in many instances

disproportionately impact Big Business. For example, the bill

requires agencies to consider the ``indirect'' effects of

their rules on small businesses without ever defining what

constitutes an ``indirect'' effect. Ordering an agency to

discern all indirect economic impacts of any rule, however

small, is akin to ordering a meteorologist to discern the

effects on Washington, D.C. weather of a butterfly flapping

its wings in Japan. Even worse, agencies could be sued by

industry for not complying with this wholly undefined

mandate. Agencies will be forced to waste precious time and

resources looking for small business impacts where there

clearly are none. In the meantime, lives could be lost and

people could be needlessly injured.

4. Unfunded Mandates Reform Act (UMRA, H.R. 899): Once

again, this legislation forces agencies to pick the least

costly rule to industry, rather than the rule that is most

effective at keeping the public safe. It also undermines the

independence of important agencies that are working to put

new Wall Street reforms and product safety standards in

place. Ironically, the new mandates in this bill do not come

with any additional funding for agencies, making them the

very definition of ``unfunded mandates.''

5. The Sunshine for Regulatory Decrees and Settlements Act

(H.R. 1493): This legislation targets citizen suits aimed at

spurring agencies to move forward with overdue and

congressionally mandated protections. Consent decrees and

settlement agreements have long been an effective tool to

provide citizens and the courts with a means of ensuring that

Congressional mandates are implemented, whether they are new

environmental safety standards or civil rights and

antidiscrimination measures. This bill would force them to

run a gauntlet of burdensome, time-consuming, and redundant

procedures--furthering slowing agency action. This bill would

weaken the power of citizens to ensure agencies follow the

law--and waste government resources in the process.

6. The All Economic Regulations are Transparent (``ALERT'')

Act (H.R. 2804): This legislation would add a blanket six-

month delay to most rules essential to protecting the health,

safety, and welfare of the American public. When the norm is

federal agencies missing Congressional and legal deadlines

for new public protections, rather than meeting or beating

deadlines, the last thing our public needs is more delays.

Bottom Line

A vote for H.R. 4, the ``Jobs for America Act,'' is a vote

against life-saving public health and safety standards and

will put American lives at risk without creating any jobs. We

need stronger public protections, not a weaker system of

safeguards. We need better enforcement of health and safety

and environmental rules, not more needless delays.

We urge you in the strongest terms to vote against the

``Jobs for America Act.''