Sunshine for Regulatory Decrees and Settlements Act of 2013

Madam Speaker, my friends on the other side of the aisle speak to a great issue coming aboard, and we're going to, I know, have many great discussions about that as we go forward.

I'm grateful for the floor time tonight, which I'm pleased to share tonight with my good friend and one of the newest Members here in our House, the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Smith).

It's an incredible honor and privilege to serve in this House. And for me, the privilege of serving as the voice of northeast Georgia in the U.S. House of Representatives now for what's going on 6 months. I'm deeply humbled and honored by the trust each of my constituents has placed in me. I wanted to take some time to share some of the lessons that I've learned and the progress we're making in achieving goals that I spent over a year talking about on the campaign trail to friends and family and the supporters and the constituents of our northeast Georgia community.

Twenty counties make up northeast Georgia and the Ninth Congressional District. It's a very diverse area. It's an area in which we have what we call from the highlands to the islands. We have lakes, we have lowlands, we have the start of the Appalachian Trail. We have a place where movies are created. We have a place where I really believe dreams are fostered.

For me, it started back a long time ago. My father was a Georgia State trooper. We moved to Gainesville. That's where I was raised and spent my life. I went to high school there while I was with my mom and dad, along with my brother. That's what grounded me in family.

As I stand here on this floor and as I look around, as I listen, as I had just the great honor just a little bit ago to sit in that chair and preside over an earnest debate on what I really feel is a very important topic right now, one in which we had disagreement, one in which we look forward in one side presenting one issue and one presenting another. From my perspective, we voted to delay a bill that, in my personal opinion, is damaging to America. But we had that debate here.

And by standing in that chair and working there, it reminded me when I used to watch this floor from my home when I was in high school, and as I came up through college and as I was starting a young family with my wonderful bride, Lisa. We have three children. I would watch this floor on C-SPAN and I would see many of the same folks who actually even spoke today. And now to be a part of this

body, there's a sense of history. And if I could encourage any of my fellow colleagues, whether they be Democrat or Republican, new, old, been here a little over a month or been here 50-something years, it is to remember when we walk on the floor of this House, it means something special. It means something to be a part of an institution that makes a difference in people's lives. And I believe from my perspective as a Republican and as a conservative that we can make a difference on the floor of this House and in Washington, D.C., when we remember why we are here. And for me, that's very easy. It's the people of the Ninth District. It's my family.

Everywhere I would speak, people would ask me, Doug, why do you want to be a Member of the House of Representatives? I said I had three reasons. They were Jordon, Copeland, and Cameron. They're my three children. Because I believe that what goes on on this House floor and across the way in the Senate, what happens on this Capitol ground, is something that can make a difference because all across the world, ladies and gentlemen, people still look to us. They still look to America because we're the freest country in the world. We're a country that provides opportunity. But we have to be guarded and we have to watch and we have to stay vigilant. And in doing so, I believe that that is what makes this place special.

I've learned a lot in the first half of 2013. The need to vigilantly protect the noble heritage of our Founding Fathers that they gave us here as a heritage of liberty, responsibility, and limited government. And this has been impressed upon me in the last little bit as never before.

Over the last 6 months, our Nation and this distinguished body have faced issues and challenges that no one could have anticipated even 6 months ago, let alone a year ago. In my short time here, we have experienced the tragedy and horror of domestic terrorism in the Boston bombing. I can remember that day and hearing about that and just thinking what was going on and seeing the faces of those affected by that. And it highlighted our need for security and our well-being here and how some within our country want to tear down the very freedoms we have. And they'll do so by any means.

But I also look in a lighthearted way at the last couple of months. When I was younger, I used to like those little Pez dispensers. I used to like, Madam Speaker, those Pez dispensers that had the little head and the characters. But when you pushed the top, something would pop out. It would be candy.

Unfortunately, for the last month or two, all we've had is a Pez dispenser of scandal. All we've had is a Pez dispenser of problems with the IRS and the Department of Justice and with NSA and things that really come to a point that really elaborate, I believe, on belief on the issue of trust in this town. It goes back to the towns in northeast Georgia, for me personally, like Homer, Gainesville, Clermont, Ellijay, Cumming, and Elberton, and these kind of places where they look to us and say, What are you doing up there? Why is it so hard to not do it right?

And I've been a part of committees like Judiciary and the Oversight and Government Reform and Foreign Affairs Committees in which we've investigated and we've held hearings. Because I believe we've got to hold ourselves accountable, and we've got to hold the administration accountable because we are sent up here with a word that is very often overlooked--and it's called ``stewardship.'' We're stewards of what we've been given. And the ``given'' for us is an elected office to come and represent 700,000 or more people--and to do so with the resources that we've been given. And when they look around and they see that Pez dispenser and it pops out another issue or another scandal, then their trust is diminished. And when their trust is diminished, ladies and gentlemen, we have a lot harder job to do.

So these are trying times for our Nation and the commonsense conservative values that I believe I bring from northeast Georgia's Ninth Congressional District. These values are rooted in the principles of our Founders, and they give me guidance for why I want to be here and for what I want to accomplish and be a part of.

But I have to say one of the best things that I've had is looking around and making new friends on both sides of the aisle, and looking at that as we go forward. But for me, being one of the newest members of the Georgia delegation, it's looking around and when I have someone come in and I make a new friend who is our youngest and newest Member from the House on the Republican side, the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Smith), who took the responsibility from his work in the legislature in Missouri, who's taken his fight of regulatory reform and taken his fight and conviction with his family and now stepped into the pit, so to speak, stepped into the fire.

I'm glad to have you here and to serve with you on Judiciary and getting to know you over the last few weeks. I see why the people of Missouri sent you here. And that's a great thing. So I would just be honored to yield time to you tonight just to sort of share what's in your heart, what brought you here, and some things that you've seen even in your short time here.

I would be happy to yield to the gentleman tonight.

I appreciate the gentleman from Missouri.

One of the things that I just want to ask you, as we just take a moment here, one of the things you brought up is something that I have discovered, and I just actually discovered it when I was on the State legislature as well, but up here it is even more prevalent: Have you already gotten the sense of ``Washington Knows Best?'' There used to be a TV show called ``Father Knows Best.'' I think up here we live ``Washington Knows Best.'' Is that what you are seeing?

I think one of the things, in my district and the district you serve--you have 30 counties, I have 20 counties--very agriculturally diverse, we are more with livestock but also poultry, also what we call the ``agrarian tourism'' with the wineries and other things that are growing, and what we are finding is just simply let us do what we need to do. I think that is one of the reasons that from our conservative perspective, working with the farm bill and the issues that we have had with that, is let's deal with agriculture, let's deal with the SNAP programs and others separately, and that was something that I believe was a good thing.

But I want to go back to one thing. Coming and testifying in committees--and you and I sit next to each other on a couple of committees--and now you've seen this today, that if you work, in my personal opinion, you work for the government, Congress is your oversight agency. That is the constitutional role of what we have. It is disturbing to me, not only in what you and I have heard today about someone not wanting to come and testify, but I have seen it in other committees as well where they just simply don't show up. We've got a disconnect.

Do you think this person actually gets your district and the impact that that would have by not coming to testify? Does that just show maybe that they don't get it?

I agree.

I think one of the things that we look at is we have literally thousands upon thousands of workers in our Federal Governments and our State Governments who are good people doing an honest day's work who want to make a difference, and they believe that it is their calling to do that.

I think, unfortunately, it is those individuals sometimes that won't believe what I and you believe in stewardship and interacting with the Congress and interacting with the agency and interacting with locals that really has cast aspersion on a large net of workers who are trying to do it right, who do get in there and go to work every day and do good work for the government that they work for.

I just believe that it goes back to stewardship. I am just raised on that stewardship issue. I'm going to talk a little bit more about it later. But I think if you have a job, that is something you need to look at.

I appreciate so much what you meant to this body in 42 days and look forward to us working together as we share some more tonight. I thank you for that.

The principles that I want to talk about here for just a little while tonight are what I call ``commonsense conservative values.'' They are things like individual freedom, fiscal responsibility, and a constitutionally limited government.

When I came to Washington and I began to look, I took these as my core values, if you will. I took them seriously when I crafted not only the legislative agenda that I wanted to work on, but also when it came down to working on other pieces of legislation and signing on to other people's legislation and also working with our conservative Members, our Republican Party, and those across the aisle who would join us.

Here is where I believe we miss it, and my colleague from Missouri brought this out. It is easy for many times that we can always say what we do. We can always say this is what we do, and there's many times that we will be able to say this is how we do it.

However, I believe that we, and especially from my party, and as a conservative who stands in this well and speaks tonight, is we've got to get better at not only saying this is what we are doing, this is how we are doing it, but we've got to reconnect, I believe, with the American people in this body and in this city with why we do what we do. That is going to matter when we look at people looking up here and they look on the TV or they read their newspapers and they see the problems that we've talked about earlier, they see the disconnect with a top-down style that is really just growing in our country, whether it be the river systems or it be in our farms or it be in our factories or it be in our workplaces.

What we've really got to understand is we've got to now say, these are these beliefs that I just laid out: individual freedom, fiscal responsibility, and constitutionally limited government. What I want to do is begin a conversation that may carry over many weeks and say, this is why I believe this is what is good for America, this is why I believe, as I did this afternoon, that if it was good enough for businesses, that it is good enough for individuals.

We've got to be fair with the American people. They understand when we are not being fair. They look at us and they believe things that are said and they say, we don't trust our government anymore, we don't trust them not to listen into our phone conversations or tap into our Internet email, they don't trust us anymore to believe us when we say that we have their best interest at heart, because frankly over the past number of years in this city we have failed them.

We, I believe, from a conservative perspective, have to get back to saying why it matters once again to have a balanced budget. Now, I know that sounds like just comic relief up here in this city. But for me and in my family--and I always take it back to my home and my wife--when we sit down and we look at our budget and we say this is how much we have coming in, believe me, I am blessed. I have said before that I believe if I could just get my wife, if she were to control the budget, we would be balanced in a very short time and have a surplus. Because we've had to do it many times when we have cut back and we have said, this is what matters to us. It is called ``priorities'' and it is called ``stewardship.'' It goes back to individual freedom, it goes back to fiscal responsibility, and it goes back to constitutionally limited government.

I believe that conservative values and conservative principles and conservative ideas that we are trying to promote right now from my perspective in my district, in my service here in Washington, is what will matter to this country and restore the shining light that I believe America is. When we understand that, then Joe and Sally, whether they are in south Florida or in Washington State or in Alaska or in northeast Georgia or in the beautiful scenery of Missouri, they all understand that at the end of the day they have paychecks, they have school bills, they have reports, they have families, they have responsibilities, and they want to be a part, but they have to look at it from a perspective of what do I have and how can I do it.

It goes back to that common theme of stewardship--stewardship--and understanding we've been given a set amount of resources and a set amount of time. The question is what do we do with it? I believe that is what will change and put us back on a course of being able to work together and moving forward with ideas that matter.

For people that now say we cannot continue the path we are on, when they have such a low opinion of this body, when they look at their country and they say it is on a wrong direction, well, I believe it is on a wrong direction because we've left the fundamental flooring of our Founding Fathers who said that we should be promoting individual freedom, fiscally responsibility, and constitutionally limited government.

In January, I joined my colleagues in the reading of the United States Constitution right here on this House floor. In fact, I came right here to this podium, as my recollection comes about after six months, a lot of things going on. But it was right here where we began with reading the Constitution again at the start of this Congress. I believe that each public servant should constantly refer to this vital document when performing his or her duties, and also the things that have come through our courts and others that have formed the foundation of our constitutional framework.

I'm pleased that this body began its session by reminding ourselves of the responsibilities we have to the American people, as well as the liberties we are sworn to protect. I am a chaplain in the United States Air Force Reserve, and recently I have been monitoring very carefully the development that has surrounded our servicemembers' rights of free speech and freedom of religious exercise and making sure that they are protected. Our men and women in uniform bled and bleed daily and die for these precious liberties.

