ITIN Reform Act of 2014

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

I am saddened to have to rise in opposition to this legislation today. As a long-time appropriator, I remember the days when we were always able to come together to determine the funding levels for our government in a bipartisan manner and with little partisan warfare. Unfortunately, this bill is not a product of those times.

I do not say this to blame Chairman Crenshaw or Chairman Rogers, as they have always listened to the concerns that our side has had and have tried to accommodate us when they could. Mr. Crenshaw is a great working partner, and he knows that that famous line is really true in this case: it is not personal; it is about this issue. There are many things we have been able to agree on as a result, but they have also been forced to listen to a portion of their caucus that is not interested in the business of governing, and as a result, the good portions of this bill are overwhelmed by the problems that this legislation has.

Let me discuss just a few of the more serious shortfalls of this bill, starting with a seriously inadequate allocation. This subcommittee received an unacceptably low 302(b) allocation that is $566 million below last year's bill. Percentage wise, this is a cut of 2.6 percent, a level that no other subcommittee has been forced to take. The result is that there are several agencies in this bill that are not funded properly.

Primary among these is the Internal Revenue Service. The IRS is funded at $10.95 billion, a cut of $341 million below last year. This means the agency would operate at a level that is below sequestration-- funding levels that were already grossly inadequate. I assume this is being done both as some sort of collective punishment of the Exempt Organizations unit for the problems associated with their scrutiny of liberal and conservative 501(c)(4) organizations, and as one final attempt to hinder the implementation of the Affordable Care Act. We already heard from the chairman that they don't think this committee should be involved with the Affordable Care Act. We keep forgetting that it was passed by both Houses, signed by the President and upheld by the Supreme Court. These actions are irresponsible, and they do more to hurt the American people than does the IRS. Rather than investing in further training to prevent the problems that happened previously or ensuring that we have the resources to go after tax cheats, the majority has chosen to play politics with the agency that brings in the vast majority of our Nation's revenue. Unfortunately, these funding levels will prevent the agency from collecting money from tax cheats, expand the tax gap, and increase our deficit. Talk about fiscal irresponsibility.

The Securities and Exchange Commission is also severely underfunded at a level of $1.4 billion. This is $300 million below the request and is simply insufficient to allow the agency to properly oversee Wall Street and protect investors, including many retirees who have 401(k) and pension plans that are invested in the marketplace. Both parties have created additional responsibilities for the SEC in recent years, but funding has not kept pace. If we keep asking the agency to do more with less, then we cannot be surprised if we experience another financial crisis.

There are numerous other cuts to the bill that are harmful as well, including the elimination of the Election Assistance Commission, cuts to the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the Federal Communications Commission, and the General Services Administration, all of which have negative impacts on the operations of our Federal Government and private sector job growth. However, I believe that the biggest impediment to reaching compromise on this bill is the large number of partisan riders that have been added. Let me name just a few of the more excessive, all of which are major concerns to our side of the aisle.

There are riders preventing the IRS from implementing the Affordable Care Act and from reforming the 501(c)(4) regulations, which have caused so much confusion and abuse. There is a rider limiting Americans' ability to travel to Cuba on people-to-people visas.

There is a rider preventing the SEC from requiring publicly-traded companies to disclose their campaign donations to their shareholders, even though there is no indication that the agency has plans to do so.

There is a rider that prevents the provision of abortion services in multistate health plans under the Affordable Care Act.

There are riders preventing the District of Columbia from using its own funds to provide legal abortion services to low-income women and to determine its own local criminal justice laws with regard to marijuana.

This is, by no means, an exhaustive list. The number of riders on this bill seems endless. I have no doubt that we will be asked to add even more to this list during debate on this bill.

Before we do that, I would point out that we have spent a lot of time this year discussing how to ensure a return to regular order in the appropriations process. I would suggest that it is extremely difficult to do so when the majority attempts to pack legislation with a laundry list of partisan priorities.

This is irresponsible governing, at best, and they make a mockery of one of this institution's most important functions, to fund the Federal Government.

When we choose politics over the needs of the American people, we should not be surprised when those same people become cynical about their elected representatives. The appropriations process is not and should not be the place to add every partisan priority that the other side cannot pass through the regular legislative process.

