Unfunded Mandates Information and Transparency Act of 2015

Mr. 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. 50.

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

Mr. Chairman, this bill was referred to three other committees other than the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. We have been in contact with all of them--Judiciary, Budget, and Rules--and they have agreed to discharge the bill from their committees so that we can consider the bill on the floor today. I include for the Record those letters that reflect this understanding between Oversight and Government Reform and the three other committees.

Mr. Chairman, Congress enacted the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act to ``curb the practice of imposing unfunded Federal mandates on States and local governments.''

Twenty years later, we continue to see burdensome unfunded mandates being imposed on State, local, and tribal governments as well as small businesses. Despite high hopes, UMRA, as it is often referred to, had little effect on agency rulemaking because of its limited coverage and its lack of accountability.

In response, H.R. 50 proposes several key reforms to bring needed transparency to how government sets rules that protect our health, our safety, our welfare, as well as the environment. This legislation does this in several key ways.

Mr. Chairman, H.R. 50 requires agencies to consult with the private sector when directly impacted by a proposed rule.

Consult with the private sector. That is a great theme. I love the title of this.

It does actually provide more information, more transparency, and engages those people that are affected by these rules. Requiring agency rulemakers to consult with small business owners will bring needed perspective and common sense to how our rules are made. Small businesses want the government to fully understand how regulations impact their ability to create jobs and promote economic growth. Of course we need rules. Of course there are going to be boundaries. But consulting with the private sector is something that has to happen, and government needs their perspective.

The bill makes independent agencies subject to the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act, also known as UMRA. There are hundreds of Federal independent agencies charged with handling responsibilities, such as managing workplace safety and protecting our forests. It is important these entities are accountable to the public when establishing a new rule. H.R. 50 ensures that that will happen.

H.R. 50 requires an UMRA analysis for all final rules. Under current law, an agency can forgo an UMRA analysis by avoiding a notice of proposed rulemaking. GAO reports that 35 percent of major rules are issued without a notice of proposed rulemaking, making it difficult for the public to comment.

In fiscal year 2014, the administration estimated the annual cost of major regulations between $57 billion and $84 billion. We must have a better understanding of those costs before passing them on to State, local, and tribal governments as well as the private sector.

The bill strengthens congressional oversight by requiring agencies to look back at specific regulations when requested by Congress. Before a rule is tested, it is difficult to understand its consequences, including its costs and its benefits. President Obama supported retrospective reviews of regulations by issuing an executive order requiring agencies to periodically review significant regulations, in Executive Order 13563, in January 2011. These retrospective reviews result in regulations that are more effective and less burdensome in achieving their objective. Retrospective analysis can and should inform future rules.

H.R. 50 allows judicial review when agencies fail to fully consider the least costly or least burdensome alternative rule. The bill allows the judicial branch to place a stay on rules when the agency fails to complete the required UMRA analysis. This provides an important check on the executive branch.

H.R. 50 codifies the Congressional Budget Office practice of estimating the true cost of a Federal mandate. When a Federal mandate is proposed, CBO ensures its cost estimates include lost profits, costs passed on to consumers, and behavioral changes as the result of a Federal mandate.

When enacted, UMRA created an important step to inform Congress of the potential burdens of regulatory mandates on both government and the private sector. This way, Congress could weigh any potential benefits as well as any potential burdens. By updating this law, we can help ensure that all parties, from government entities to small businesses, understand the true cost of prospective mandates.

I commend the gentlewoman from North Carolina (Ms. Foxx). She has poured her heart and soul into this. She believes passionately in this. Her leadership on this bill has brought it to this point today. It has passed three times with bipartisan support in this House, but it is necessary to bring it up again and to share this bill with a new Senate that is now in place.

I encourage my colleagues to support H.R. 50. It is good. It is common sense. It is good for this Nation, and it enjoys bipartisan support.

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

House of Representatives, Committee on Oversight and

Government Reform,

Washington, DC, January 28, 2015.

Hon. Bob Goodlatte,

Chairman, Committee on the Judiciary,

Rayburn House Office Building, Washington, DC.

Dear Mr. Chairman: On January 27, 2015, the Committee on

Oversight and Government Reform ordered reported without

amendment H.R. 50, the Unfunded Mandates Information and

Transparency Act of 2015, by a vote of 20 to 13. The bill was

referred primarily to the Committee on Oversight and

Govemment Reform, with an additional referral to the

Committee on the Judiciary.

I ask that you allow the Judiciary Committee to be

discharged from further consideration of the bill so that it

may be scheduled by the Majority Leader. This discharge in no

way affects your jurisdiction over the subject matter of the

bill, and it will not serve as precedent for future

referrals. In addition, should a conference on the bill be

necessary, I would support your request to have the Committee

on the Judiciary represented on the conference committee.

Finally, I would be pleased to include this letter and any

response in the bill report filed by the Committee on

Oversight and Government Reform, as well as in the

Congressional Record during floor consideration, to

memorialize our understanding.

Thank you for your consideration of my request.

Sincerely,

Jason Chaffetz,

Chairman.

Mr. Chairman, at this time, I am pleased to yield 5 minutes to the gentlewoman from North Carolina, Dr. Foxx, the prime sponsor of this bill.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 1 minute.

It would be inaccurate and inappropriate to suggest that this bill bypasses individuals. To the contrary, the bill says, ``and impacted parties within the private sector.'' The definition of ``private sector'' under UMRA--the term ``private sector'' means ``all persons or entities in the United States, including individuals.''

Any assertion on this floor that this gives unilateral priority to the individual corporations and bypasses the individuals, we are trying to give people who are affected by these rules--we are trying to give them the opportunity to be heard.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I am pleased to yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Jody B. Hice).

Mr. Chairman, I am pleased to yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Meadows).

Mr. Chairman, I am pleased to yield 1 minute to the gentleman from California (Mr. McCarthy), the distinguished majority leader.

Mr. Chairman, may I inquire of the time left on both sides?

Mr. Chairman, I am pleased to yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Walker).

Mr. Chairman, I would like to point to the bill because it keeps getting repeated on this floor that it doesn't include the public, it doesn't include individuals. That is just not true.

On page 12 of the bill:

Agencies shall, to the extent practicable, seek out the

views of State, local, and tribal governments, and impacted

parties within the private sector.

Definition of private sector: the term ``private sector'' means all persons or entities in the United States, including individuals.

It sounds like a good rhetorical point to keep saying: Oh, we are leaving out the little guy; we are leaving out the public. It does include the public; it does include the individuals; and when these unfunded mandates are placed upon them, this bill would make sure that they are at least asked about it. That is what we are seeking.