I had the opportunity to serve in Iraq in 2008. I had the ability, and I was a nighttime flight line chaplain, and I would go around at night and it was great, because I was the only chaplain on duty so I would spend time with our flying squadrons and spend time with our maintenance operators and our food service folks and our security forces and would get to know them on a very real and personal basis.

I did so in a role which did not matter if they had faith or no faith. It was my job to protect their right to have a faith and to practice it or to not have a faith and choose not to practice any kind of faith, but it was protected under what chaplains do.

Lately, efforts through the DOD and outside organizations and this administration seem to want to take that privilege and that right that we have in our Constitution and denigrate that right and take it away. I am very troubled by efforts that would curb chaplains' abilities to perform their duties and prevent servicemembers from honestly sharing their faiths or a Scripture with other servicemembers.

Now, before anyone jumps up and says, Proselytizing, we don't need that in the military or workplaces, there are already rules for that, there are already things that would keep out of bounds the inappropriate workings of someone's sharing or putting someone in a position of uncomfortableness with their faith. But when it comes to chaplains, our very experience is to share from what we believe and what we have in our hearts, and for me, being a Southern Baptist chaplain, it comes from a faith that I believe is deeply welled within me. To say that that cannot be a part of who I am is something that is simply wrong.

Now, we have ideas of bringing into the Chaplain Corps, among different services, an atheist chaplain. Now, when I first heard this, I said, This must be a joke. You're kidding me. An atheist chaplain? Now, if you choose to not believe in God, that is your right. You're in America, and that is your belief, and that is something that you can have. You can be agnostic--believe there's a God but not personal--or you can have a personal faith of another variety or you can be Muslim or Hindu or Buddhist or whatever you want to do and whatever you want to believe.

There are standards that we have as chaplains: we have to have a master's degree; we have to be endorsed by our religious affiliation endorser to be a part of the Chaplain Corps. We serve sort of two halves: we serve the military by maintaining our military bearing and our physical fitness and our military qualifications; and at the same time, I also have to maintain my qualifications as a Southern Baptist ordained minister. In doing so, I can't have one without the other. It goes back to a theme that I've talked about tonight of responsibility. No matter the household, no matter the political persuasion, people get responsibility, and they get stewardship; but as chaplains, we have to measure both sides.

So, when it becomes a game, in my mind, to take away or to denigrate what the chaplain's role is--to protect the religious freedom and expression of all servicemembers whether they have faith or not--then we're missing it, and, frankly, those on Main Street don't get it. They don't understand it in their churches and in their synagogues and in their mosques. They don't get it.

Then there's Washington, D.C. When we have job issues in our country and

when we have financial issues in our country, we are finding out from our agencies--from the Department of Defense--and an administration that is pushing an agenda that goes to the very heart of our constitutional freedom, they don't get it. Frankly, I don't either. I'm going to be watching this over the next few weeks and few months, and I will continue to speak out.

There are many ways for us to be there, but I believe, as a chaplain, I have stood beside the bed of those who've believed as I and of those who have never had a faith or who have wanted a faith, but they wanted to talk to someone who was not in the chain of command who they could share in and confide in. Back home, their wives were struggling and their kids were suffering, and they just wanted to be a part, and they knew they were separated. They wanted to talk about their work environments. They wanted to talk about their jobs. They wanted to talk about their dreams and aspirations--and yes, for some, they needed protection. They wanted their meals because they needed Kosher requirements. Even in one case, we had a situation in which a Wiccan wanted to have a place in which he could perform his services, and we provided that for him. That's not the faith that I subscribe to, but it is my job as a chaplain--it is my role--to provide that for them so that they can.

We've got to quit playing games, and we definitely have to quit playing games with our fundamental freedoms. You see, we can talk about what we want to do and how we want to do it, but I believe many people are just wanting to know why this matters. Why is Doug Collins talking about this on the floor tonight? Why is he talking about these issues of individual freedom, of fiscal responsibility and constitutionally limited government?

Why? Because it matters and because they are the things that make us free.

I've also taken seriously our Second Amendment rights in seeing what has happened up here in not taking into account or in discounting the needs that we have in our society for responsible firearm ownership, but we cannot take away the rights of those gun owners in our country and of those who want to own guns simply on a whim or a political agenda. We don't need to do that.

Why? Because it matters.

When we look at this, one of the issues that I've had over my last few months is: I was driving home one night, and in the midst of all this debate in Washington about Should we curb gun rights? Should we do background checks? Should we do a lot of different things, I thought to myself, I had a father-in-law who grew up shooting, and he talks about the way he would target shoot as he was growing up, shooting squirrels and other things. What I found was--whether it was my father-in-law, TJ, or my daddy, Leonard Collins--they had a commonality. What the commonality was is that they understood that gun ownership also meant gun responsibility.

So, as I was driving home one night, I said, What can we do in the Ninth Congressional District of Georgia to promote responsible gun ownership? Here is that word ``responsible'' again. We've got to be responsible with what we have.

What we did is we said we're going to have gun safety events. We put on several gun safety events, and well over 300 people attended these events. They were put on by the local sheriff's department for those because what I was also hearing was that many people were going out and buying guns for the first time because they didn't think that guns were going to be around. So, in my district, gun shops were overflowing, and people were buying guns.

I said, What can we do to make sure that gun rights and ownership and our Second Amendment principles are balanced with the responsibility that is given? These people showed up, and they learned. They learned how to store their weapons. They learned how to take care of their weapons. They learned what they should do and shouldn't do.

That is responsible government. That is taking what we do here and making it matter to the folks on Main Street--in the high schools and the stores and the shops that we go into every day. That's what's going to put conservative ideas back on the map--by attaching them to what matters and by attaching them to who and what we are because when we attach it to the dinner table, when we get to the point when we say, This is why it matters, instead of the vast rhetoric of this world, then we will be able to say and people can look at us and say, That's why they think that a balanced budget is necessary, and that's why they believe that the ObamaCare legislation is so bad, not because we're fighting against a President we don't like, but because it doesn't make sense--and it costs us jobs; it costs us money; it costs our people trust in the government that I hold so dear.

You see, when you understand this, you move to fiscal responsibility or, like I say here, fiscal irresponsibility. Only up here can you talk about it. I was in the State government, and I dealt in similar terms; but I remember in the first 2 weeks I was in this Chamber--and you can debate the good or the bad--we spent $60 billion. That's three Georgia budgets in 2 weeks. It wasn't that I was not in Georgia anymore. I wasn't in Kansas anymore either, Toto. I wasn't there. Something wasn't making sense. We've got to get back to a fiscal responsibility approach; $17 trillion in debt is a national disgrace, and it's a national disgrace because you can't go into anyone's household and knock off the zeros--knock off whatever you want to do--and then apply it to your family budget.

If you happen to be watching tonight or if you happen to see this later, I want you to do something. Just apply the same concept to your home budget; and whether you're Democrat or Republican, we can come to the understanding that numbers don't lie and that, when you've got $17 trillion in debt and when you're taking in this amount of money and when you're spending this amount of money and when you can't reconcile the two, it's not because we're making a better country. It's because we're not making the hard choices that you have to make every day in your homes and in your businesses.

That's what we've got to get back to. That's what this country needs to get back to. It's not about the vast rhetoric. We can debate the big things all we want; but what we've got to understand is when we debate the big things and when we miss the small things, people lose trust in us, and we've got to stop that.

That's why I believe that the Republican budget presents a smart, fiscally sound policy. It balances our Federal budget, and it allows hardworking Georgians and Missourians and North Carolinians and others to actually keep more of their own money. That's a novel concept.

As much as I like this city--and I love to go at night and see Lincoln, and I love to go see the Jefferson Memorial, and I love to look around at the museums and see the history that just oozes from this place--I'll tell you what: I want to come here and spend my money, and I want folks from Georgia to come up here to spend their hard- earned money, their tourist dollars, but I don't want Georgians or anybody else in this country to have to look to the government to be sending money. I want us to be able to earn that money and to have a free enterprise system that works again and is not crippled by a government that is too big and too large.

In addition to the Federal budget that we passed and balancing it in 10 years, which, again, is a novel concept because, undoubtedly, on the other side of the building here and in other places, they don't ever seem to think a balanced budget is necessary. Explain that to your banker the next time you go in. The House budget cuts $4.6 trillion over the next decade; it simplifies the Tax Code; it repeals ObamaCare, protects Medicare and increases energy exploration.

Again, we can tell you the ``how,'' and we can tell you the ``what,'' but what about ``why''? Why does this matter? Why do these things that I just talked about matter? Because they end up putting more responsibility in individual households; they end up putting more money in individual billfolds; and they end up getting the government back in the proportion it has been.

It has been said many times that fire is a great thing. I love fire. I love a fire outside, and I love a pit outside, but do

you know something? That fire is wonderful as long as it's inside and constrained. When it's inside the fire pit, then you cook with it, and you warm yourself with it, and you can make sure that it doesn't burn down the whole forest. But once it gets outside that fire ring, then it can burn down the whole forest. I live up in an area which is inhabited with a lot of forest. We've seen a lot of forest fires, and we've seen a lot of mistakes when using fire.

So I'm just going to say the same thing is true with our budget. What matters in our budget and why it matters, I believe, to most Americans is that we can't allow the debt--the crushing debt--to begin to get outside of that ring, as it has already, and start taking everything else with it.

I wish that the administration felt the same as I did, but they don't. In fact, what happens in their budget, as opposed to balancing, actually, is that it has more taxes, more spending, more borrowing--the same thing that we've gotten into.

I heard a friend across the aisle today talk about the issue of if you do the same thing over and over and expect a different result, it's the definition of ``insanity.'' Well, we're doing the same things over and over again, and we're expecting different results. We actually have to cut spending to get a balanced budget. You actually have to do things in a budget that is so overgrown. The first thing we need to do is to begin cutting. For those of you who say ``no''--you're looking at the screen right now and you're saying, No, we've got to raise taxes-- remember, we did that at the end of the year. It's now time for some cutting.

When we looked ahead, I also looked at fiscal responsibility, and that's why I was pleased that this House adopted unanimously an amendment that I had for Camp Merrill, which is where our rangers are trained. What it will do is transfer the land from Forestry to the DOD, which will ensure we save millions of dollars in taxpayer money at Camp Merrill while at the same time providing them with an increased amount of security. In doing so, I believe this just makes common sense.

For some who will say, What does that matter to me? well, it matters when I looked at this situation--and this is inside my district--and they told me that two government agencies--the DOD and Forestry--had been negotiating for 20 years. An agency of the government and an agency of the government, both paid by my and your tax dollars and both serving us as Americans individually and collectively--two agencies-- took 20 years and could not come to a resolution. In fact, they almost came to a resolution, and then one government agency wanted $10 million more at the end.

That is wrong. That is why people look at government and why they look at our government processes and say that it doesn't work, because you can't get away with that in the business world. I've been in the business world as a pastor of a church. If it takes you 20 years to negotiate a simple business proposition, you're going to be bankrupt before you can ever get there. That's why this matters.

We also have to look at a constitutionally limited government. Our Founders envisioned a Federal Government that was strong enough to hold the States together and to protect our Nation but that was limited in its authority in citizens' lives. Unfortunately, many in the current administration--and in the culture in Washington--refuse to accept the limitations placed on them by the Constitution. As Congress, we also have to take back our role.

When we take back our role, then we'll be able to have oversight and control of the purse string, and then we'll be able to do what we do.

Limiting the firepower of Federal bureaucrats and those who work to make de facto law, as my friend from Missouri talked about, through regulation is one of my highest priorities. In fact, when we looked at this, I started with Congressman Ted Yoho out of Florida. We started a Freshman Regulatory Reform Working Group. I've introduced H.R. 1493, the Sunshine for Regulatory Decrees and Settlements Act, which has been marked up recently in subcommittee and hopefully will come to the full committee and to the floor of this House very soon, because I believe regulations are the beginning of the end.