I feel confident that the American people would rather just have us get on with our jobs, instead of rehashing the same arguments over the Affordable Care Act, Dodd-Frank, and many other issues.

Our side will attempt to remedy some of these defects through the amendment process; although with the inadequate allocation, it will be difficult to do so. Unfortunately, as it is currently written, this is not a bill that I can support.

Before I finish, let me take a moment to thank the staff on both sides of the aisle for their hard work on this bill. They have all devoted many hours to creating this bill and report, and I know I speak for all the Members on our side when I say that we are grateful for the hard work that they have put into this bill.

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

Mr. Chairman, I yield 5 minutes to my colleague from New York (Mrs. Lowey), the ranking member of the full committee.

Mr. Chairman, the gentleman mentioned baseball. I would like to remind folks that we are so committed and dedicated to our job that we are not watching the Home Run Derby right now.

With the way we treat Washington, D.C., you would think we were members of the city council. But I am going to shock everyone by actually yielding 2 minutes of time to the gentlewoman from Washington, D.C. (Ms. Norton), who was elected by the folks from D.C.

Mr. Chairman, may I inquire as to how much time remains on both sides.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Rhode Island (Mr. Langevin) for the purpose of a colloquy.

I yield the gentleman an additional 15 seconds.

I thank the gentleman for bringing this issue to our attention.

I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Cybersecurity is of critical importance to our national security and our economic security. I look forward to working with you as we move to conference to ensure that the SEC can effectively address cybersecurity issues.

I yield 15 seconds to the gentleman from Rhode Island to close.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Cohen) for a colloquy.

Mr. Chairman, I would just like to take a second in closing to say that Mr. Cohen's comments were very well taken. I think the mistake we make here is that we continue to add riders to this bill, and a lot of riders in the past had to do with Washington, D.C.

Now, as I have said on many occasions, for me, this is more than a legislative issue. It is a personal issue. I was born in Puerto Rico, raised in New York, and at times I haven't been pleased with the relationship and the way Puerto Rico has been treated by this Federal Government.

So I would just hope that, as we go along, people will continue, continue, continue to realize that the District of Columbia has its own folks, its own elected officials at the local level, and they should be able to conduct their own business.

Lastly, we do this because this country that we love so well and this country that I love so well and that we serve on a daily basis should not treat any segment of its citizens in a different way than it treats other people. I realize that we have a constitutional responsibility, but we don't have to misuse that responsibility.

I yield back the balance of my time.

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

Mr. Chairman, I rise to oppose the amendment.

Mr. Chairman, departmental salaries and expenses of Treasury have already been cut by $17.4 million this year as compared to last year. That includes the departmental offices account. That means that this portion of the bill is 4.4 percent below what the administration requested.

Mr. Chairman, there is no need to cut it any further. I urge my colleagues to oppose this amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I claim the time in opposition.

Mr. Chairman, I urge opposition to this amendment. The IRS has already been cut overall by $341 million from last year's funding level. This will prevent the IRS from going after tax cheats and helping those who are attempting to obey the law.

The Taxpayer Advocate has even said that insufficient funding of the IRS is one of the most serious problems facing taxpayers. This underfunding will force the IRS to operate with 9,500 fewer staff, which means that less than 50 percent of taxpayers who reach out to the IRS for assistance on the telephone help line will be able to get it, while waiting times for those who do get answers will rise to 35 minutes or longer.

As many as 24 million taxpayers would be unable to reach the IRS for assistance. That is unacceptable.

The cuts in this bill will also result in $2 billion in uncollected revenue compared to what could have been collected at the requested level, thereby increasing the deficit by that amount.

Take as contrast funding at more than $1.6 million above last year's level and over half a million more than was requested. I am not sure what they have done to deserve an increase that they didn't even ask for.

During our hearing, it became clear that the IG didn't fairly represent the findings of its own investigator. Its lead investigator reviewed 5,500 emails and concluded that there was no indication of political motivation, yet the IG failed to mention that until months later after his order was released, and you will certainly not hear Republicans mention it now.