At this time, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Meadows).

Mr. Chairman, I would like to make Mr. Cummings aware that I have no further speakers, and I am prepared to close, but I will reserve the balance of my time.

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

The one who is in the power position, the one who has got the resources, the one that has got the attorneys is the government. The government is the one that has got all the cards.

All we are asking for is to allow input from individuals, small businesses, big businesses. If you are going to be affected, isn't it common sense to suggest that maybe they should talk to the people that they are going to put this mandate on? Let's have a discussion, a dialogue, get some input from them?

The name of this bill is very, very accurate, Unfunded Mandates Information and Transparency Act. What are we afraid of, asking them the question: How are you going to be impacted? What is this going to do to the economy?

What I hear from my constituents--and I have heard it from outside of Utah's Third Congressional District--is the Federal Government comes in with its big, heavy hand, and they have no voice, no opportunity. It is just laid upon them.

I appreciate Dr. Foxx and what she is doing. We also hear from State, local, and tribal governments, from small businesses and business organizations that are in support of this bill.

In fiscal year 2014, the administration estimated the annual cost of major regulations was between $57 billion and $84 billion. There is room. There is appropriate use of regulations. To suggest that we are opposed to all regulations is irresponsible.

I think there are good regulations that are in place--they make our country better--but there needs to be a process and a communication and input from individuals that are affected by these regulations.

We have got to understand the costs and how we are passing these unfunded mandates on to State and local governments. This is an important part of the process.

Updating this law, we can ensure all parties, from government entities to small businesses to individuals, understand the true costs of the prospective mandates.

This bill should successfully pass in the House again, and I urge my colleagues to support it. I applaud Dr. Foxx from North Carolina, the prime sponsor of this, for moving this legislation.

I would urge, my colleagues, a ``yea'' vote on H.R. 50, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I appreciate Congressman Reed and what he is trying to do here. I think this makes a lot of sense.

His amendment asks agencies to consider the effects of regulatory action upon private property owners. The amendment furthers the bill's intent to

provide more input from private sector entities and taxpayers affected by these regulations. It thinks of farms and other types of public land issues that we deal with, particularly out West, but across the Nation.

Federal regulators should consider the effects of any regulation on private property owners.

I urge my colleagues to support this amendment.

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

Mr. Chairman, a cost-benefit analysis prior to the implementation of a regulation requires a number of assumptions that make an accurate analysis difficult, if not impossible.

H.R. 50 allows committee chairmen and ranking members to ask for the retrospective reviews of specific regulations.

I think there needs to be a degree of deference and some respect for the idea that it is for committee chairmen and ranking members, both sides of the aisle, not just based on some whim. I think it is offensive to suggest that it be just some whimsical thing.

This allows an important check on any pre-implementation cost-benefit analysis, and these retrospective reviews better clarify the true costs of regulation. Even President Obama supports retrospective reviews and issued an executive order requiring agencies to conduct them.

More importantly, retrospective reviews work. In April of 2014, the GAO issued a report on retrospective reviews at 22 executive agencies. That report found that more than 90 percent of retrospective regulation reviews led the agencies to revise, clarify, or eliminate regulation text--90 percent.

However, the pace of retrospective review is much slower than planned, and the 22 agencies reviewed by the GAO had plans to conduct more than 650 retrospective reviews but had only completed 246 of them as of August of 2013.

As you can see, the agencies are already doing this work. It is good to go back and review. We shouldn't be afraid of that. We should encourage it.

This provision in the bill simply allows Congress to work with agencies to prioritize regulatory areas most important to the American taxpayer. We need to maintain the ability to make such requests, and I urge my colleagues to oppose this amendment.

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

Mr. Chairman, that is some good creative thinking right there. I reserve the balance of my time.

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

I want to highlight, again, that when there was a report done by the GAO, they found that 90 percent of retrospective regulation reviews led agencies to revise, clarify, or eliminate regulatory text.

All this does is ask for a report. It doesn't repeal it. It is not going to slow it down. What it does is ask for a report. That is an important process to go through, and when we have gone through it in the past, 90 percent of the time, according to the GAO, it has led to revisions that are important.

It is very difficult to understand what is going to happen on the front end. All we are asking for in this bill is let's consult with the individuals, the property owners, others who are affected, and then, if we need a report, and we are going to limit that to chairmen and ranking members, that is an appropriate thing to do.

What are we afraid of? We are just trying to get transparency to the issue and be able to highlight this.

I worry, when you talk about the numbers of reviews and how far behind, it just shows the massive numbers of regulations that go through this process. We should be able to review those. There are real Americans that are affected by this every day.

I urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' on this amendment.

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

I thank the gentleman, and I appreciate my colleague from Virginia. I appreciate his tenacity and good work on these issues and on the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

But I do have to suggest that if the economy is struggling, Federal regulators should be extra concerned about imposing undue and unnecessary costs on to the American public and the private sector job creators.

H.R. 50 helps ensure that regulations that impose unfunded mandates on State, local, and tribal governments and the private sector are fully analyzed and considered.

Keep in mind, we are focused here on unfunded mandates. This amendment would repeal this helpful legislation if the GDP rate grows at a rate of less than 5 percent. To me, this is counterproductive.

GDP is a deliberately broad measure of economic growth. The GDP does not reflect the impact a regulatory mandate might have on a State or local government or a portion of the private sector, nor does it reflect the impact of regulations as a whole.

Ultimately, GDP growth is not a substitute for a sensible regulatory analysis and process. I would argue that,

regardless of GDP growth or reduction, we need to allow, particularly these local governments, these tribal governments, these private individuals--it is the little guy that has this unfunded mandate thrust upon them that we have to review.

So repealing H.R. 50 if the GDP is failing to grow is contrary to the very purpose of this bill and, therefore, I stand in opposition to the gentleman's amendment.

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

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

Mr. Chair, how much time remains?

Mr. Chairman, to take a metric of the gross domestic product, the entire economy, and then have that be the weighted factor by what may happen to a dairy farmer, for instance, who is out there in Utah or Kansas or Colorado is not the way that we should be determining whether or not H.R. 50 is in place.

If the economy is waning, if the economy is decreasing, if our production overall for our Nation is declining, that may be the very key indicator that we have thrust too many unfunded mandates upon the little guy, the dairy farmer, the person who has got a transmission shop. It could be a whole host of things. It may be upon private property owners. It could be--you name it.

Pretty much in this country, there are mandates that are thrust upon people, and they feel like they have no ability, no understanding why this happens. They don't feel like they have a voice in the process.