I want to just show you here what I mean by this. The amount of red tape that continues to grow in this administration and, in all fairness, previous administrations is way too much. When we start back at 2000 and we look at the increasing number of regulations, then we see what is happening. We went from the 170,000 to 180,000 up to a quarter of a million. And this is just in this timeframe. Look at the number in the last 5 to 6 years how regulation has just expanded. We cannot continue this path.

Why does this matter to you? Some of you are sitting here saying, Oh, here is just another Republican. Here is just another Republican talking about--he just wants to make dirty water, dirty air, and do all those things. I've heard those arguments, but I, frankly, tired of those arguments because I live here, too. Remember, I said the three reasons I wanted to be here were Jordan, Copelan, and Cameron. I don't want my children and my grandchildren that I have not seen to have dirty water and dirty air and unsafe workplaces, but there is a limit to what government can do. And we have done a lot.

So I want to say this is why--and then you say, If that's just you talking, why does it matter to me? I'm going to tell you why it matters. And it should matter to every tax-paying family in this country, every American, everybody. I don't single out any groups. I take us all as a whole. We're Americans.

How do we know that this affects you? Look right here. What do regulations cost us? The average American family pays $14,678 in hidden annual regulatory taxes. That's a lot of money. I know in Washington this is just a drop in the bucket, and when we put it out to American families it's just one at a time and people don't care.

I'm going to tell you, from northeast Georgia, $15,000 will do a lot. For my family--I have a senior and a freshman in high school now, actually the high school I went to. It's amazing that it hasn't changed a whole lot in the only 3 or 4 years since I was last there. Unfortunately, it's almost 30 years now. But what has happened is that amount of money, that $15,000--if Doug Collins' family, if Lisa and Doug sat down and said, ``What can we do with that $15,000?'' or what could Jim and Sally do in south Florida, or over in California or in Arizona or North Carolina when you have families sitting down and talking about their budgets and talking about what they want, here's what they could do. They could buy a new car, a 2013 Ford Fiesta, $13,200; 2013 Chevrolet Sonic, $14,185. Or better yet--and I heard it from this well, passionately explained by one of my friends from across the aisle in talking about education and the importance of education. I believe that as well. What it could do in Georgia is this: it could send their kids to college. One year of tuition and fees at the University of Georgia is $10,262.

We can talk about these big things all we want. We can talk about $17 trillion debt. We can talk about budgets that don't balance. We can talk about scandals that are coming out like PEZ dispensers. We can talk about all these things. But in the end it starts back to what I talked about earlier, that it goes back to it doesn't matter what the big picture is and what it is to people if they don't understand why it matters to them.

I'm standing here tonight as a proud member of the Republican Conference, as a conservative. If you don't believe me, just look at my voting record, because I believe conservative principles matter.

Why do they matter? Because I believe they're the very things that we can explain why they matter by looking at things like this and showing where regulations are hurting our businesses and hurting our jobs, and I can explain to you why a $17 trillion debt hurts us. It takes us away from buying cars, building houses, adding additions, or sending our children to college. That's why it matters. That's why conservative principles matter. And if we haven't done a good job articulating that, then shame on us, because that's what matters. It is the individual families. It is the individual hopes that we share.

So I come to a close tonight in having a wonderful time explaining why I believe conservatism matters and why conservatism is relevant for today. I believe it's individual freedom. I believe it's fiscal responsibility. I believe it's constitutionally limited government. And I will continue to view my decisions through those glasses. And there will be times that we're not all going to agree. And our side, across the aisle, we're not going to agree, but that's what this place is for. It's a place for healthy debate. It's a place in which we can share big ideas.

But if we, as a body, lose the reason we are here, if we lose the fact that we're not here representing always the big ideas or the things that are abstract, when we disconnect ourselves from the dinner table and the coffee shops and the hardware stores, then we have disconnected ourselves from our purpose for being here. Frankly, Mr. Speaker, I don't want to do that.

I'm going to be in this well talking about what matters and highlighting things that may not be real sexy to the press. They may not want to put it in the paper, but it matters to the American people. And I want to encourage our body here in the House and our friends across the way in the upper Chamber and this administration to say let's come together.

I believe conservative principles matter. I believe conservative issues are what will get us back to the thriving economy and the jobs that we need to be focused on. But it's going to take work, it's going to take explaining, and it's not going to be something we can just brush off. It's going to have to be something that we take seriously so that we can go to the individuals that we see in our grocery stores and our service stations and our high school football games and basketball games and baseball games, and we can look our friends and neighbors in the eye and say, ``This is what I'm trying to do. I'm trying to get Congress back to the role of understanding. It's about what happens to you, not what happens to us.'' When we do that, then America is much better off than what we have.

I appreciate my friend from Missouri being here tonight and discussing these important topics with me. The principles we set forward tonight will help guide not only myself but others in the month ahead.

I also notice that I have been joined by a friend from North Carolina, and I would be happy to yield to my friend from North Carolina if she would like to say something.

I appreciate that. And your work here is something I can look up to, and I appreciate that so much, along with my friends from all over, Congresswoman Bachmann and others, who share this. We've got to share this message. It matters. We can never lose sight. Amongst the 435, we represent 700,000 or more. They're looking to us for good, conservative, commonsense values.

The challenges that our Nation faces are great, but the resiliency of the American spirit is even greater. I'm encouraged by the accomplishments of this body and what we have put forward from the majority and the dedication and commitment of my colleagues on both sides of the aisle. When we look at this, we can never forget the responsibility of the bounty that we have. It can only be matched by our vigilance to the responsibility of the abundance we've been given. If we keep vigilant, then we'll keep our eyes on the right prize, we'll keep our eyes on what matters, and we'll keep our eyes on our families.

And for me, it always goes back to three reasons: Jordan, Copelan, and Cameron, and a beautiful lady I call my bride of 25 years, Lisa. That's why I'm here, because they represent all the other families and nieces and nephews across this country that we can help if we get our act together and explain to them why this place matters still in our country.

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

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

Earlier this week, we had a declaration that this week would be ``stop government abuse'' week. My colleagues on the other side called for us to commemorate this week by the introduction of draconian anti- safety legislation that would allow businesses to declare war on the rules that protect Americans, including babies, children, and the elderly. That is why, Madam Chair, I rise in opposition to H.R. 2804, the Achieving Less Excess in Regulation and Requiring Transparency Act of 2014, also known as the so-called ``ALERRT Act.''

The ALERRT Act is a continuation of the same Republican obstruct at all costs paradigm that led to the sequester and to the shutdown of the Federal Government. This race to the bottom approach to the regulatory process is wasteful and dangerous, and it prioritizes profits over protecting Americans.

Although the ALERRT Act purports to ease the burden of regulations on American businesses, it would not create a single job, grow the economy or help any small business to thrive, nor does it address serious issues--the minimum wage, unemployment insurance, pay equity or immigration reform--that would help so many American workers and businesses. Instead, the only purpose of this bill is to straitjacket the same rulemaking process that protects countless Americans every day.

Title I of the bill imposes a 6-month moratorium on rules. The rulemaking process is already transparent, deliberative, and exhaustively inclusive of the views of small businesses and other interested parties.

Adding an additional 6 months to this process would do little except create uncertainty and increase compliance costs.

Instead of cutting through red tape, title II of the bill would add over 60 additional procedural and analytical requirements to the rulemaking process. This is yet another clear message that this bill would lengthen, not shorten or streamline, the rulemaking process, thus undermining the regulatory certainty and predictability that small businesses rely on to make long-term decisions.

In case the first two titles didn't adequately convey the message that Republicans are dead serious about helping deep-pocketed interests create regulatory mischief and confusion instead of offering serious solutions, titles III and IV would authorize virtually any party under the sun to challenge a proposed rule or intervene in litigation in Federal court no matter their connection, or lack thereof, to the issue.

Make no mistake. This bill is a wolf in sheep's clothing. It would jeopardize critical public health and safety regulatory protections and undermine the very small businesses it claims to protect.

By giving a handout to well-funded organizations to challenge proposed rules, consent decrees, and settlement agreements at every opportunity, the ALERRT Act would stack the deck against the public interest and the American taxpayer.

And who would be harmed by this deregulatory train wreck? Every American who wants to be able to breathe fresh air and who wants to drink clean water; every mother who wants safe formula for her baby and cribs that don't collapse on the baby in the middle of the night; and every small business competing for an edge in a marketplace dominated by large, well-funded competitors. And the list goes on and on and on.

I hope you will join me in my observation of stop government abuse by Republicans week and my opposition to the ALERRT Act.

I urge my colleagues to oppose this dangerous legislation, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Chair, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Barrow).

Madam Chair, I yield 4 minutes to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson Lee).

Madam Chair, I yield the gentlewoman an additional 1 minute.

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

Mining, construction work, manufacturing, those are the kinds of livelihoods that have made this country a great nation, people being able to go to work with a lunchbox in hand and work hard every day, make a decent wage.

By the way, $7.25 an hour for a full-time worker would equate to about $14,500 a year. That is just simply not enough for a working person to raise a family and take care of that family. They need help when they make $7.25 an hour. They would need help from the government if they couldn't rely on friends and relatives for support.

So that is a shame, in this day and time, where a person working a manufacturing job, or even a job in a mine or on a construction site, would be making $7.25 an hour.

We should, perhaps, Madam Chair, be paying attention to income generators such as that kind of legislation, as opposed to legislation like H.R. 2804, which would simply make it difficult to protect those workers in those unsafe occupations like mining, like construction work, like manufacturing, keeping the work site, the job place safe. Regulations are what do that.

With that, Madam Chair, I reserve the balance of my time.

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

Madam Chair, oh, how I wish that my friends on the Republican side of the aisle cared as much about America's workers as they do about America's big businesses.

Oh, how I wish that they cared more to let a minimum wage bill come to the floor, where I believe that most Members of the House of Representatives would find it within their hearts to realize that $7.25, you just can't make it on that without help. Everyone who goes out and works hard every day should be able to be paid a fair living wage and be able to support themselves and their family.

Madam Chair, I reserve the balance of my time.

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

Madam Chairman, the majority deliberately downplays the benefits of regulation and exaggerates the cost of regulation, when in fact, the benefits of regulation far exceed the costs, whether those benefits are defined in monetary terms or in terms of promoting values like protecting public health and safety, and ensuring civil rights and human dignity.

The explosion that occurred down in Texas not too long ago that wiped out an entire town, I believe it was a fertilizer plant. Many lives lost. If there had been adequate legislation and adequate regulation to protect those people and the workers in the plant, then those folks would still be here today.

What we are doing with this legislation is preventing the promulgation of the kinds of rules that would protect the health and safety of people throughout America, not just workers, but people who have to eat, people who have to drink, people who have to breathe. The benefits of regulation far outweigh the costs.

A 2012 draft of the Office of Management and Budget report to Congress on the costs and benefits of regulations concluded that the net benefits of regulation promulgated through the third fiscal year of the Obama administration have exceeded $91 billion.

This amount, which includes not only monetary savings, but also lives saved and injuries prevented, is more than 25 times the net benefits through the third fiscal year of the previous administration, and these are important points that I believe my friends on the other side of the aisle like to omit from their analysis.

With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Chair, I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Chair, the gentleman speaks eloquently as a lawyer, and he makes excellent points.

Regulations do cost. So out of a $15 trillion gross domestic product, $1.8 trillion dedicated for regulatory expenses which protect lives--I can't put a value on one human life--but tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people are dying because of unsafe conditions on the job. It is certainly worth $1.7 trillion out of $15 trillion in a year.

I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Cartwright).

Madam Chair, my colleague from Alabama said that we all need to come together to find real solutions to create jobs. I submit that one way that we could create jobs, in addition to making sure that we have equal pay for equal work and that we increase the minimum wage to a living wage, another way to do that is through immigration reform.