So I am not sure what they are trying to reward, but it certainly is not good work. I oppose this amendment and urge that everyone else do so as well.

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

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

Mr. Chairman, I claim the time in opposition to the amendment.

The gentleman says that the IRS has too much money. I haven't done the math totally, but I think if we were to accept every amendment that will come up in the next couple of days against the IRS, we would not only reach zero on the budget for the IRS, we would probably go under and create a crisis that we don't know how to handle.

The enforcement account at IRS has already been cut by $72 million above last year and is more than $421 million below the President's request. The taxpayer service account is already funded above last year's level.

Given the lack of funding for the IRS, there should be no need to plus-up an account that has actually increased while the overall funding for the agency has decreased. That is just a simple statement to understand.

I understand the need to continue to attack the IRS under this belief that they went after just a certain kind of organization. They went after no one. They asked questions of both sides, both conservative groups and liberal groups. I guess we are not going to hear the end of it for the next couple of days. It might be 3 days of bashing the IRS.

So I urge opposition to the amendment, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, for a minute there, I was almost convinced that they are not after the IRS, but they are even willing to give money to an agency they traditionally do not support just to get at the

Mr. Chairman, the good news is that the whole bill is not on the IRS, so, eventually, we will move on to something else, and we won't see any more of these attacks.

The IRS has already been cut overall by $341 million from last year's funding level. This will prevent the IRS from going after tax cheats--I know it is repetitious, but it is a fact--and from helping those who are attempting to obey the law. The Taxpayer Advocate has even said that the insufficient funding of the IRS is one of the most serious problems facing taxpayers.

This underfunding will force the IRS to operate with 9,500 fewer staff, which means that less than 50 percent of taxpayers who reach out to the IRS for assistance on the telephone help line will be able to get it, and the waiting times for those who do get answers will rise to 35 minutes or longer. As many as 24 million taxpayers will be unable to reach the IRS for assistance, and that is unacceptable. The cuts in this bill will also result in $2 billion in uncollected revenue compared to what could have been collected at the requested level, thereby increasing the deficit by that amount.

I think what is being missed here tonight with all of these amendments is that, yes, there is a concern on the other side--and there was a concern here also, and there still may be--in terms of what went on and what needs to be straightened out, but the answer is not to cut the IRS down to bare bones, because our next problem will be that the deficit will continue to grow because we won't be able to do the proper collecting of tax dollars in this country.

I oppose this amendment, and I urge that everyone else do so as well.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, my early math tells me that, if the amendments that we just passed stick in conference, we have already cut $1.154 billion from enforcement. Those are the folks who are going to collect taxes from people who don't want to pay taxes.

I continue to make my comments--again, sounding repetitious--that there has to be a moment when this stops, when we realize that, yes, there are issues that have to be dealt with at the IRS. There have always been issues that have had to be dealt with at the IRS, but the idea of zeroing out this account and zeroing out the enforcement account just does not make any sense. I would hope that we would just pay attention to that and pay attention to the fact that, while we may have differences with an agency, we have never, ever in the years that I have been here seen anyone, any party or any group, go after a particular agency the way we have gone after the IRS, not only tonight, but in the last few months.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on H.R. 5016, and that I may include tabular material on the same.

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

Mr. Chairman, I am pleased to present to the House the fiscal year 2015 Financial Services and General Government Appropriations bill.

This subcommittee has jurisdiction over a great number of programs and activities, including the Federal Judiciary; the Treasury, which includes the IRS; the Federal Trade Commission; the Federal Communications Commission; the Small Business Administration; and several other activities.

All the agencies under this subcommittee's jurisdiction play an important role in the functioning of the Federal Government, and I think it is appropriate that all the Members of the House have a chance to offer germane amendments that impact the funding that is provided in this bill.

The bill that we are considering today provides $21.3 billion in discretionary funding, which is $566 million, or 2.6 percent less than last year, and $2.3 billion, or 9.6 percent less than the request.

The subcommittee's allocation has been reduced, but it is one that is necessary to live within the confines of the budget agreement that was put together under the Ryan-Murray agreement. The allocation is sufficient to fund priority programs while reducing some of the programs that are not essential to the operation of the Federal Government or have a history of wasting taxpayer resources.