So I stand in opposition to this amendment. So, to the overall gross economy, to say that we are just going to repeal that, H.R. 50, and get rid of our ability to ask people to consult, ask the government agencies to consult with local governments, to consult with private individuals, to talk to small businesses, we are going to just get rid of that because the economy is waning?

I would argue that part of the reason our economy hasn't taken off is there are too many unfunded mandates. The government imposes these, and they don't have a full understanding of what is causing these people to not hire more people, to invest more capital.

So I stand in opposition to this. I appreciate the gentleman who offered it, but I stand in opposition to this amendment. I would urge my colleagues a ``no'' vote.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to the motion to recommit.

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the body, thank the Speaker, and the process by which we did this. This bill came up in regular order in the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. We had a full and complete markup. That was followed by going to the Rules Committee.

Every single amendment that was offered at the Rules Committee was made in order, two Democrat amendments as well as the Republican amendment. We had good and lively debate about those, and we just voted on those amendments. I appreciate that.

From my heart, I will tell you that I look forward to working with the gentlewoman from Illinois and everybody else in this body to attack and go after--defend the innocent and make sure that we attack domestic violence because it is so prevalent in every aspect of our society, but I would suggest to you that this is the wrong amendment.

What this does, it does not force the Federal Government to actually work with the individuals that are affected. What H.R. 50 does, what this bill does is to make sure that the Federal Government consults with individuals, it consults with small businesses, those that are affected by mandates.

I want the Federal Government--in fact, I would love to codify the idea that the Federal Government in this case and what you offer in the motion shouldn't talk to these people, they should talk to them. We want them to talk to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. They should be the first people that they call. If you want to know what is happening in this country, go talk to the individuals who are affected by this.

What this legislation, H.R. 50, does is to make sure that individuals are asked before; it makes sure that nothing is repealed. We don't get to unilaterally repeal things. I heard the word ``repeal.''

No, there are reports that we need to access and look at, and so if we truly want to get after domestic violence and these heinous crimes-- these awful, hideous crimes--then you want to vote in favor of H.R. 50 and make sure that the Federal Government does go and consult with the victims of crime.

I oppose this motion to recommit and vote in favor of H.R. 50 by Dr. Foxx.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate it very much. Like my colleague before me, I am grateful for the opportunity to be here on the floor to speak about issues that are of concern to the American people.

My colleague from California (Mr. LaMalfa) is joining me for a short period of time, and I would like to give him the opportunity to speak for a few minutes. I believe that he has some important things to say, and I would like him to share those.

I now yield to the gentleman from California (Mr. LaMalfa).

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague, Mr. LaMalfa from California. I have heard him often speak on the floor. I have invited him several times to speak and do 1-minute speeches because I am the person in charge of getting people to the floor. I am very grateful to have had the opportunity to hear him speak in a little longer time because I found out how much we agree on issues.

I am particularly keen about the water issue that he spent some time talking about. I grew up in a house with no electricity and no running water. I grew up carrying water. Water has always been a precious, precious commodity to me.

We are the most fortunate people in the world in the United States that we

have the greatest resources available to us. Many times I think we don't appreciate the scarcity of some of those resources or the need to husband those resources in a way that protects them not only for ourselves but for future generations.

I have always felt that people who are farmers are among the most eloquent speakers for our environment. As Mr. LaMalfa said--and I completely agree with him and said it many times myself--farmers are the best stewards of our land. They believe in sustainability. They believed in sustainability long before sustainability became a catchword in the community because if they didn't keep the land sustainable, then they wouldn't have the land in order for their own livelihood.

I am a person who also grew up farming, sometimes on a very small scale. My husband and I still have a garden every year. We certainly understand the importance of taking care of all of our resources, but particularly our natural resources. I think so often Republicans don't get the credit that they deserve for being good stewards and for looking after our land and all of our resources.

I also am very keen on the fact that we have a diversity of people serving in Congress. Again, I think it is very important that we have people from all walks of life serving in here because it is the diversity of experiences that are so important to us in terms of having the different points of view as we consider legislation, so that there are people who grew up in cities who have no idea what it is like to farm, have no idea where food comes from exactly, and it is important for us to get the different points of view. We need farmers, we need educators, we do need some lawyers, but we need people who have had all kinds of experiences. We need people who have driven trains, train engineers. But every kind of diversity that is at all possible here. I think it is very important, though, that we have particularly a large share of farmers. Our numbers of farmers have gone down over the years, obviously, as we have left the farm and as farmers have become so incredibly productive in this country. They provide so much more than they have in the past. So I really appreciate the eloquence of my colleague from California in presenting the issues that he has presented.

I want to talk a little bit about some of the other things that he talked about. He talked about our need for jobs and for, again, maintaining what we can in this country, improving the economy. I want to talk about the three focuses that we in the majority have in this session of Congress, the three initiatives that we are going to be working on: energy, jobs and the economy, and regulatory reform.

This week already we have already passed two bills that we think will help us with the creation of jobs and the economy. On our first day here on Tuesday, it got very little attention, but we passed a bill, the Jobs for Heroes Act. The idea for it came from a constituent of one of our colleagues from Illinois. The constituent said: Look, I was a veteran, couldn't get a job because the employer was concerned about going over the 50 limit, or hitting the limit of 50, which then his company would be subject to ObamaCare, and companies are avoiding being subject to ObamaCare.

So we passed a bill introduced by Congressman Rodney Davis that said veterans don't have to be included in the 50 persons in a business requirement and then be forced to go into ObamaCare; that if they are covered by TRICARE then they don't have to do that. That is a positive bill to help create jobs.

Today, we passed another bill that we think will help with employment in this country. As many people know, ObamaCare has told employers if people are working 30 hours or more then you have to cover them with ObamaCare. So we changed the definition of full-time employment from 30 hours to restore the traditional 40-hour workweek. As I have said in other comments that I have made, from adjunct professors to hourly workers, I have heard from constituents all across North Carolina's Fifth District who have one thing in common: their work hours are being reduced. ObamaCare has placed an undue burden on employers and their employees by undermining the traditional 40-hour workweek, which has long been the standard for full-time work.

This legislation will help protect the estimated 2.6 million Americans at risk for lost hours and wages at work under this destructive rule. The employer mandate in ObamaCare defines a full-time employee as someone who works an average of at least 30 hours a week. But H.R. 30, the Save American Workers Act, which passed the House today by a vote of 252-172, changes that definition, and that is a good thing for American workers.

As I said, we have three big initiatives: energy, jobs and the economy, and regulatory reform. So the American people are going to see us passing bills all this year and next year focused on these three issues, in addition to the other things that we work on. We work on a plethora of subjects here.