The Chamber of Commerce and small businesses everywhere have come together in support of comprehensive immigration reform. Why? Because it creates jobs.

David Park, the cofounder and creator of Job Creators Alliance, wrote in 2012:

Immigration reform is key to spurring innovation and

getting the economy back on track. I am a small business

owner who realizes the role legal immigrants play in creating

new jobs. As founder and CEO of a boutique merchant bank, I

have started or acquired nearly 30 small and midsize

companies, creating hundreds of jobs for Americans across the

country. I am also an immigrant and an example of how highly

skilled immigrants educated in the United States can drive

job creation right here.

So immigration reform, Madam Chair, is a job creator. We can't seem to get an immigration bill--which, by the way, has been passed by the Senate. We can't get it heard by this Congress. We cannot bring a bill to the floor that would pass the House that would result in comprehensive immigration reform. We cannot bring a bill to the floor of the House that would provide for a raise for Americans who work for $7.25 an hour, full-time. $14,500 a year is simply not enough to feed the family and take care of one's self. We can't get job-creating bills that would stimulate our economy by providing for dollars to go towards transportation and towards repairing and enhancing our infrastructure. Instead, we get caught up on messaging bills like the achieving less excess in regulation and requiring transparency act of 2014, also known as the ALERRT Act.

I oppose this bill for numerous reasons, the most important of which is that it would jeopardize critical public health and safety regulatory protections. For example, the bill requires agencies to consider potential costs and benefits associated with proposed and final rules, notwithstanding any other provisions of law. This supermandate would effectively trump all other statutes--such as the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, and the Occupational Safety and Health Act--that prohibit or limit the use of cost information in setting health and safety standards.

In addition, title II of the bill would require agencies and Federal courts to consider whether a rule has ``significant adverse effects on . . . the ability of United States-based enterprises to compete with foreign-based enterprises in domestic and export markets.'' The practical effect, Madam Chair, of this definition is that it will require agencies and the courts to consider the business and regulatory environment of other nations.

Consider, for example, a proposed rule that imposes heightened clean air requirements on American steel manufacturers. H.R. 2804 would necessarily require consideration of whether this regulation--which could potentially result in higher compliance costs--could make American steel products less competitive in a country, such as China, that has a much less stringent or no regulatory regime.

While the economic analysis under this requirement may be deceptively

simple, its dangerous ramifications for public health cannot be underestimated. Chinese officials have only recently begun to acknowledge the health hazard risks presented by extensive air pollution; and if you have been over there and tried to breathe, you know that the air is greatly polluted over there. And so the Chinese have finally awakened to that fact, but the end result is that the public health of Americans and the safety of the environment would be compromised so that American manufacturers can better compete with their foreign counterparts. This is a shortsighted regulatory race to the bottom that prioritizes profits over saving lives.

Another fundamental flaw with H.R. 2804 is that it will greatly lengthen and not shorten the already time-consuming process by which Federal rules are promulgated. Avoiding undue delay in rulemaking is important because strong regulation is vital to protecting Americans in nearly every aspect of their lives. On average, Madam Chair, it takes between 4 to 8 years for an agency to promulgate a new rule. But instead of streamlining the rulemaking process, this bill extensively adds numerous procedural hurdles to the process.

In title II of the bill, 60 additional procedural steps to the rulemaking process are included. Not only that, title II reinstates a long discredited rulemaking process that requires trial-type procedures. Known as formal rulemaking, this time-consuming process was widely rejected decades ago as being highly ineffective.

Recently proposed regulations that could be impacted by this and other provisions in the bill include rules implementing the Food Safety Modernization Act's standards to reduce food contaminants like salmonella, and that would help prevent 1.75 million cases of illness.

Another thing that would be interrupted, another rules process, strengthening chemical facility accident prevention standards in response to the 2013 fertilizer explosion in West, Texas, that resulted in the deaths of 12 volunteer firefighters and two other individuals.

Another interruption would be preventing the manufacture and distribution of tainted and counterfeit prescription drugs.

Also impacted would be the implementation of the Justice Department's national standards to prevent, detect, and respond to prison rape.

Another interruption would be adjusting the reimbursement rates to Medicare providers for end-stage renal disease and setting payments to primary care physicians under the Vaccines for Children Program.

It would also stop the establishment of meal requirements for the National School Lunch Program under the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010.

It would prevent implementation of the Labor Department's standards for H-2B aliens in the United States.

For all of those reasons, Madam Chair, I oppose this legislation, and I would ask my colleagues to do the same.

I yield back the balance of my time.

As the designee of Mr. Cartwright, I am offering amendment No. 1.

Madam Chair, this amendment simply strikes the moratorium provisions in title I of the bill. Madam Chair, a regulatory moratorium makes absolutely no sense. Cass Sunstein, the former head of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, has observed:

A moratorium would not be a scalpel or a machete; it would

be more like a nuclear bomb, in the sense that it would

prevent regulations that cost very little and have very

significant economic and public health benefits.

This is yet another iteration of an attempt by the majority to obstruct at all costs and stop all regulations. In the last Congress, we considered H.R. 4078, which would have imposed a moratorium for ``any quarter'' where the Bureau of Labor Statistics average of monthly unemployment rates is equal to or less than 6 percent. Although the Republican-controlled House passed the bill, it of course died in the Senate.

A moratorium threatens key health and safety regulations. During the 104th Congress, the House passed the Regulatory Transition Act of 1995, a bill that imposed a regulatory moratorium pending the institution of a risk analysis and assessment regime. The Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Democrats, in their dissent to the reported bill, observed that the legislation was ``ill-conceived'' and that it had ``unknown consequences.'' In particular, they noted:

The bill ignores the interests of the average American.

There is no effort in this bill to sort out the good from the

bad. It is a one-size-fits-all solution. The bill will

threaten key health and safety regulations, such as improved

meat and poultry inspection procedures, while also halting

regulations favored by business, such as rules at the FCC to

allocate portions of the spectrum for new telephone systems.

Accordingly, I urge my colleagues to support this amendment that would strike the bill's pernicious moratorium provision.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Chair, the majority is pursuing this legislation in complete disregard of various recent examples of regulatory failure. These include the Massey coal mine explosion in West Virginia which took the lives of 29 miners. In fact, next month will mark the 1-year anniversary of that explosion. The explosion of BP's Deepwater Horizon oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico that stemmed from lax regulation of oil drilling platforms is also a prominent example. The home foreclosure crisis, the 2008 financial crisis, and the ensuing Great Recession, all of which stemmed from the fact that regulators under the Bush administration lacked the direction, resources, and authority to confront the highly reckless behavior of the private sector, and particularly the lending and financial service industries.

It was a direct response to these regulatory failures in the financial realm that Congress passed the Dodd-Frank Act and other measures during the 111th Congress, and Republicans have tried to repeal those measures and have tried to repeal the Affordable Care Act.

Of the 58 bills that were passed out of this so-called do-nothing Congress in the first year of this session, not one of them was a jobs bill; not one job created. Do we set ourselves up again for the kind of regulatory Wild Wild West that got us into trouble in the first place?

I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Chair, I think everyone can agree that the Federal agencies need the resources to be able to go back and review and rescind and repeal any unnecessary regulations, but we have been busy cutting government for the last 3 years. This legislation before us won't cut any regulations, but it certainly will keep any regulations from coming forward. I think that would accomplish the objective of the Republicans here, which is to protect Big Business.

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

Madam Chairman, I rise in opposition to the Rothfus amendment.

Madam Chairman, this amendment would add an additional level of analysis in the regulatory process that examines whether or not regulations have a negative impact on jobs and wages.

Adding this additional requirement that is highly speculative and analytical would further slow down the rulemaking process, adding more red tape.

I invite the gentleman to support my amendment, amendment No. 9, which we will get to shortly, that would exclude from the bill any rule, consent decree, or settlement agreement that would result in net job creation or have greater benefits than costs.

I would also hope that my friends on both sides of the aisle would have a desire to improve the economy and take actions to foster job growth, instead of adding more red tape to the regulatory process.

To the extent that regulations have anything to do with jobs, H.R. 2804's proponents should overwhelmingly support my amendment No. 9, which exempts from the bill all rules that OMB determines would result in net job creation.

With respect to regulations stifling job creation, the evidence, Madam Chairman, is to the contrary. If anything, regulations can promote job growth and put Americans back to work.

For instance, the BlueGreen Alliance notes:

Studies on the direct impact of regulations on job growth

have found that most regulations result in modest job growth

or have no effect, and economic growth has consistently

surged forward in concert with these health and safety

protections. The Clean Air Act is a shining example, given

that the economy has grown 204 percent and private sector job

creation has expanded 86 percent since its passage in 1970.

In reference to the Clean Air Act, the Office of Management and Budget observed that 40 years of success with this measure have demonstrated that strong environmental protections and strong economic growth go hand-in-hand.

Regulations create valuable jobs and research across industries. For example, a pending regulation limiting the amount of airborne mercury will not just reduce the amount of seriously toxic pollutants, but create as many as 45,000 temporary jobs and possibly 8,000 permanent jobs, as The New York Times noted last month.

Heightened vehicle emissions standards have spurred clean vehicle research, development, and production efforts that in turn have already generated more than 150,000 jobs at 504 facilities in 43 States across the United States of America.

The majority's own witness clearly debunked the myth that regulations stymie job creation during his testimony at a Judiciary Committee hearing held in the last Congress on an antiregulatory bill.

Christopher DeMuth, with the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank, stated in his prepared testimony:

The ``focus on jobs . . . can lead to confusion in

regulatory debates'' and that the employment effects of

regulation, while important, ``are indeterminant.''

The claim by the bill's proponents, namely, that regulatory uncertainty creates a disincentive for businesses to add jobs, was rejected by Bruce Bartlett, a senior policy analyst in the Reagan and George H. W. Bush administrations.

He observed:

Regulatory uncertainty is a canard invented by Republicans

that allows them to use current economic problems to pursue

an agenda supported by the business community, year in and

year out. In other words, it is a simple case of political

opportunism, not a serious effort to deal with high

employment.

That was Bruce Bartlett.

Leading scholars, such as Wake Forest Law Professor Sidney Shapiro has testified:

All of the available evidence contradicts the claim that

regulatory uncertainty is deterring business development and

investment.

Scant demand, not regulations, drives hiring choices.

In sum, there is no credible evidence that regulations depress job creation.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Madam Chair, I rise in opposition to the amendment.

Madam Chair, this amendment reminds me of how things used to be when I was a young parent and I had my children at home. When it came time for my favorite TV program, I would tell them to go upstairs and clean up their room again.

They would say, Daddy, we already cleaned up the room, and I would say, Go clean it up again.

Then when they would scamper upstairs, I would put the TV on and watch my program in peace. So it gave them some busy work.

That is pretty much what this amendment does. It creates an additional requirement in the rulemaking process for an agency to articulate achievable objectives and metrics indicating progress toward those objectives.

This amendment piles on the bill's numerous mandatory new rulemaking requirements, and it implies that agencies issue rules that lack an achievable objective, notwithstanding the fact that regulations already go through an extensive public notice and comment period as well as being subjected to judicial review.

The bill would impose unneeded and costly analytical and procedural requirements on agencies that would prevent them from performing their statutory responsibilities. It would also create needless regulatory and legal uncertainty, increase costs for businesses and State, local, and tribal governments, and it would impede commonsense protections for the American public.

That is why, Madam Chair, there are more than 150 consumer groups, environmental organizations, labor unions, and other entities that are strenuously opposed to this bill. These organizations include the AFL- CIO, the Alliance for Justice, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, the American Lung Association, the Consumer Federation of America, the Consumers Union, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, the UAW, the League of Conservation Voters, the National Women's Law Center, the National Resources Defense Council, People For the American Way, Public Citizen, the Sierra Club, the Service Employees International Union, the Union of Concerned Scientists, and the United Steelworkers, just to name a few.