One of the main provisions of this bill is funding for law enforcement. The bill provides increased funding over fiscal year 2014 for several law enforcement activities.

The High Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas program receives a $6.5 million increase. The Drug-Free Communities program receives a $3 million increase, and the Treasury's terrorism and financial intelligence activities--they are the ones who develop and enforce sanctions--receive an $18 million increase. In addition, we have ample funding for the operations of the Federal judiciary and the D.C. Courts. We also have money for the supervision of offenders and defendants who are living in our communities.

Another priority for the bill is supporting small businesses and assisting in private sector job creation. This bill provides $195 million for the Small Business Administration's business loan programs, and that supports $18.5 billion of lending under a program called 7(a), and it supports $7.5 billion under 504 lending. This bill also provides increases over the current year for the Small Business Development Centers. It provides increases for the Women's Business Centers and for the Treasury's Community Development Financial Institutions Fund program. In addition, this bill asks several of the regulatory agencies to report to this committee and to tell us how they are doing as they attempt to eliminate some of the burdensome, duplicative, and just plain unnecessary regulations.

In order to live within our allocation, we had to reduce funding in some areas. We actually eliminate funding for nine different programs, including the Christopher Columbus Foundation and the Election Assistance Commission. Those are activities that we feel are no longer necessary or are certainly not vital to the operation of the Federal Government. We further reduce funding for more than a dozen agencies and programs that, in our opinion, can operate on a little bit less, like the Bureau of the Fiscal Service, the Federal Trade Commission, and the Federal Communications Commission.

For the GSA, we reduce their funding for the Federal buildings fund by $240 million. We continue to require them to regularly report to us on their spending and on the state of their building portfolio. The bill provides the GSA with enough funds to operate their current building inventory, and it provides new funding for three land port of entry construction projects. We also continue to push the GSA to reduce their surplus and vacant space. We designate some funding to help them consolidate their projects and dispose of some of the projects, but we make sure that they do that only if there are going to be savings in the long run.

In an effort to increase transparency and accountability, we make the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the CFPB, subject to the annual appropriations process of this Congress. When Dodd-Frank set that agency up, they purposefully left it without any oversight from this Congress. We think that is not the best way to go. We think that that is an agency that ought to report to us what they are doing, how they are doing it, and how much money they are spending, and this bill will correct that flaw.

The bill freezes funding for the White House and the Office of Management and Budget. It includes a requirement that OMB submit the President's budget request on time, which is something they have not been able to do in the last couple of years, or they will face a withholding of approximately 7 months of their budget until the President's request is sent. In addition, the bill contains a prohibition on funding for the White House to prepare signing statements and executive orders which are contradictory to existing law.

I would like to touch on the IRS. This committee still remains outraged at some of the activities that we have seen from the IRS in recent times. First, we learned that they were singling out individuals and groups of individuals for additional scrutiny based on their political philosophies. Then we learned that they had wasted millions of dollars in having lavish conferences around the country and in making silly videos. Then we learned that the new Commissioner paid $63 million in bonuses and awards after the prior Commissioner had said we are not going to pay those. Then we find out that some of the people who were receiving those bonuses and awards were, in fact, delinquent in paying their own taxes. So,

last year, we had some reforms on spending, and we had reforms on the targeting, but work remains to be done.

This bill provides the IRS with $10.95 billion. That is $341 million below the level last year, and it is $1.5 billion below their request. Now, people say that is a pretty drastic cut, but that actually leaves the IRS funded at the same level at which they were prior to 2008. We have to remember that the IRS has betrayed the trust of the American people in a lot of different ways, and it is going to take some time for the IRS to restore that trust, because it seems like, just about every week, we read about a new revelation of some sort of IRS bureaucratic incompetence or, maybe, of a willful disregard for existing law--or sometimes even both.

We want to make sure that they begin to clean up their act, and this bill provides that they can no longer subject people to additional scrutiny. They can't waste money on lavish conferences anymore, and they can't pay bonuses and awards to people unless they at least consider the conduct of that individual and whether or not that individual is current on his taxes. We require a certain amount of reporting from the IRS, and we require them to tell us how much official time is being used on union activities.