But I introduced a bill on the first day which will help us deal with regulatory reform. It is a bill I am proud to say has passed the House before with bipartisan support. I am very proud to say that when I introduced the bill on Tuesday, it had bipartisan original cosponsors. I am very pleased that Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez, from Mr. LaMalfa's State of California, joined me in introducing legislation to shed light on how Federal policies impact the budgets of State and local governments and private sector employers.

The bill is called the Unfunded Mandates Information and Transparency Act--H.R. 50--and it would fix loopholes within the bipartisan regulatory reform act, known as UMRA, which passed in 1995. I introduced this legislation in the past four Congresses, and it has successfully passed the House with bipartisan support on three separate occasions.

Every year, Washington imposes thousands of rules on local governments and small businesses. Hidden in those rules are costly mandates that stretch State and city budgets and make it harder for North Carolina businesses to hire. While Congress cannot create prosperity, we can work to ensure entrepreneurs and employers aren't crushed under costly regulations. This legislation will help restore transparency and hold Washington bureaucrats accountable for the true cost in dollars and in jobs that Federal dictates pose to the economy. Americans are better served when regulators are required to measure and consider the cost of rules they create.

The bill ``increases transparency in the regulatory process and protects State and local governments from the burden of unfunded and often unnecessary mandates that waste time and money,'' is what my colleague Loretta Sanchez said. H.R. 50 would increase transparency about the cost imposed by unfunded mandates and holds the Federal Government accountable for considering those costs before passing them on to local governments and small businesses. The legislation would make it easier for people to determine how much these regulations are going to cost and make sure that we are not imposing unnecessary rules and regulations on both State and local governments and the private sector. So I am very pleased that that bill has passed. It is going to be a part of the regulatory reform package that passes this House.

I encourage people watching this to contact your Member of Congress if you are aware of unnecessary rules and regulations that are out there that we could do something about. Obviously, we need rules and regulations. We want to make sure that we have safe food, that the airlines are flying correctly and safely, we want to make sure the railroads are operating safely, we want to make sure our cars are safe to drive in.

But as we all know, often bureaucrats in Washington, and sometimes at the State and local level, look for ways to create jobs for themselves, create a reason for their being, and pass along rules and regulations that are simply unnecessary for the health and safety of the people in this country.

So what we want to do is reduce those rules and regulations. That reduces cost, that helps with our emphasis on jobs and the economy. I believe that is going to be very important to us in getting our economy going again.

As I mentioned, we are going to be working hard on our third initiative: energy. We will be passing another

version of the Keystone XL pipeline. We will do that tomorrow. That bill will then go to the Senate. The Senate is already holding hearings on the bill, but the Senate does work a little bit slower than we do here in the House. We hope very much that the President will work with us in a bipartisan fashion and sign that bill.

We are all very happy about the cost of gasoline having gone down in our country in the past few months. It, of course, doubled under President Obama, and now it is coming back down. It is because in many cases we have been able in the private sector to create more energy supply, and that's been helping bring down the cost. We know that the economies in Europe and Asia have slowed down considerably so there is less demand. We are all very grateful for the price of gasoline going down. I am very grateful for it. Every Member of Congress is very grateful.

So what we hope is to help that cause even further by passing the Keystone XL pipeline and have more energy available in this country. We want to do everything we possibly can. Republicans have always believed in all of the above. As Mr. LaMalfa said, we want solar, wind, and all those other things, but they are primarily operating now because of giant government subsidies. What we would like to see is renewable and sustainable energy that doesn't require government subsidies, and we believe Keystone XL pipeline will help us along those lines.

I am looking forward very much to our passing that legislation, the Senate passing that legislation, and our being able to send that bill to the President for his signature. I am hoping that he will sign it.

I oftentimes get people quoting the Constitution to me and talking about what the Constitution says. Particularly, I hear from people a lot about the role of the House of Representatives. I want to talk a little bit about that in terms of our work in appropriations.

In particularly the last few weeks, many people have expressed genuine concerns to me about the appropriations bill that passed Congress in December. Unfortunately, many Washington-based special interest groups are confusing the matter of what happened in December with the omnibus bill that we passed with incomplete and sometimes, frankly, false messages aimed more at fundraising for themselves than uniting behind our shared goal of stopping President Obama's executive overreach on immigration.

One of the most misleading and commonly circulated suggestions is that the Constitution grants the House of Representatives alone the ``power of the purse,'' or giving the House exclusive authority to withhold funding for targeted initiatives.

I am going to be reading a part of the Constitution in a moment that relates to this, but I want to read another part of the Constitution that I think often gets misquoted to prove this example.

We often hear the quote from the First Amendment, ``Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.''

This comes oftentimes from groups who protest Ten Commandments being placed in public buildings or creches being placed on public land. They often quote that, but they usually forget to quote the second part of that sentence, which says ``or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.''

Congress has a dual responsibility there. It is the same when people, I believe, are attempting to quote the Constitution when it comes to their version of what they call the power of the purse.

As I said, they are, I believe, misconstruing a part of the Constitution. Specifically, it is article I, section 7, clause 1, of the Constitution which states, ``All bills for raising revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives.''

I believe many well-meaning people believe that that means the House of Representatives has total control over what happens with appropriations, but they have forgotten that there is another phrase there, and it is ``but the Senate may propose or concur with amendments as on other bills.''

While the House may pass an appropriations bill, it still has to go to the Senate for the Senate to pass. As we all learned in civics, the bill has to pass the House and pass the Senate in exactly the same form and be signed by the President in exactly the same form.

There is another clause that people are often thinking about also. Article I, section 9, clause 7 states, ``No money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in consequence of appropriations made by law.''

Those two are often talked about as power of the purse, meaning that is what people are talking about when they talk about power of the purse. As I said, all bills, including the appropriations bills that pass the House, must also pass the Senate and be signed by the President in the exact same form.

What happened, particularly last year, is the Democrat-controlled Senate could reject a House-passed bill. It could pass liberal amendments and return it to the House, forcing the House either to accept a worsened product or risk a Federal Government shutdown, which would still not stop the President's executive overreach.

What we did last December was pass a bill that would fund the rest of the government, except for the Department of Homeland Security, in a negotiation with the Senate because we needed to not shut down the government. Most of what was in that bill had already been passed by the House.

We passed seven appropriations bills and sent them to the Senate, but the Senate had refused to act. We had also passed four more appropriations bills out of committee, but hadn't taken them up on the floor because they take so many hours to pass, and once the Senate made it clear they wouldn't take any of our appropriations bills, we thought we shouldn't waste additional time.