Likewise, the administration has issued a strongly worded veto threat against this bill. It warns that the bill would impose unneeded and costly analytical and procedural requirements on agencies that would prevent them from performing their statutory duties.

For those reasons, I strongly urge my colleagues to oppose this amendment.

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

Madam Chair, I rise in opposition to this amendment.

Madam Chair, this amendment harkens me back to the time when my kids were young and when I was trying to make sure that they would not jump into something where one of their schoolmates might be being bullied, and then they would jump in on the part of the bully or would just participate in the antagonism against the victim, and I told them not to pile on.

This amendment is a classic case of piling on. It would add an eighth requirement for the initial regulatory flexibility analysis specified by the bill. The agency would have to provide a detailed statement describing any impairment of the ability of small entities to have access to credit. The bill already requires agencies to consider all indirect costs, which would include this issue. This amendment would allow yet another ground for a regulated entity to challenge a rulemaking.

Title III does nothing to help small businesses and other small entities reduce compliance costs or to ensure agency compliance with the RFA. Instead, this amendment would impose another unnecessary burden on agencies. This is just another piling on of the already burdensome new rulemaking requirements.

This amendment as well as the bill ignore the fact that the small businesses, like their larger counterparts, can substantially impact the health and safety of their workers as well as that of the general public. Small businesses, like all businesses, provide services and goods that affect our lives and carry the same risks of harm as the services and goods that large businesses provide. It makes no difference to someone who is breathing dirty air or drinking poisoned water whether the hazards come from a small or a large business.

Speaking of business, the American Sustainable Business Council is a growing national coalition of businesses and business organizations committed to advancing policies that support a vibrant and sustainable economy. The American Sustainable Business Council, through its partner organizations, represents over 200,000 businesses and more than 325,000 business professionals, including industry associations, local and State Chambers of Commerce, micro enterprises, social enterprises, green and sustainable businesses, local livable economy groups, women and minority business leaders, and investors and investor networks.

While some inside the beltway claim that regulations are holding back our economic recovery, the American Sustainable Business Council has a different view. It, along with other small business organizations, released a February 2012 poll of small business owners which found that small businesses don't see regulations as a major concern. Its polling confirmed that small business owners value regulations if they are well-constructed and fairly enforced.

They found that small business owners believe certain governmental regulations play an important role: 86 percent of them believe some regulation is necessary for a modern economy; 93 percent of respondents believe their business can live with some regulation if it is fair and manageable; 78 percent of small employers agree regulations are important in protecting small businesses from unfair competition and to help level the playing field with big businesses; 79 percent of small business owners support having clean air and water in the community in order to keep their family, employees, and customers healthy.

Madam Chair, I include the letter from the American Sustainable Business Council in the Record, and I yield back the balance of my time.

American Sustainable

Business Council,

Washington, DC, February 25, 2014.

Dear Representative: I write you today to urge you to

oppose the mini-omnibus bill of four flawed regulatory

proposals (packaged into H.R. 2804) and H.R. 899, the

Unfunded Mandates Transparency and Information Act. Votes on

these bills are expected this week. These bills hurt small

and medium sized businesses by halting the regulatory process

that levels the playing group for these businesses to

compete, creates incentives for innovation and protects our

customers and employees.

The package of Anti-Regulatory policies these bills

represent constitutes a shift away from forty years of

regulatory precedent that protects the public against a range

of market imperfections. These policies will also lead to a

more chaotic and less competitive market. And finally, the

bills will have the unintended consequence of shifting the

burden of proof for environmental, health and safety issues

back to taxpayers and away from powerful corporate interests.

Eroding the operational capacity of regulatory agencies to do

their job, as these bills appear designed to do, will not

foster productive growth among small and mid-sized firms.

Instead these actions will allow the largest firms to further

dominate the marketplace.

Also if enacted, this package of bills would open the door

for more problems like the financial and mortgage crisis of

2008. This would, in our view, would further damage our

economy, stifle consumer demand and put small companies out

of business.

The American Sustainable Business Council (ASBC) is a

growing national coalition of businesses and business

organizations committed to advancing policies that support a

vibrant and sustainable economy. ASBC, through its partner

organizations, represents over 200,000 businesses and more

than 325,000 business professionals, including industry

associations, local and state chambers of commerce, micro-

enterprise, social enterprise, green and sustainable

business, local living economy groups, woman and minority

business leaders, and investor networks.

While some inside the Beltway claim that regulations are

holding back our economic recovery, ASBC has a different

view. ASBC, along with other small business organizations,

released in February 2012 a poll of small business owners

which found that small businesses don't see regulations as a

major concern.

Our polling confirmed that small business owners value

regulations if they are well-constructed and fairly enforced:

Small business owners believe certain government

regulations play an important role

86% believe some regulation is necessary for a modern

economy and 93% of respondents believe their business can

live with some regulation if it is fair and manageable.

78% of small employers agree regulations are important in

protecting small businesses from i unfair competition and to

level the playing field with big business.

79% of small business owners support having clean air and

water in their community in order to keep their family,

employees and customers healthy.

61% support standards that move the country towards energy

efficiency and clean energy.

Supporting the ASBC 2012 poll is a Wells Fargo/Gallup poll

of small businesses conducted this past October, which found

that only seven percent mentioned regulations as being an

important challenge.

Given the important role regulations play yet there still

may be a small percentage of businesses having difficulty

with them, the answer is not H.R. 2804 and H.R. 899. Instead

we believe the solution lies in expanding the capacity of the

regulatory agencies to provide assistance to small businesses

in compliance. Increasing the number of agency ombudsmen and/

or ombudsmen within the SBA and giving them the resources to

be more proactive as well as responsive will target federal

dollars to specific areas of concern. Our experience has been

that the ombudsmen process works well.

Blocking, weakening or delaying critical standards and

safeguards will not address existing needed regulations that

a small number of small businesses have trouble with

compliance. It will only worsen the uneven economic playing

field that leaves many small and medium sized businesses at a

competitive disadvantage. It also inhibits innovation in new

technologies that can create good, sustainable jobs and

create safer products, workplaces and communities.

We call on the House of Representatives to reject this

package of anti-regulatory policies.

Sincerely

David Levine,

Madam Chairman, I claim the time in opposition to the amendment, though I am in support of this amendment.

It is to my horror that I would agree to this amendment, but it simply corrects a drafting error. So we do not oppose this amendment. It makes a thoroughly flawed bill slightly less thoroughly flawed.

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

Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous materials on H.R. 2804.

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

Just over 6 months ago, President Obama announced that he would once again pivot to the economy. The bottom line of his speech: after 4\1/2\ years of the Obama administration, ``We're not there yet.''

The President was right. We were not there yet nor are we there today. Job creation and economic growth continue to fall short of what is needed to produce a real and durable recovery in our country. The nominal unemployment rate is down, but that is not because enough workers have found jobs; it is because so many unemployed workers have despaired of ever finding new full-time work. They have either left the workforce or have settled for part-time jobs.

As long as this situation continues, Congress must stay focused on enacting reforms that will stop the losses, return America to prosperity, and return discouraged workers to the dignity of a good, full-time job. The legislation we consider today is just that

kind of reform. Through its strong, commonsense measures, the ALERRT Act will powerfully and comprehensively reform the Federal regulatory system, from how regulations are planned to how they are promulgated to how they are dealt with in court.

This is legislation that Congress cannot pass too soon, for while the Obama administration's pivot to the economy has faltered, the Federal bureaucracy has not wavered an instant in its imposition of new and costly regulation on our economy. The ALERRT Act responds by offering real relief to the real Americans who suffer under the mounting burdens of tyrannical regulation.

Consider, for example, Rob James, a city councilman from Avon Lake, Ohio, who testified before the Judiciary Committee this term about the impacts of new and excessive regulation on his town, its workers, and its families.

Avon Lake is a small town facing devastation by ideologically driven, anti-fossil fuel power plant regulations. These regulations are expected to destroy jobs at Avon Lake, harm Avon Lake's families, and make it even harder for Avon Lake to find the resources to provide emergency services, quality schools, and help for its neediest citizens, all the while doing comparatively little to control mercury emissions, which are the stated target of the regulations.

Title I of the ALERRT Act helps people and towns like Rob James and Avon Lake to know in real time when devastating regulations are planned, comment in time to help change them, estimate their real costs, and better plan for the results as agencies reach their final decisions.

Consider, too, Bob Sells, one of my constituents and president of the Virginia-based division of a heavy construction materials producer. His company and its workers were harmed by EPA cement kiln emission regulations that were technically unattainable and included provisions vastly changed from what EPA proposed for public comment; other EPA emission regulations that were stricter than needed to protect health, gerrymandered to impose expensive controls on other types of emissions and which prohibited commonsense uses of cheap and safe fuel that could actually help the environment; and Department of Transportation regulations that, without increasing safety, vastly increased record- keeping for ready-mix concrete drivers, unnecessarily limited their hours and suppressed their wages.

Title II of the ALERRT Act helps to protect people like Bob Sells and his workers from regulations that ask job creators to achieve the unachievable, do not help to control their stated regulatory targets, suppress hours and wages for no good reason, and inundate Americans with unnecessary paperwork.

Title III of the ALERRT Act offers long-needed help to small business people like Carl Harris, the vice president and general manager of Carl Harris Co., Inc., in Wichita, Kansas. Mr. Harris is a small home builder. Every day, he has to fight and overcome the fact that government regulations now account for 25 percent of the final price of a new single-family home.

Mr. Harris participates in small business review panels of existing law uses to try to lower the costs of regulations for small businesses, but he has seen firsthand how loopholes in existing law allow Federal agencies to ignore small business concerns while ``checking the box'' of contacting small businesses. One case is that of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration's Cranes and Derricks Rule, which was effectively negotiated before small business was ever consulted and threatened to impose disproportionate costs on small builders.

Title III of the ALERRT Act helps small business job creators like Mr. Harris make sure that agencies like OSHA stop treating them like procedural hurdles and afterthoughts, take into real account the difficulties small businesses face, and lower costs on small businesses that must be lowered.

Finally, consider Allen Puckett, III, who is the fourth-generation owner of Columbus Brick Company, a family-owned enterprise that has been making fired-clay bricks in Columbus, Mississippi, since 1890. His company distributes bricks to more than 15 States, has second-, third- and fourth-generation employees, offers a fully funded, profit-sharing retirement plan and a 401(k) matching program, and has a nurse practitioner come on site twice a month to provide a free clinic to all of its employees.

Mr. Puckett's company may now be shuttered in the face of two waves of sue-and-settle brick-making emissions regulations that threaten to put his company and others like it out of business. After time- consuming litigation, the first regulations were thrown out in court but not before Mr. Puckett's company had already lost at least $750,000 in compliance costs and the entire industry had lost $100 million. The second replacement regulations threaten to be twice as expensive, so expensive that Columbus Brick Company expects to have to downsize by two-thirds or close.

The translation for hardworking Americans employed by such businesses is: higher prices for goods, fewer job opportunities and lower wages.

Title IV of the ALERRT Act helps people like Allen Puckett find out about sue-and-settle rulemaking deals in time, make sure their concerns are heard by agencies and the courts, and have a fighting chance to achieve a just result for themselves, their employees, and the families and communities that depend on them.

In all of these ways and more, the ALERRT Act brings urgently needed regulatory reform to hardworking Americans, whether they are small business people struggling to be heard by faceless Washington bureaucracies or whether they are citizens of small towns who are crushed by the impacts of regulations that force plant closings, harm families, and kill the revenues needed to provide vital services.

I thank Mr. Bachus, Mr. Holding, and Mr. Collins for joining with me in offering the individual bills that now come to the floor together as the ALERRT Act, and I urge my colleagues to vote for this urgently needed legislation.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Chairman, it is now my pleasure to yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Holding), a member of the Judiciary Committee and a contributor of one of the bills that has been included in the ALERRT Act.

Madam Chairman, at this time it is my pleasure to yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Graves), the chairman of the Small Business Committee.