We also have language in there of this new, revised regulation that they have put forward regarding the definition of what is an organization under 501(c)(4) of the Internal Revenue Code, which was a rule that was promulgated based on the investigation that was taking place about the abuse of singling out individuals. In our opinion, the Treasury should wait until that investigation is conducted before any kind of new rule has been proposed. The rule was withdrawn after there were 150,000 comments, and a lot of those comments came from all sides of the political spectrum. We think there is plenty for the IRS to do in terms of time, in terms of energy, in terms of money before they spend that in trying to write a new rule. We also found out just recently that, while the IRS asks us to keep our records for 7 years, they couldn't keep their records for more than 7 months, so there is a provision in here that says they can't destroy any of their records if it is outside existing law.

Finally, I want to say something about the Affordable Care Act. This committee believes that the IRS should not have a role in implementing the individual mandate of the Affordable Care Act. The IRS, as I said, has betrayed the trust of the American people. There is not much trust in the IRS today. People don't trust the IRS with their taxes, and they are certainly not going to trust the IRS with their health care. At a time when the IRS hasn't demonstrated much ability to either self- correct or self-police, the bill says that they can't spend any money to implement the individual mandate of the Affordable Care Act and that they also can't transfer any money to fund it from the Department of Health and Human Services.

That is it in a nutshell, Mr. Chairman. I think this is a good bill. It takes the money that we have and makes some tough choices, sets the right priorities, and spends money in a wise and efficient way.

I want to thank all of the members of the subcommittee for the work that they have put in. I want to thank our staffs--both the majority and minority staffs--for the work that they have put in.

I want to say a special word of thanks to the ranking member, Mr. Serrano, the gentleman from New York. His input has made this a better bill. Even though he thinks there should be more money and he doesn't agree with everything that is in the bill, he has been a great partner to work with in the spirit of cooperation and particularly in an effort to make sure that we return to regular order, where the appropriations bills are brought before this House, so I want to thank him for that.

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

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Mr. Chairman, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. Rogers), the chairman of the full Appropriations Committee.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Arkansas (Mr. Womack), a valued member of the subcommittee.

Mr. Chairman, at this time, I yield to the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Gosar) for a colloquy.

Well, I thank the gentleman for yielding and engaging in this colloquy. I also thank him for his leadership on this particular issue and for making great strides regarding the rooting out of government waste, fraud, and abuse. The committee did include the language in question, and we were happy to do so.

As the gentleman stated, this type of practice surely fits within the same realm of government propaganda which is barred by law. When the conference committee is selected and meets to discuss all spending programs and priorities, I will work to see the gentleman's request is considered appropriately and amongst all conferees.

So again, I thank the gentleman for his efforts. I look forward to working with him on this item and others.

I reserve the balance of my time.

I will continue to reserve the balance of my time.

I yield back the balance of my time.

I thank the gentleman for yielding, and I just want to thank him for bringing this to our attention and let him know that I am happy to support this amendment.

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

Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to this amendment because the bill strongly supports the Treasury's Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence and actually provides $14 million above the request, and that is to make sure there are robust and forceful sanction programs. This bill also supports the TIGTA. It provides $581,000 above the request to ensure that the inspector general can keep a careful and close eye on the IRS activities.

So I appreciate the gentleman's support for the TFI, but it cannot come at the expense of the IRS watchdog. Everyone knows what has been happening with the IRS, and we need a strong IG to oversee the IRS. They are doing good and much-needed oversight, and the bill already provides Treasury's financial intelligence programs with a significant increase.

So, Mr. Chairman, I would encourage my colleagues to vote ``no'' on the amendment. I yield back the balance of my time.

Will the gentleman yield?

I thank the gentleman for yielding, and I appreciate the gentleman from Florida working with the committee on this amendment. We are glad to accept it.

Recently, the IRS began enforcement of this new regulation requiring U.S. banks to report the amount of interest earned on deposits made by nonresident aliens, and this new regulation is detrimental to Florida's economy and the U.S. economy as a whole because it weakens the competitiveness of the U.S. financial institutions and forces foreign capital to flee our country.