While H.R. 83 was not a perfect bill, we are all faced here with making decisions on what is presented to us rather than what we would like to be presented. We did have a lot of conservative victories in H.R. 83. It continued our track record of cutting wasteful discretionary spending by $165 billion since FY 2010, but it is no small achievement that the Republican-led House has been able to implement overall spending cuts to save taxpayers more than $2 trillion over the next 10 years since taking the majority 4 years ago. Certainly, we want to do more, but we shouldn't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

We cut back spending to the Internal Revenue Service to pre-2008 funding levels. We blocked the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating farm ponds and ditches. There was no new funding for ObamaCare, and a host of pro-life and conservative, pro-gun policy ``riders'' were protected in that bill also.

House Republicans have worked extremely hard in the past 4 years to stop President Obama and the Senate Democrats from furthering the damage they did to this country when they and Nancy Pelosi were in control.

In fact, Nancy Pelosi and Elizabeth Warren both stridently opposed that legislation. However, unfortunately, when people focus on the perfect instead of the good, they don't give credit to us, and we were criticized by the liberal media and the conservative media.

Despite the short time we have had, the obstacles we faced, and the enormity of our task, House Republicans have still managed a number of conservative victories. Last summer, a bill I authored was passed. It streamlined the Federal workforce development system, including the elimination of 15 duplicative programs.

I would have liked to have eliminated more than that, but again, we take the victories that we can get. It is like being on a football team. You get the ball, and you look down field, and you think, ``Gosh, I can't score a touchdown,'' so I just sit down because I can't score a touchdown.

No, that is not what the receiver does. The receiver says, ``If I can make a few yards, if I can make a yard, I'm moving in the right direction.'' That is what Republicans have been doing for the past 4 years, moving us in the right direction.

Occasionally, we are going to score a touchdown, but if we are moving in the right direction totally, then we are going to win this game, and that is what we are doing. We wish we could

have done more, but we are going to have greater opportunities over the next 2 years with the Republican-led House and Senate.

This 114th Congress offers us new chances to pass legislation that will lead our country down a road of economic recovery. We are going to work to reduce the size and scope of the Federal Government, protect against executive overreach, reform Federal spending, and keep America strong.

This is America's Congress, and we are going to be addressing the American people's greatest priority in the 114th Congress. We are going to work hard to build a better future for American families. I believe we will accomplish that.

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

I appreciate it. Thank you to my colleague from North

Carolina. You are very gracious in yielding to me, and it has been a pleasure to work with you.

Mr. Speaker, I thank those assembled here tonight. I just want to talk a little bit about some of the issues we have going on in the West, in northern California.

First of all, the excitement we have of coming in--it is a new Congress, it is a new direction for our country, I think. We have a stronger majority in the House of Representatives, of the Republican House. As well, it is a different majority over in the Senate. A lot of people aren't too concerned with what party it is or what partisan issues are; they want to see results. That is what I am looking for as well.

Many bills were sent out of the House last session and languished on a desk over on the Senate side, and I think we will now see action on those commonsense measures that are going to help jobs in America, help our economy rebound, and help people get out from under the grip of government power and government regulation that is just killing their hopes and killing their ideals.

We are looking for that in this new session, and we expect we will be held accountable to make that happen. It is not going to be a miracle. We are not going to get all the results we hoped for, but at least there are going to be things on the Record now that have gone through this House and have gone to the Senate that will be showing the American people what our agenda is and what it has been about.

Bringing it back home to California, I represent the First District in the northeast portion of the State. It is a beautiful district. I am very proud to have been elected for a second time to represent the First District. It is an area that has a lot of great resources that benefit our whole State, even our whole country.

To be able to have my family here with me in Washington attending the festivities, the honor of being sworn in and getting started, getting a fast start, going to work here in this new 114th has just been a real delight.

What we need to be happening in California is a better and wiser use of our resources. You may have seen, at the end of the last session, we were working towards better management of our water supply. Now, we have a deluge of rain once in a while, even when we are suffering drought for the last few years in California.

The water seems to all come at once. If it isn't being saved in snowpack, it will come quickly via rain through our streams, and that is an opportunity for us that we should be retaining that behind the dam, so that we have as well the water that gets down the Feather River and the Sacramento River and can be transferred and put somewhere to be used later.

We have the ability to have the water allocated as needed for fish, for habitat, but there is excess water that needs to be stored. I don't know why that isn't the automatic protocol, but Congress--a bill I cosponsored with many of my other colleagues put forward reminding the Bureau of Reclamation and others that they need to retain this extra water.

It isn't needed for fish, and it isn't needed for the normal runs, so we will have more stored later.

That is what we will continue to work for. But I still go back to the vision that people before us had that have given us Shasta Dam, Lake Oroville, and the whole State water project and the Central Valley project that we have in our State that we have benefited from for so many years, that everybody benefits from, whether you are an environmentalist, a farmer, a person who lives in a city, or if you just have a tap in the country. If you are not on a well, you are probably benefiting from these projects because we had the vision in the past to build them and we didn't have nearly the roadblocks.

Now, of course, we have great environmental concerns and environmental awareness to do things better than we did in the 1850s or the 1880s or what have you. We know how to do these things. But it doesn't mean that, because of a handful of people who don't want to see things happen, we stop the progress for all the rest of us.

So that is what we will be pushing for in this new Congress, to build more water storage. We can do that in northern California. Sites Reservoir, and there are other projects that can be enhanced to retain more water, and there are smarter ways to keep the water that we do have to make the water go further because it is necessary. The way California is suffering from droughts, agricultural land is going to be the first thing to go. Any time an emergency can be declared to switch whatever water does get to agriculture to meet other needs around the State, we have to take care of people first and we have to take care of cities, but when we see so much being run out through the Golden Gate that could be saved, or for questionable tactics on fish that really haven't been proven for that kind of habitat, then we are missing the mark.

So we will be working very hard to add to our water storage and to be smarter with the water we have available to us because we can't count on a record rainfall this year. We are very thankful and we have been blessed with good rainfall in November and the early part of December, but it has tailed off lately. We will need record rainfall the rest of the season up through the spring to have the kind of water we need to get through a good crop year. In the meantime, we should be doing everything possible in government to enhance, to retain, to be smarter with the water we have.

When we hear ideas of removing dams in the north part of the State, part of my district, that produce hydroelectric power because of dubious studies that might benefit fish, we are hurting our region of the State. We are hurting our grid by taking enough renewable electricity off the grid that would somehow need to be replaced with other green power to manage 70,000 homes in the State because of dubious lack of science. We need to battle through this and have smarter use of our resources.