Madam Chairman, at this time it is my pleasure to yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Cantor), the majority leader.

Madam Chairman, at this time it is my pleasure to yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Hastings), the chairman of the Natural Resources Committee.

Madam Chairman, at this time it is my pleasure to yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Smith), a member of the Judiciary Committee, and chairman of the Science, Space, and Technology Committee.

Madam Chairman, at this time, it is my pleasure to yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. Barr).

Madam Chairman, at this time, it is my pleasure to yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Alabama (Mr. Bachus), the chairman of the Regulatory Reform, Commercial, and Antitrust Law Subcommittee, who has worked so closely with us on this legislation and who is the sponsor of one of the pieces of the ALERRT Act.

Madam Chairman, it is my pleasure to yield an additional 1 minute to the gentleman from Alabama.

Madam Chairman, I have no further requests for time. I believe that I have the right to close, so if the gentleman from Georgia would proceed, I will reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Chairman, I yield myself the balance of my time, and I urge my colleagues to support this commonsense legislation.

Let's begin by reviewing the facts: $1.8 trillion plus--and that is just Federal Government regulations, mind you. That is not State government regulations or local government regulations. $1.8 trillion, one-eighth of the total economic production of our country, is spent on government regulations. Some of those regulations are necessary, and this law by no means eliminates the regulations. It puts them through a process whereby we will know that the regulations are needed and are done in the most cost-effective way and in the most commonsense way.

What will be the result of that? Lower costs for goods and services; lower taxes for Americans who face, right now, an average per-family cost of $11,500 a year in higher costs of goods and services and higher taxes as a result of regulatory burdens. So imagine if some of that money were reduced what the savings would be. Imagine what it would do to job creation in our country.

We have talked a lot about manufacturing here today. Last year, for the first time in history, manufacturing in the United States reached $2 trillion in production--$2 trillion. It sounds remarkable until you consider that regulations cost $1.86 trillion--just Federal Government regulations almost wiping out the entire economic production of the manufacturing sector of our economy if all those regulations apply to manufacturing, which, of course, they do not.

But consider the impact on individuals. Consider the impact upon Rob James, the city councilman in Avon Lake, Ohio, who is experiencing reduced revenues coming in to meet basic obligations like education and emergency services because regulations of power plants with unnecessary ideologically driven anti-fossil fuel burdensome regulations are expected to destroy jobs in Avon Lake.

Consider the job loss in the business of Mr. Allen Puckett and his brick manufacturing company in Mississippi who expects to have to lay off two-thirds of his employees because of the second round of sue-and- settle brick-making emissions regulation where somebody sues, and the regulatory agency makes a settlement of that in a friendly case that Mr. Puckett and his employees didn't even know about the process where the suit was being brought and couldn't enter into it and say this is what is going to happen if you have to implement these regulations.

Or consider the impact on the cost of buying a home, one of the basic parts of the American Dream, when Mr. Karl Harris of Wichita, Kansas, says that one-quarter of the cost--one-quarter of the cost of a home today is in the form of regulation, the cost of those regulations.

With this legislation in place, businesses across America and workers across America will experience an increase in their profitability and an increase in their wages. We don't need to have government interference in the marketplace with regard to wages. They would rise on their own if the government would take practical steps in reviewing regulations before they are implemented in this country.

Finally, let me say that this is all about the individual and their freedom. Government regulation suppresses freedom of ideas and of implementing new ways of doing things. Yes, we need to have regulations to protect safety in the workplace. Yes, we need to have regulations to protect the environment, but they need to be commonsense regulations that are going about doing what needs to be done and no more, and are going about doing what needs to be done in the most effective way, and they are going about doing what needs to be done in a way that the people who are going to be impacted by those regulations, who are going to see their businesses lost, their workers lose their jobs and not even have any notice that this is going to occur.

I urge my colleagues to support this important legislation and yield back the balance of my time.

Madam Chair, I rise in opposition to the amendment.

Madam Chair, as Federal regulatory agencies attempt to pile more and more regulatory burdens on America's struggling workers, families and small businesses, the least we can ask is that they be transparent about it. What could be more transparent than requiring them, the regulators, on a monthly basis, online, to update the public with real-time information about what new regulations are coming and how much they will cost?

Once they have that information, affected individuals and job creators will be able to plan and budget meaningfully for new costs they may have to absorb. If they are denied that information, they will only be blindsided. That is not fair.

Title I of the ALERRT Act makes sure this information is provided to the public. To provide a strong incentive to agencies to honor its requirements, title I prohibits new regulations from becoming effective unless agencies provide transparent information online for 6 months preceding the regulations' issuance.

The amendment seeks to eliminate that incentive. Without an incentive like that in existing law, what have we seen from the Obama administration? Repeated failures to make disclosures required by statute and executive order, including the administration's yearlong hiding of the ball on new regulations during the 2012 election cycle. I urge my colleagues to oppose this amendment.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Chair, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Alabama (Mr. Bachus), the chairman of the subcommittee.

Madam Chair, I yield myself the balance of my time, and just say that the fact of the matter is that the provision in the bill that this amendment attacks is a very straightforward provision that just provides for transparency. It doesn't stop any of the regulations the gentleman from Georgia referenced; it simply says if you do the regulations, tell us about them ahead of time so as you move toward the final implementation, the last 6 months before it goes

into effect, the public gets to see it, the media gets to see it, the businesses that are impacted get to see it, the workers who may lose their jobs get to see it. That allows them to prepare for it, and it allows them to comment. It allows them to try to change the law. It is simply a fair way to enter into regulations. It is a commonsense provision that should be kept in the bill, and the amendment should be defeated.

I yield back the balance of my time.

America's small businesses, workers, and families are being crushed by an annual regulatory burden that in 2012 amounted to $15,000 per household. That is an expense bigger than any family expense except for housing, and the number of new costly regulations just keeps growing and growing.

In response, titles II and IV of the bill, which this amendment seeks to strike, those two titles write into statute best practices into rulemaking that help to lower costs, avoid unnecessary regulation, and keep pro-regulatory special interests from abusing the courts to force new costly regulations upon the public.

They do all of this without denying the ability of agencies to issue new regulations that are sensible to fulfill statutory mandates.

Why is this so important that the bill do that? Because although these are best practices, they are too often honored in the breach or not at all because they are not yet written into statute.

The amendment substantially guts the bill; denies important protections to American workers, families, and job creators; and unjustifiably prolongs the time during which regulatory agencies can operate without adequate checks and balances.

I urge my colleagues to oppose the amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Madam Chairman, I thank the gentleman from Pennsylvania for yielding.

I strongly support the amendment that he and the gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. Barr) have offered. I urge my colleagues to support it as well, which protects America's workers.

I support the amendment.

Those who suffer the most from over-reaching regulations are workers who lose their jobs or see their wages cut on account of regulations that cost too much. Displaced workers suffer lower earnings once they find new work. That earnings gap persists over the long-term. Blue collar workers are the hardest hit.

Those who take too long to find new work are more likely to leave the labor force and retire. These workers, their families, and this country cannot afford to lose good work, good workers and good wages to needless regulatory excess. This amendment makes sure that agencies better analyze the potential impacts of new regulations on jobs and wages. And it makes sure that agencies come clean with the American people when they impose new regulations that they know will impose real adverse impacts on jobs and wages.

It will protect America's workers and families--and give voters the information they need to hold agencies and their enablers accountable when agencies recklessly destroy jobs and wages.

I urge my colleagues to support the amendment.

I thank the gentleman from Texas for yielding, and I strongly support his amendment.

Madam Chairman, one of the simplest, most effective, and most commonsense measures we can take to make sure agencies issue smarter regulations is to require them to do just what this amendment requires: identify achievable objectives for new regulations when they propose them; identify metrics by which they will measure whether those objectives are achieved; and at the end of their rulemakings, live by their own, stated objectives and whether the metrics say the proposed regulations can achieve them.

That is plain, simple, commonsense decisionmaking that American families and businesses live by every day. It is high time that Federal agencies be required to live by these standards, too.

I urge my colleagues to support the gentleman from Texas' amendment.

I thank the gentleman for yielding, and I strongly support his amendment.

Madam Chair, title III of the ALERRT Act makes important reforms to assure that agencies identify whether their new regulations will have significant adverse effects on small businesses. One of the most important adverse effects is to identify whether

these new regulations will make it harder for small businesses to obtain credit.

Small businesses create the majority of the new jobs in our economy, yet without access to credit, how can they do that? How can they even survive? The gentleman's amendment makes sure that agencies do identify whether new regulations will make it harder for a substantial number of small businesses to obtain credit. It is a reform that is long overdue and especially important as our country struggles to achieve a real and durable job recovery.

I thank the gentleman for his amendment and urge my colleagues to support it.

Will the gentleman yield?

I support his commonsense amendment and urge my colleagues to join in making it unanimous.

Madam Chairman, I move that the Committee do now rise.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Georgia for yielding me the customary 30 minutes, and I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I am forced to rise again in opposition to the rule and the two underlying bills that are counterproductive and aren't dealing with the issues that our constituents sent us here to address. Each of these bills was brought under a restrictive process, one of them a completely closed rule that blocked all efforts from both sides of the aisle to improve the legislation.

Let's talk about the IRS bill first.

The IRS bill has a title that I think would engender broad bipartisan support. If we want to run a bill that prevents the IRS from discriminating against organizations based on their political affiliations, whether they are progressive or tea party or anywhere in between, I think there would be a way to come together in support, hopefully near unanimous support, around such a bill.

Like many Americans, I was outraged that organizations had been singled out based on the name of their organization for additional scrutiny.

That is simply not the right criteria that the IRS should be using. I hope they got the message over at the IRS loud and clear, and I hope we can move to fully implement the recommendations of the inspector general to ensure that this never happens again.

However, this bill actually undoes one of the very recommendations of the inspector general from the inspector general's own report. There is even a Republican bill in the Ways and Means Committee by Pete Roskam that would require the IRS Commissioner to implement all of the recommendations of the inspector general, including these very regulations that this other Republican bill is seeking to prevent the implementation of. So make up our minds here, folks.

If we want to move together to prevent the IRS from discriminating against any organization because of their political affiliation, let's do so, whether it is something binding, implementing in statute the recommendations of the inspector general, whether it is a sense of Congress, I stand ready to work with my colleague from Georgia and others to speak with a strong voice that that kind of discrimination has no role in the IRS. However, that is entirely separate from what this bill does, which guts one of the very inspector general recommendations that was designed to remedy this problem going forward.

As for the other bill, the ALERRT Act, it would slow down the regulatory process and increase red tape for agencies. It has been estimated that this bill increases reporting requirements for agencies by six times. This is a Republican bureaucrat welfare bill. How many more government bureaucrats are you going to have to hire to deal with six times more paperwork that is going to come from this bill?

You know, when I talk to my constituents in Colorado about what do we need to do, they don't say, ``You need to go to Washington and help bury government workers in more paperwork. I want more red tape.''

Yet, that is the bill we have here today, a Republican bill that would bury the Federal Government under six times as much reporting requirements for agencies. That is not what the American people want. That is why I urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' on this rule and this bill.

Look, there are some issues that we could be working on here today, Mr. Speaker. Let me talk about a few of those. These are the kinds of issues that I believe if my party had the opportunity to bring bills to the floor of this Chamber, we would be bringing those bills to the floor of this Chamber. One of those is immigration reform. Rather than spending time debating bills that are counterproductive and aren't going anywhere, let's consider legislation that would replace our broken immigration system with one that works.

The Senate, Mr. Speaker, was able to come together, 68 Members, Democratic and Republican, around a commonsense solution, securing our border, ensuring that people who are here illegally get in line behind those who are here legally, implementing mandatory workplace authentication of workers, making sure the future flow of workers is in line with the needs of our economy and America can continue to compete in the 21st century. We have a nearly identical bill in the House, H.R. 15, a bipartisan bill. I think if we brought it forward under a rule, it would pass. Let's bring that bill forward, Mr. Speaker.