The regulation burdens U.S. financial firms with additional paperwork and has the unintended consequence of causing many of these foreign depositors to take their business and capital elsewhere, so hundreds of billions of dollars will flee the economy.

That will impede small business lending and affect local communities. Both Congress and the administration will benefit from a fuller understanding of how the regulation affects banks, their clientele, and all of the communities, so I urge a ``yes'' vote in support of this amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I claim the time in opposition.

Mr. Chairman, I appreciate the intent of the gentlewoman's amendment. I have great sympathy for the situation that the family found itself in, but I have to remind my colleagues that the bill already cuts FinCEN by $3.3 million compared to 2014, and our bill increases taxpayer services by $7.5 million.

So I wish the IRS could do a better job of dealing with taxpayer services. That is one of the areas that they really need to get a handle on because there are too many stories like the one she just told, but FinCEN does good work.

They work with industry to detect and discourage and apprehend money launderers, so I don't think we should cut them any further. As I pointed out, we have increased the funding for taxpayer services, and so for that reason, I have to oppose the gentlewoman's amendment.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I just want to say one final thing. In terms of taxpayer services, this bill already provides $2.1 billion for taxpayer services. As I point out, that is an increase over last year. We have already cut FinCEN by $3.3 million.

So, for that reason, Mr. Chairman, I would urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' on the amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.

I just want to thank you for bringing this to our attention and am pleased to support the amendment.

Will the gentlewoman yield?

I just want you to know that we have no objection to your amendment.

I thank the gentleman for yielding.

I am pleased to support his amendment.

I think tax counseling for the elderly is very important, and I am happy to accept your amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I want the gentlewoman to know that this is a very good amendment. I support it, and I urge my colleagues to vote ``yes.''

I want to thank my good friend, Congressman Johnson, for his leadership and the management of this legislation.

I would just like us to take a journey down memory lane:

I am sure that many of us will be reminded of the famous Pinto and the crafting of that automobile. I have no commentary on the great industry that so many of us admire, but for those of us who have memories, we realize some of the injuries that occurred in the structure of the Pinto;

Or maybe it is cars without seatbelts or airbags;

Or maybe we recall times when we travel throughout our community and we notice not only a heavy fog but polluted air. Maybe some of us have been exposed to polluted water;

Or maybe you traveled internationally, even in the 21st century, seeing the conditions that many who live outside of the United States live in, with the utilization of dirty water because they have no other water or the food danger because it is not regulated.

Well, my friends, unfortunately, the legislation that is here on the floor of the House seems to take us backwards down a poisonous memory lane. So it is very difficult to support this legislation.

I said today in a committee hearing that I know that Members come here with good intentions. So I will not attribute to anyone that this bill does not come to the floor with good intentions, but it is a bill that has not been, as a whole, considered by the Judiciary Committee.

This is now being brought to the floor with three separate bills combined, now called the ALERRT Act. But it really imposes unneeded and costly analytical and procedural requirements on agencies that would prevent them from performing their statutory responsibilities to protect the public health and safety. This, I believe, is an important responsibility. It creates unnecessary regulatory and legal uncertainty and increases costs for businesses and State, local, and tribal governments and impedes plain common sense.

I will offer an amendment dealing with homeland security. We just had a hearing today that emphasized the importance of the work of the Homeland Security Department. With our new Secretary of Homeland Security, Secretary Johnson, we are very much on the right track, recognizing franchise terrorism and the need for securing the border. Much of the work done by Homeland Security is a regulatory structure.

Why would we want to impede securing America?

Well, my friends, that is what is going to occur with this legislation, the All Economic Regulations Are Transparent Act.

I also offered an amendment dealing with baby formula. For those of us mothers who have raised children and tend to their needs as newborns and use infant formula, it is well known that there is a great need to regulate companies that manufacture infant formulas in an effort to protect babies from food-borne illnesses and promote healthy growth.

On Thursday, the FDA announced plans to revise, earlier this month, infant formula regulations with an interim final rule that will be published soon. But guess what. The legislation that we have will stand in the way as an iron wall, if you will, prohibiting any rule from being finalized until certain information is posted for 6 months.