Another thing that we are very rich in in our part of the State is timber. Each summer we see the crisis of nonmanagement of our timber and what that looks like. It is in the air. It is in our brown skies. We get to breathe that. The people within those communities are wondering why their mills are shut down and why their storefronts are boarded up and why they don't have jobs and why they have things like domestic violence increasing because people don't have work in those communities sometimes because their industry has been taken away from them.

I sit on the Natural Resources Committee to get after both of these and other issues--our water, our timber use, and other resources--that are so necessary to the rural part of the State, the rural West that has been languishing for many years, ever since the Endangered Species Act was passed in 1973, for good reason at the time, to save the bald eagle. We have bald eagles in our rice fields where I live at home. But we have gone so far beyond that rural America is suffering from this type of regulation that it isn't even proven to help recover a single species. Indeed, somewhere around 1 percent, at best, of species have been recovered after 40-plus years of the Endangered Species Act. That is pretty deplorable for what the cost has been to the people, to the jobs, and for the communities and their values.

But I am still optimistic that America is turning the corner and seeing things a little bit differently and that the job needs to come back home. And the jobs at home need to be revived once again. As a grower of grain myself, we look at our alternatives. Do we want to be in a situation where in the past we were dependent on oil from people who don't like us much? Do we want to be in a position to have our grain crops, the breadbasket of our Nation, do we want to become more dependent on that from people who maybe aren't always a reliable ally overseas? Wheat from Russia and rice from China, do we want to rely on that, or do we want to do the best we can?

My fellow farmers across the country and in my area, they are good stewards of the land. Many have been there for many, many generations. Some of the ranchers I know, their families have been farming and ranching for 160 years in northern California, my own family 80-plus years. We know how to take care of the land. We know what needs to be done. It is sustainable, to

use that buzz word that goes around a lot these days. If it wasn't sustainable, the land wouldn't still produce.

So this is the type of thing we are fighting for. If we don't have a breadbasket in this country, what will America rely on to keep us fed? With the unrest we have in the world, ultimately, if we can't fuel our own Armies if it becomes necessary, what kind of position will we be in to defend ourselves or our allies, like in Europe, like in Israel, like in Japan, or others we have great relations and great trade with? We are in great peril right now if we keep our head in the sand on these issues. We need to look at the resources we have.

As I look at the young people in the audience tonight, one of the first things that I am reminded of is that we are running an $18 trillion national debt. We have lived for the future in the present on someone else's money. And so every dollar we have, every dollar that comes in, we have to be good stewards of, much better than in the past. So every dollar has to go for the type of infrastructure that will improve our transportation system, our water system, our flood control system, and keep our communities safe, and not on frivolous things.

I am reminded in California, instead of this water infrastructure that we so desperately need, we have had several years of drought to remind us, they are still pursuing a high-speed rail system in California. As a former State legislator, we were right in the middle of that as it was coming to a head. What will the rail cost? Voters were told then $33 billion to go from San Francisco to Los Angeles at 220 miles per hour. It isn't even close to being that project anymore, and the price has tripled, at least. It has gone from $33 billion to at least $98 billion by the admission of the rail authority in a hearing we had in the State legislature back then. They are still chasing this dream. Now they have tried to downsize it to be a $68 billion project. To this day, right now, they have still only identified $13 billion-- $10 billion from the State bond and $3 billion from the Federal Government via the Stimulus Act of 2009. So $13 billion of a needed and downsized $68 billion project. They are $55 billion short, and they still think today they are going to go find that money. From the private sector, they are staying away in droves.

There is no way that it is going to be built anywhere near on time, anywhere near on any kind of budget, or that the riders they would have will ever be able to afford to ride it. Why don't we take a fraction of that money, of the $13 billion or the $68 billion, or whatever number it is, and put it towards the water storage we need?

We could build two really nice dams with $68 billion, especially with private sector money that wants to come in and be a partner on this. Let's get it done, because this is the infrastructure that will help our State and help the people and help bring jobs back to rural California and rural America.

I am looking for help from my other colleagues from other States, especially other Western States that have water infrastructure needs they are looking at themselves. Let's work together on this. That is what made us great back in the day.

We have had these huge projects that have made so much hydroelectric power. We like green power. We like renewable power. When it rains behind a dam, you have renewable power and it is reliable. And it is low cost, much more so than windmills and solar panels that require government assistance to put them in and keep them going. Let's do the right thing here and allow these things to happen, all that private sector to happen.

I am optimistic in this Congress that we can make that case and put it in front of the American people. I ask the President to join with us and help on that, whether it is that or the further development of energy that we need in this country to stay ahead of the curve. We are seeing prices coming down, amazingly. Hydraulic fracturing has played a big part in us seeing the price of fuel in some areas--not in California, but other States going below $2 a gallon. In California, we are still taxing ourselves and thinking up cap-and-trade measures to drive the cost up so we will be our own island of high costs. But the other 49 States, God bless you, you have it pretty good.

The vision that we have had to do these things is what we need desperately going forward in 2015 because when we are productive, like what we can produce in northern California with agriculture, with timber, with our mine resources, all of the other things that come from the land, that sets the table for everything else across our district and across our State and across the whole country. That puts us back to work again.

We have trillions of dollars offshore that would love to be repatriated back to this country if we had any kind of constant as to what the tax burden would be for those dollars, for those businesses and investment that needs to be here, any kind of consistency for what our regulatory burden would be so they could predict. If they are to put 30-year loans and 30-year infrastructure in place, will they be able to do business 5 years from now? We would be bringing American jobs back if we could repatriate that money back here. So let's get it done.

We don't come here in Congress--at least I haven't--because it is nice to wear a suit and tie. We come here to get results. To be results oriented, we need to use real facts, real figures, real budgets, real numbers to get to the core of what we are supposed to be doing as to what the Founders had set for our government. The government is doing a lot more things it has no business doing and it can't do well. Let's make sure that we are doing and we have the economy, we have the engineering to generate so we have a functioning school system, it has the funding it needs at fair and proper levels; for our law enforcement, so they are not left wanting for the equipment and backup they need; and for the folks deployed overseas defending our borders as well as helping our allies. We shouldn't leave them wanting while they are deployed; and certainly with the mess that the VA system is, when they come back home, the promises made to them are broken and the shame that we should all feel when our veterans, so many are left homeless or simply begging to have their claims processed.

I am confident in this new Congress that the House and the Senate can work together and put these ideas forward. We can put them out in front of the American people, have the accountability, have the oversight that our job demands. We will get there.