Nearly a year ago, the New Democratic Coalition Immigration Task Force, which I cochair, released detailed principles on comprehensive immigration reform. I applaud the Republican principles that were issued on immigration reform. There is a lot that we have in common. I believe that we can work together to pass a bill to create American jobs, ensure that we are more competitive in the global economy, reduce the deficit by hundreds of billions of dollars, and that reflects our values as Americans and reflects our values as people of faith.

Yet, the House majority has found time to shepherd dozens of bills through the Judiciary Committee to the floor of the House, including one that we are considering today, but the House hasn't dedicated a single moment of floor time to an immigration reform bill. We haven't even tried, Mr. Speaker. We haven't had a 3-hour debate, we haven't had a 1-hour debate, we haven't had a 1-minute debate on any immigration reform bill here on the floor of the House of Representatives. You don't get to ``yes'' without scheduling the time and the space for Democrats and Republicans of good faith to work together to solve a problem that the American people want and demand a solution for.

Across the country, business leaders, faith leaders, national and local editorial boards, and the law enforcement community are calling for real leadership on advancing immigration reform now. In fact, just yesterday, the Chamber of Commerce sent a letter to Speaker Boehner from more than 600 businesses urging Congress to pass immigration reform. The Chamber president, Tom Donohue, posted a blog post emphasizing the need to have a modernized E-Verify system, provisions that are included in H.R. 15.

Last week, a Wall Street Journal op-ed criticized the Republicans' failure to act on commonsense reform. Citing a recent study from the American Farm Bureau about the cost of failing to act, The Wall Street Journal wrote:

Republicans have killed immigration reform for now, but the

Farm Bureau study shows that in the real economy it is still

needed. The irony is that many Republicans who support

handouts to farmers oppose reforms that wouldn't cost

taxpayers a dime and would help the economy.

So instead of passing a bill that reduces the deficit, secures our borders, and makes the reforms we need, Republicans say let's bury the government in red tape, increasing the paperwork for agencies by six times, and let's give government handouts to farmers. Those are the Republican policies that we are seeing in this Congress, and it is why the American people hold this institution in great disapproval. The longer we delay in passing comprehensive immigration reform, the greater the cost of inaction becomes.

According to the Congressional Budget Office's nonpartisan analysis, passing immigration reform would increase our gross domestic product by 3.3 percent, raise wages by $470 billion for American citizens, and create an average of 121,000 jobs for Americans each year over the next decade.

So, rather than create jobs for Federal bureaucrats having to deal with six times as much paperwork, let's create jobs in the private sector, Mr. Speaker. Let's pass immigration reform to ensure that American companies can compete in the increasingly complex global marketplace.

If we have the ability, Mr. Speaker, to bring a bill forward to the floor, another bill we would bring forward is increasing the minimum wage to $10.10. Just before coming up here today to manage this rule, Mr. Speaker, I signed a discharge petition to bring that bill to the floor, a bill that I proudly cosponsor, a bill authored by my colleague, Mr. Miller of California.

Raising the minimum wage would help restore fairness for working men and women across the country. It would lift millions of Americans out of poverty. It would fuel demand and economic growth.

A letter from over 600 economists, including seven Nobel Prize winners, said:

At a time when persistent high unemployment is putting

enormous downward pressure on wages, such a minimum wage

increase will provide a much-needed boost.

It is no panacea, but if we are looking at helping Americans earn enough so that they don't have to be part of the social safety net or government welfare programs, we need to make sure that they can do that in the private sector because--you know what?--at current minimum wage levels, a family working full-time, 40 hours a week, earns about $14,000 a year.

Mr. Speaker, you try living on $14,000 a year. I couldn't do it. I don't think you could do it, Mr. Speaker.

Guess what? That is why we have a social safety net that helps Americans and supplements their income. Whether it is Medicaid, whether it is food stamps, Americans earning $14,000 a year don't live a great life, but they get a little help from us, and that is the right thing to do; it reflects our values.

Do you know what? If we can help them earn a little bit more, they will require less help from other taxpayers

in paying their rent, paying their bills, putting groceries on their table.

So we can be fiscally responsible in reducing the need for social safety net programs if we can help lift up more Americans out of poverty. One substantial step towards doing that will be to increase the minimum wage to $10.10.

Another issue that we would love to bring forward, Mr. Speaker, would be renewing unemployment insurance. Again, when unemployment insurance ran out with employment at high levels, it sucked money out of the economy, money that could otherwise go to create jobs and private sector growth.

In the past and in prior recessions and in prior times when we had this level of unemployment, this has always been a bipartisan issue. There has always been responsible governing majorities of Republicans and Democrats, in this Chamber and the other Chamber, that have put together extensions for unemployment insurance.

And yet, once again, it has run out, and we seek to bring a simple bill to the floor that ensures that we don't endanger our recovery by sucking money out of the economy in our time of need.

I will go on and on, Mr. Speaker, about bills we could be considering, but sadly, the truth is--and the American people see this--we are not considering those bills here today. We are considering a bill that adds six times as much paperwork to already overworked Federal workers, and we are considering a bill that guts one of the recommendations of the inspector general that was designed to help prevent the IRS from discriminating based on political affiliation and ensure that we have sufficient transparency, consistent with our Tax Code around entities in the political arena.

We can do better, Mr. Speaker. I encourage my colleagues on the other side of the aisle to do better. I am confident that, if they are not able to do better, Mr. Speaker, the American people will give my side of the aisle a chance to do better. Either way, Mr. Speaker, immigration reform doesn't solve itself. It takes the United States Congress to solve it.

While the President can move forward with his executive powers, as he has with the deferred action program, the only comprehensive solution can come from the United States Congress.

I encourage my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to work in good faith towards addressing the flaws in our immigration system and replacing chaos with the rule of law, increasing our competitiveness, reducing our deficits, securing our borders, making America safer, and creating jobs for Americans.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, before further yielding, I want to address some of the comments, and I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Again, this bill creates a backdoor increase in the Federal bureaucracy. When you are talking about increasing reporting requirements by six times and adding 60 additional procedural and analytical requirements to the rulemaking process, you know that this bill must contemplate increasing the size of the Federal bureaucracy to deal with these increased requirements.

As an entrepreneur who started a number of small businesses, I know the importance of having certainty and predictability in the regulatory process. The additional bureaucracy instituted by this ALERRT Act will simply not help businesses thrive and grow. This legislation would create headaches for businesses at a time when many small businesses are already struggling to recover from the recession.

Mr. Speaker, if we defeat the previous question, I will offer an amendment to the rule to bring up H.R. 1010, which is legislation to raise the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour, in order to restore fairness for men and women across our country.

To discuss our proposal, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Bishop).

I yield an additional 1 minute to the gentleman from New York.

Mr. Speaker, we do. We have at least one speaker who is here and ready to go.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Jeffries).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Scott).

I would inquire if the gentleman from Georgia has remaining speakers.

I yield myself the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, in closing, these underlying bills are destined, if they pass this Chamber, like so many bills, for the Senate's bill graveyard. Why? Because they are counterproductive. They are not what the American people want. They don't do what they say.

If we had a bill that fully implemented the recommendations to prevent any kind of discrimination based on political affiliation at the IRS, we could pass that bill. That would be an important step forward in ensuring that the terrible embarrassment and pie on your face that the IRS had, the loss of confidence that it engendered among the American people, will not happen again.

That is a good issue to work on, but that is not what we have. Instead, we have a bill that actually guts one of the very recommendations of the inspector general designed to prevent this from happening again--the exact opposite of the title of the bill.

We also have a bill before us that creates more red tape in the Federal Government and regulatory agencies. I don't think the American people are calling out for more red tape. I don't think small businesses want regulators, whose approval they need, to be so buried with six times as many reports and 60 times more analytical requirements that they won't even be able to give routine approval for various things that small businesses and entrepreneurs need. It is a counterproductive step.

So instead of addressing the issues that the American people want us to act on, from immigration reform to raising the minimum wage to extending unemployment insurance, we are debating counterproductive, single-Chamber bills that will die in the Senate and would be harmful to the country if passed.

My colleagues Mr. Scott and Mr. Bishop gave eloquent testimony for the importance of raising the minimum wage. I certainly agree with my colleague from Georgia that it is not a panacea. Would that there were a silver bullet to lift people out of poverty, it would have 435 votes.

I do believe that the American people agree that when you work full time, you shouldn't need a government handout. You should be able to support your family at a very basic level. You shouldn't have to live in poverty if you are working 40, 50, 60 hours a week at a backbreaking job. Raising the minimum wage to $10.10 will help accomplish that.

Mr. Speaker, if we defeat the previous question, I will offer an amendment to the rule to bring up H.R. 1010, legislation to raise the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour, to restore fairness for working men and women across the country.

Someone working full-time, year-round at minimum wage earns just over $14,000. That is nearly $4,000 below the poverty line. It means that other Americans will need to subsidize that person through government support, welfare, or food stamps. Because, guess what. That $14,000 isn't enough to provide for a family, have a shot at the American Dream, or even to put a roof over your head and food on the table.

By raising the minimum wage to $10.10, we can help Americans become self-sufficient to support themselves and their families with pride and have a job that gives them pride to put food on their table and a roof over their head without the need for government support.

Increasing the minimum wage to $10.10 is simply a return to the level of the minimum wage in the 1960s. It would allow millions of additional American workers to support their families.

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

Mr. Speaker, as my colleague from Georgia said, this rule does not contain immigration reform and minimum wage, but I think it is important for the American people to know what it could contain, what it should contain with this Chamber under Republican leadership, what it would contain if this Chamber were under Democratic leadership.

The agriculture community, the faith-based community, the business community, the law enforcement community, and the fiscal responsibility community all speak with one voice on immigration reform. What we are doing now doesn't work.

There are over 10 million people here illegally. Companies violate the law every day. There is over close to 2 million deportations, each at cost to the taxpayers of $10,000 to $20,000.

It is time to replace our broken immigration system with the rule of law, reduce our deficit by hundreds of billions of dollars, create over 100,000 jobs

for Americans, finally secure our borders, and ensure that nobody works illegally in this country, potentially undermining wages for American workers. That is what we can accomplish. We recognize it would be a bipartisan solution.

H.R. 15, the Senate-passed bill, doesn't have everything that Democrats want in it; it doesn't have everything that Republicans want in it; but it would be good for our country. It would be great for our country and for the American people.

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

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

Mr. Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I call up House Resolution 487 and ask for its immediate consideration.

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

General Leave

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

Mr. Speaker, you have heard me say it before, it makes me so happy to be a member of the Rules Committee because our entire resolution gets read down here. The entire Rules resolution gets read, and by golly, Mr. Speaker, if you are not proud of what you are doing in your committee, you better not sign up for a committee where every word of the work that you do gets read each and every time, but I am proud of the work we are doing in the Rules Committee.

The rule that we have on the floor today, Mr. Speaker, is going to make two bills in order. Both, I would argue, are incredibly important for providing

not just transparency to what goes on here in Washington but also to ensure that the people's voice continues to be heard in Washington.

House Resolution 487, this rule, is a closed rule for consideration of H.R. 3865. That is the Stop Targeting of Political Beliefs by the IRS Act, Mr. Speaker. That is in response to what now every American understands to be the 501(c)(4) scandal, for lack of a better word; that for the first time in my lifetime, there are allegations that the IRS is targeting folks on the basis of their political beliefs for whether or not they are able to have their organization certified as a tax-exempt organization. That is not just a concern of groups on one side of the aisle or the other, Mr. Speaker, that is a concern of folks across the spectrum, and I would argue it is a concern for all Americans who believe that having their voice heard is important.

Mr. Speaker, this resolution provides for a structured rule for the consideration of H.R. 2804, the All Economic Regulations are Transparent Act.