How long will 6 months be in the life of an infant?

It will override existing statutes, such as the Clean Air and Clean Water Act, and override any aspect of regulating this important food product, adding more than 60 additional procedural and analytical requirements to the FDA's work on trying to help babies and making it easier for rules to be delayed or stopped by allowing regulated industry and entities to intervene.

And so, in actuality, this is not saving money. It will be a quagmire of spending money. In the meantime, the protections of our innocent babies who demand the responsibility of adults to protect the food products that they need for life by good regulations will be stopped.

Well, Madam Chairman, I don't want to go back down memory lane and horrible car crashes and no seatbelts and no airbags and polluted air and dangerous water. That is what we will be doing.

I look forward to introducing my amendment on the floor regarding the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. I can't imagine that my colleagues would want to stand in the way of securing America.

With that in mind, I hope that we will find a way to defeat this legislation, or to make it better, and ask our colleagues who are they standing for.

Madam Chair, I rise today to speak on H.R. 2804, the ``All Economic Regulations Are Transparent Act of 2014,'' the so-called ``ALERRT Act.''

H.R. 2804 makes numerous changes to the federal rule-making process, including: (1) requiring agencies to consider numerous new criteria when issuing rules, such as alternatives to rules proposals; (2) requiring agencies to review the ``indirect'' costs of proposed and existing rules; (3) giving the Small Business Administration expanded authority to intervene in the rule-making of other agencies; and (4) requiring federal agencies to file monthly reports on the status of their rule-making activities.

I cannot support this legislation in its present form for two reasons, one procedural and one substantive.

Procedurally, I oppose the bill because in its present form it was never considered by the Judiciary Committee. This bill was reported by the Oversight and Government Reform Committee on a party line 19-15 vote but was not acted on by Judiciary Committee.

As reported, the bill contained only provisions relating to monthly reporting requirements regarding agency rule-making.

But the bill being brought to the floor now includes three additional and very controversial Judiciary bills (H.R. 2122, Regulatory Accountability Act; H.R. 1493, Sunshine for Regulatory Decrees and Settlements Act; and H.R. 2542, Regulatory Flexibility Improvements Act).

This is not the way to legislate on matters that have such serious consequences for the public health and safety.

Substantively, I oppose the bill because it imposes unneeded and costly analytical and procedural requirements on agencies that would prevent them from performing their statutory responsibilities to protect the public health and safety.

I oppose the bill also because it creates unnecessary regulatory and legal uncertainty, increases costs for businesses and State, local and tribal governments, and impedes common-sense protections for the American public.

Madam Chairman, the bill is unnecessary and invites frivolous litigation. When a federal agency promulgates a regulation, it already must adhere to the requirements of the statute that it is implementing.

Agencies already must adhere to the robust and well-understood procedural requirements of federal law, including the Administrative Procedure Act, the Regulatory Flexibility Act (RFA), the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act of 1995 (UMRA), the Paperwork Reduction Act (PRA), and the Congressional Review Act.

Regulatory agencies already are required to promulgate regulations only upon a reasoned determination that the benefits of the regulations justify the costs and to consider regulatory alternatives. Final regulations are subject to review by the federal courts which, among other things, examine whether agencies have satisfied the substantive and procedural requirements of all applicable statutes.

Finally, Madam Chairman, H.R. 2804 in its current form does not include an exemption for rules promulgated by the Department of Homeland Security to protect the safety of the American people and the security of our country.

For this reason, I offered an amendment that provides this important exception and I thank the Rules Committee for making it in order.

The security of the homeland is one of the most preeminent concerns of the federal government. The increased need for national security following the attacks of September nth makes it important that the Department of Homeland Security not be unduly impeded in the promulgation of rules that may preempt attacks against our nation.

Unnecessary delays to rules set forth by the Department of Homeland Security can wastes

scarce resources that keep our nation safe as well as impede the regular operations of the agency.

The Jackson Lee Amendment to H.R. 2804 will improve the bill. But, on balance, the bill still has too many defects and should not be passed by this body.