So whether it is now or 2 years from now, I challenge the President to look at these things from a commonsense way of thinking. Think about America first. That is what we will be doing in this House and over in the Senate.

So from northern California to the rest of the country, help us all to be productive and to live the lives we choose to give our kids a chance to live at home, to find jobs and opportunities in their own communities--farming, ranching, mining, whatever it is, or related industries in those small towns that so many are boarded up now. Let them have that chance to live at home, not have to go someplace else, go to a big city somewhere, a different State, or even overseas to try to find good employment so they would have the dream they see fit and the one that their parents would like to pass along to them.

My colleague from North Carolina, I appreciate the time tonight and the opportunity to talk about my district and the things we need to do there, as well as what we need to do for our country. I bid you a good evening, and thank you.

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

Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to H.R. 50, the Unfunded Mandates Information and Transparency Act. This legislation may be well intended, but it would have unintended consequences that would make the government less efficient and less effective.

I stood here just 4 months ago when the House, for the second time, considered a package of special interest bills, including this one. I said then that the Republican leadership in the House cannot fool the American people by passing the same bad bills over and over again, yet, Mr. Chairman, here we go again.

Yesterday, the House voted to repeal the Affordable Care Act for the 56th time. Today, we are considering an antiregulatory bill the House has considered three times before. Tomorrow, we will consider another antiregulatory bill the House has also passed before.

H.R. 50, the bill we are considering today, would add red tape to the rulemaking process in an effort to slow down or halt agency rules.

One thing that is different this time around is that the Congressional Budget Office estimated that H.R. 50 as reported would increase direct spending by $18 million over the next 10 years. CBO estimates that this increase would primarily impact the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a bureau that was established to protect our constituents.

The majority inserted a last-minute provision last night after the Rules Committee meeting to address this problem. The majority's fix, however, does nothing to reduce the cost of the bill.

The majority instead inserted language to cut the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's budget by $36 million in fiscal year 2016. Cutting CFPB's budget by $36 million while also requiring the agency to comply with significant new requirements is absurd.

On Saturday, The Huffington Post published an article titled, ``Congress Revives Gingrich-Era Law to Thwart Obama.'' The article said:

Republicans in Congress aim to revamp an antiregulatory law

from the Newt Gingrich era in an effort to paralyze new

financial, environmental, and labor rules with a never-ending

string of court challenges.

The Unfunded Mandates Reform Act was enacted as a part of Newt Gingrich's Contract with America. Even in the context of the extreme agenda of the Contract with America, Congress included several limitations in the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act.

This bill would repeal those limitations. For example, under this bill, agencies would be required to consult with regulated industries on proposed rules before they are even made public.

For example, if the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau planned to propose a new rule to protect consumers from abusive mortgage practices, banks would get advance access to the rule and the opportunity to shape it before our constituents, the consumers.

I believe that businesses should have the opportunity to provide comments on proposed rules, but they should do it through the normal public comment process just like other stakeholders.

H.R. 50 would also expand judicial review under the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act. The statute currently prohibits courts from using its requirements to delay or invalidate a rule.

This bill eliminates that restriction which would allow regulated industries to use the law to slow down rulemakings.

This bill also would put independent agencies in jeopardy of political interference. The Unfunded Mandates Reform Act currently exempts independent agencies from its reporting requirements. The bill removes that exemption.

That would mean that the independent regulatory agencies like the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau would have to submit their rules to the Office of Management and Budget for review which could undermine their independence.

Section 12 of the bill would require an agency to perform retrospective review, including an additional cost-benefit analysis of any existing rules if requested by the chairman or ranking member of a committee. It is interesting that we always talk about being able to predict what is going to go on in the business world. This certainly would add a high level of unpredictability.

I will offer an amendment at the appropriate time to strike that provision. These flaws are reason enough to oppose this bill.

The most important reason is that we rely on agency rulemakings to protect our children, protect our workers, protect our economy, and protect our constituents, the folks who sent us here.

That is why the Coalition for Sensible Safeguards--a group of more than 150 good government, labor, scientific, faith, health, and community organizations--sent a letter to the Oversight Committee opposing this bill.

Here is what the letter said: ``The costs of deregulation should be obvious by now: the Wall Street economic collapse, various food and product safety recalls, and numerous disasters, including the recent Dan River coal ash spill in North Carolina and the Freedom Industries chemical spill in West Virginia, demonstrate the need for a regulatory system that protects the public, not corporate interests.''

Congress should be moving forward to protect the public from harm, not rolling back the clock and weakening important safeguards.

Yesterday, the White House issued a statement opposing this bill.

I urge my colleagues to vote ``no,'' and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Connolly), the chairman of the Subcommittee on Government Operations.

I yield the gentleman an additional 30 seconds.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Clay).

Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Lynch).

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Michigan (Mrs. Lawrence), a new member of our committee.

I yield the gentlewoman an additional 30 seconds.

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

I just want to remind the gentleman before he leaves the Chamber that there is truth here. The truth is that the CBO has already estimated that this bill will cost some $18 million. There is also truth here with regard to what has happened to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau--the very bureau that this Congress established to protect our consumers on a day-to-day basis--and its losing some $36 million. That is the transparency.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from New Jersey (Mrs. Watson Coleman).

Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlelady from the District of Columbia (Ms. Norton).

I yield the gentlelady an additional 30 seconds.

I yield 2 minutes to the gentlelady from California (Ms. Waters), the ranking member of the Committee on Financial Services.

I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Kildee).

Mr. Chairman, how much time is remaining?

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

I just want to be clear. Many things concern me about this legislation. We need to be very careful about this.

We have a situation here where this is clearly an effort to give Big Business an advantage. All the speakers on our side have talked to that. We can go around saying we don't need regulations, but regulations are very, very important. This President has done a lot with regard to addressing the issue of regulations.

There is something else that is happening here that really bothers me. There was a tremendous effort by the other side when we were trying to get the consumer financial protection bill passed.

After seeing our constituents abused over and over again, we bring about an agency that would bring them some type of protection, and here, we are taking away money from an agency that already needs money, the very agency that is there to help our constituents. That concerns me.

The other thing that concerns me is that we have an extra layer here. It makes it much more difficult now with regard to rulemaking, and then to have the courts have the ability to delay and basically take away rules is unprecedented. That is something that even Newt Gingrich didn't do.

We need to look at what we are doing and bring a sense of balance, and the other side will say that balance is brought about because private industry is given an opportunity to be involved in the process.

Well, they really do have a tremendous advantage because, as Ms. Norton said, they are the ones that have the lawyers. They are the ones who have the big money. They are the ones now who will be able to come in before the regulations are even formulated and have their say while the public won't be in that kind of position.