Mr. Speaker, in that structured rule, we made in order 11 amendments. We had two Members come by and testify on behalf of their amendments last night in the Rules Committee. We made both of those amendments in order. In addition, we made four Republican amendments and five other Democratic amendments in order; so for a total of 11 amendments, four Republican amendments and seven Democratic amendments were made in order on that underlying bill. As is customary, it provides the minority with a motion to recommit on both bills.

Mr. Speaker, I sit on the Government Reform Committee. We just had a Government Reform Committee bill pass here on the floor of the House, and we have another one here today. It aims for transparency. There is just no question in my mind, Mr. Speaker, that we have replaced taxation in this country with regulation. Rarely does someone come down and say, ``I want to tax an industry.'' What they will come down and say is, ``I want to regulate an industry.'' In fact, in my great State of Georgia, Mr. Speaker, we are regulating jobs right out of existence. We don't have to tax them out of existence. We don't have to outlaw an industry. We just regulate it out of existence.

Perhaps there are some industries that need to be regulated out of existence, and we should have that full and open debate on the floor of the House, but what is absolutely certain is that the American people need to be able to understand the power of the regulatory process, and the impact that it has on jobs and economic development in their community.

Today in statute, Mr. Speaker, there is a requirement that the administration twice a year publish a notice of all of those regulations that are being considered and what their impact is anticipated to be, but we have had instances, as recently as 2012, Mr. Speaker, where the administration just ignored that statute altogether. Now understand, the requirement is that you must inform the American people twice a year, just twice a year, about the regulations that are coming through the pipeline that will impact them, their families, and their businesses, and yet, that has been ignored. There has been no ability for folks to understand the magnitude of those regulations.

So we came back in this piece of legislation, Mr. Speaker, and said, listen, not only should you be doing that, you should probably be doing it once a month. If you have seen the Federal Register, Mr. Speaker, it is thick. It comes out every day of the week. It captures all of the new rules and regulations that are coming out. They are coming out like water out of a spigot. They are tough to keep track of. So this bill says let's do it not twice a year, let's do it once a month. Let's make sure that the American people understand in a volume that they can see and read once a month what those new rules and regulations are, and, if an agency chooses to ignore that requirement, that proposed rule and regulation will not go into effect such that the American people will get six months of notice about what it is that is going on.

I will give a good example, Mr. Speaker. It goes to the second bill we are considering, the Stop Political Targeting bill that is on the floor here today. There is a public comment period that is on right now. I don't know if most folks in America know that. I know everybody understands the IRS targeting scandal. I don't know if they know that the administration is involved in a rulemaking right now. The investigation is still ongoing into the IRS. The extent of the abuse is not yet understood at the IRS. The committees are continuing to work through that process, as the law requires, and yet the administration has released a rule that says we think we know how to fix this, even though the investigation is not done yet; this is what we want to do, and the public comment period ends tomorrow. The public comment period ends tomorrow.

Now, folks can go to www.regulations.gov. They can still go and file their comment if they believe that the people's voice being heard is important, but think about that, Mr. Speaker. A scandal that everyone in America understands, a scandal that I believe is offensive to absolutely everyone in America because it doesn't matter which party you are in, you shouldn't target folks who disagree with you; we should absolutely have an full and open debate and let the best ideas win. Yet the administration has proposed a solution to a problem that is not yet fully understood, and the opportunity for the American people to comment on it ends tomorrow. I don't think folks know that back home, Mr. Speaker.

This transparency bill we have on the floor today intends to address that, not just for this regulation, but for all future regulations, and the Stop Political Targeting bill that we have on the floor today says this and this alone: it says since we don't fully understand what is going on, and since we know with certainty that the IRS has breached the public's trust, not the entire IRS but just this one scandal here in the 501(c)(4) operations, since we know with certainty that the public's trust has been diminished, let's not have the administration, in the absence of a full understanding by the Congress, the absence of full comment by the American people, let's not have the administration completely re-regulate that area. Rather, let's put this off, not forever, Mr. Speaker, because we all agree that work needs to be done, but for 1 year and 1 year only so that the Congress can have a full understanding and the American people can have a full accounting of what it was that led to citizens' voices being silenced by the Internal Revenue Service in their applications for 501(c)(4) status.

Those are the two bills we have on the floor today, Mr. Speaker. Again, all of the germane amendments that were offered, and candidly, there were no germane amendments that were offered to the Stop Political Targeting Act, so that is a closed rule with just the one motion to recommit, and 11 amendments made in order for the government transparency bill on the floor today, only four Republican amendments, seven Democratic amendments, so we can have a full and open debate. I am very proud of this rule, Mr. Speaker.

With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, at this time, I yield 10 minutes to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Collins), a freshman Member, a young Member of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, in support of this legislation.

I yield the gentleman an additional 2 minutes.

Mr. Speaker, I would ask my colleague from Colorado if he has any speakers remaining.

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 3 minutes to say, if you care about any of these issues that have been brought up today--and these are not issues that are involved in the rule, and these are not issues that are coming to the floor today--then you care about whether or not the American people are able to make their voices heard, because I am absolutely certain, as I have learned in my 3 years of having a voting card, Mr. Speaker, that the American voters still run this show. Now, the voters have a tough time having their voices heard, but if they can have their voices heard, they can make a difference.

We are talking about issues that we wish we could change, Mr. Speaker. Today on the floor, we have an issue that we can change. The administration is proposing regulations that will silence voices on these very issues that my colleagues are raising.

Let me read from Cathy Duvall, the Sierra Club's director of public advocacy and partnerships, who says this about the proposed regulations from the Obama administration's Treasury Department:

The proposal harms efforts that have nothing to do with

politics--from our ability to communicate with our members

about clean air and water to our efforts to educate the

public about toxic pollution.

Mr. Speaker, if you believe in this process as I do, if you believe in this Nation as I do, then you believe that it is paramount that the people's voices are able to be heard. That is the issue here today. If you believe that the priorities of this House should be changed, if you believe the priorities of this Nation should be changed, if you believe anything in this Nation should be changed, you must believe that we should preserve the power of the individual's voice.

That is why this rule moratorium is here today, Mr. Speaker. That is why the investigations must go on. That is why we must reject the administration's rush to judgment here and ensure that our priority continues to be that of the board of directors of this country--the American voters.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 2 minutes.

I say to my friend from Virginia I think he is absolutely speaking from the heart when it comes to sharing the voice of his constituents in Virginia. My constituents take a slightly different view. They look to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office that said, yes, you can raise the minimum wage. You called it a modest raise. I think they called it a more than 40 percent increase in the minimum wage. But you can raise the minimum wage, as some are proposing, and that is going to lift 900,000 families above the poverty line and that is going to destroy 500,000 jobs.

I don't fault my colleagues at all for being concerned about those 900,000 individuals that are going to be lifted above the poverty line. I think we all want folks lifted above the poverty line. I don't want folks working a lifetime for minimum wage.

I want people working their way up the ladder. It is a ladder of opportunity that we ought to be building in this House. But to dismiss those 500,000 individuals that the Congressional Budget Office said will lose their jobs altogether are not partisan fights we have, Mr. Speaker. These are heartfelt discussions that we have about how best to serve the American people to whom we have sworn an oath to the Constitution that rules this land.

These are very difficult issues, but they are made better each and every time, I am certain, Mr. Speaker, if we preserve the power of the American people to have their voice heard in this debate. That is what is so important about this rule and why we must pass this rule today-- to bring to the floor the Stop Targeting of Political Beliefs by the IRS Act--so that Americans' voices are not just silenced on the basis of their content, but not silenced period.

It is abhorrent that we would silence voices on the basis of their content, but I would argue, Mr. Speaker, it is abhorrent if we have an opportunity to stop voices from being silenced at all.

I believe this House will take that step today, and that is why I am proud to be here representing this rule.

I reserve the balance of my time.

I do not have any remaining speakers.

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

Mr. Speaker, you have heard a lot of heartfelt sentiments from my friends here on the floor of the House today. Unfortunately, what you haven't heard is what we are going to do together to ensure that the heartfelt sentiments of every single citizen of these United States can be heard here in Washington.

I fear my friend from Colorado is right. I don't say that lightly. He has a lot of good ideas, and I hope to collaborate with him on even more. I fear he is right that this is a single-Chamber solution. I fear that only the United States House of Representatives is concerned with protecting the voice of the people--not just people who agree with me, Mr. Speaker, but people from all stripes.

I have read from the Sierra Club earlier. Let me read from the ACLU's comments to the administration on this rule. This is what they say: ``Social welfare organizations praise or criticize candidates for public office on the issues and they should be able to do so freely, without fear of losing or being denied tax-exempt status.''

That is ``the heart of our representative democracy,'' the ACLU says.

``The proposed rule''--that is the administration's rule; that is the rule we are here today to stop--``threatens to discourage or sterilize an enormous amount of political discourse in America.''

Mr. Speaker, I have a chart here today. It lists what tax-exempt organizations are able to do. A 501(c) is that section of the Tax Code that deals with tax-exempt organizations.

You have 501(c)(3)'s that are able to do get-out-the-vote work, voter registration work, and candidate forums. 501(c)(4)'s are where the administration is regulating, and that is the source of the scandal: the targeting of American citizens based on their political beliefs. And 501(c)(5)'s are the labor unions in the country.

Mr. Speaker, what folks need to understand is that, as we sit here today, all of these groups can do get-out-the-vote work. All can do voter registration work and candidate forums. Why? Because it advances our Republic. It advances the cause of freedom and discourse in America.

But this, Mr. Speaker, is what the administration is proposing. For 501(c)(5)'s, or labor unions, it is proposing they continue doing all of that material. Also, for 501(c)(3)'s to continue doing all of that. But the 501(c)(4)'s--the very same 501(c)(4)'s that were targeted by the IRS on the basis of their political beliefs--those groups, and those groups alone, would be silenced.

Mr. Speaker, America is not advantaged by that rule. Maybe in some shortsighted way someone believes their personal political agenda is advanced by that scheme, Mr. Speaker, but we do not. We as a Nation do not. It is a shortsighted gain. That is why we put this bill on the floor today to delay these new regulations, this change of how American political discourse occurs, for 1 year--and 1 year only--while the investigation completes itself.

Mr. Speaker, I just want to read from the report that the inspector general crafted at the Treasury Department. He says, What were the words, what triggered this additional investigation that went on?

This is what they were, Mr. Speaker.

If you use the word ``Tea Party,'' you might get special scrutiny. If you use the word ``patriot'' in your name, you might get special scrutiny. If you were concerned, Mr. Speaker--and this is reading from the Treasury Department report--if you were concerned about government spending, government debt, or taxes, you could be subjected to special scrutiny. If you wanted, Mr. Speaker, to ``make America a better place to live,'' you could be subjected to special scrutiny.

The administration has gone far beyond that, Mr. Speaker. They are not just going to subject some groups to special scrutiny, as is the source of the scandal. They are silencing all groups. If you had a statement in your case file, Mr. Speaker, that criticized how this country is being run, you were subject to special scrutiny.

Mr. Speaker, that is not just our right, that is our obligation. Our obligation as citizens is to criticize the way this country is being run when we don't agree. Because, after all, Mr. Speaker, the President doesn't run this country. The Congress doesn't run this country. We the people run this country.

This rule to bring this bill is about one thing and one thing only, and that is making sure that those people to whom the Constitution invests every bit of power that the country has to offer, the American citizens have a voice with which to express their concerns and the information on which to educate that voice.

My colleague from Georgia was absolutely right, Mr. Speaker. There are so many things that happen on the floor of this House, you can't tell the difference between who is who regionally, politically, and what it is that folks believe. But this issue is one of those defining issues.

Do you believe that the board of directors of America, the United States citizen, deserves a loud voice and full information? If you do, you vote ``yes'' on this rule, you vote ``yes'' on the underlying legislation, you reject the administration's effort to silence the American people on both sides of the aisle, and you commit yourself to believing that a full and open debate is the only way in which this country will succeed.

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