Let's not kid ourselves. We are putting our constituents at a decided disadvantage, no matter how you look at it. This is a triumph for Big Business.

I yield back the balance of my time.

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

Mr. Chairman, I am not going to really oppose this amendment. This amendment would add a requirement that agencies evaluate the impacts of a rule on private property owners. I do not object to this requirement in isolation.

The problem is that this amendment adds one more requirement to the layers of red tape this bill already adds to the rulemaking process.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. Chairman, my amendment strikes section 12 of the bill.

Section 12 would require an agency to perform a retrospective analysis of any existing rule any time a committee chairman or ranking member asked for it.

Under this section, any one of nearly 100 Members of Congress could tie an agency up in knots, forcing review after review of any existing rule.

I asked the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service to analyze the constitutionality of this section. CRS provided my staff with a memo that found that section 12 of H.R. 50 raises a serious constitutional question.

CRS evaluated the impact of the Supreme Court's decision in INS v. Chadha. In that case, the Court held that Congress can exercise its legislative authority only through bicameral passage of legislation that is then presented to the President.

CRS evaluated whether giving individual Members of Congress the authority to demand agency action would violate that requirement.

Here is what CRS found: ``It could be argued that imbuing certain Members with the authority to demand that an agency prepare a report under section 12 is an action of sufficient legislative character and effect as to trigger the bicameralism and presentment requirements of article I.''

CRS also found there is a ``tenable argument that the provisions of section 12 raise constitutional concerns of the magnitude addressed in Chadha.''

Congress certainly has a legitimate interest in conducting oversight of agency actions. It is appropriate for House committees to request information about agency rules and how they can be improved, but committees already have the opportunity to conduct that type of oversight.

We don't need to require in legislation that an agency conduct an entirely new cost-benefit analysis for potentially every rule on the books at the whim of individual Members of Congress. CRS notes that Congress could conduct these reviews as part of its oversight prerogative.

CRS goes on to note, however, that if these reviews were considered part of congressional oversight rather than an exercise of legislative authority, they ``would leave open significant and unresolved questions regarding the parameters of congressional oversight authority.'' These questions are significant enough to warrant stripping this section from the bill.

In addition, section 12 would threaten the ability of agencies to carry out their missions. The more time an agency spends responding to demands for rule reviews, the less time it is spending performing the work it is supposed to be doing.

I urge my colleagues to vote ``yes'' on this amendment, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, may I inquire as to how much time we have on this side?

I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Connolly).

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

One of the things that we have to keep in mind, the President is the President. You are talking about 100 Members of Congress, as opposed to the President. The President has done this, and the chairman admits that they are already behind.

So now what we are going to do is bring in a whole new 100 people, at a whim, to say, We don't like something and let's pull it back.

No. I think we are better than that, and I think it does have constitutional problems. I think enough is being done, and I am glad to hear somebody giving the President some credit for something. The fact is that he has been most aggressive in this area.

I don't think that this provision is needed, and I would urge Members to vote in favor of my amendment.

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

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of this commonsense amendment. The legislation we are considering today has been sold by supporters as a jobs bill. Give me a break.

This amendment simply says that if the economy doesn't improve the way the bill's supporters say it will, then the bill will sunset. It is as simple as that. The amendment would leave the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act untouched. This sunset provision would only impact the changes made by this bill. For those reasons, I strongly support the amendment.

Mr. Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman, Dr. Foxx, for yielding me the customary 30 minutes, and I yield myself such time as I may consume.

I also express through you my wishes for her recovery, and I also appreciate her patriotism in doing her duty to God and country here today despite her respiratory duress. I hope that goes

noted, that she is doing a great job representing her party on this bill.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to the rule and the underlying bills, the Unfunded Mandates Information and Transparency Act and the Small Business Regulatory Flexibility Improvements Act.

The titles of these bills, while lengthy, seem to suggest that somehow these efforts are designed to increase transparency or help small business. Their actual impact is quite frankly the opposite.

By allowing rules to be written behind closed doors by big businesses and effectively preventing Federal agencies from promoting the national interests as they are supposed to and adding additional bureaucratic red tape and paperwork, these bills represent an assault on the health and safety of our Nation's families and threaten to drown our government in mountains and mountains of unnecessary paperwork.

I think that the release of the President's budget this week shows a contrast between the priorities of both parties' agendas. The President's budget focused on Main Street, offering new ideas for how we can meet the infrastructure needs of our country and reform our corporate tax system to make American businesses more competitive.

Unfortunately, what we continue to see here in this body from the Republicans is a ``Groundhog Day'' scenario where every day, every week--it is like the movie--we are talking about the same thing over and over again.

We have acted on repealing the Affordable Care Act 56 times in this body. Here, we are back with another set of bills that echo other bills again and again and again.

Now, I understand why many people want to do this once and go through it. People ran on repealing ObamaCare, and people ran on passing these bills. Once they are done, we will see what the other body does.

But to keep coming back, rather than dealing with the critical national priorities, I think simply shows a detachment from reality. That is one of the reasons the public holds this body in such low regard.

The bill that we considered 2 weeks ago added 65 new analytical requirements to the process of rulemaking--more red tape, more hurdles. I think what we are seeing here today is maybe that is not enough red tape. We are now looking at bills that allow big business to weigh in before the public, creating even more hurdles before regulations become public and are implemented.

H.R. 50 would effectively require agencies to consult with the private sector before the public is even made aware of the bill, let alone engaged in the rulemaking. This blocks transparency and handicaps public input.

I agree we want to make sure that business has the opportunity to weigh in, but we want to make sure that every stakeholder in a rulemaking process has the opportunity to weigh in equally.

In my State of Colorado, I would be concerned about the erosion of our protection of our great natural areas like Rocky Mountain National Park which is a protected site. We celebrated its 100th anniversary as a national park just last week.

In those 100 years, the Rocky Mountains have been thriving. If you visit the park today, you can find streams, elk, bighorn sheep, and fields of wildflowers; but if we hadn't designated the park a national treasure and created a comprehensive management plan for its protection, we might very well have lost not only something that relates to our national pride and is beautiful but, frankly, is the economic driver in Estes Park and Grand County for much of the economic activity in and around the National Park.

H.R. 50 would threaten the ability of the National Park Service to create the kind of management plan that the economy has thrived under in my home State of Colorado and in my district. It would essentially create a veto power for legislators and interests that don't believe in the protection of public lands or are willing to threaten the health of our families for enhancement of their bottom line. There is always going to be somebody that objects.

Again, we have a thriving tourism economy relating to Rocky Mountain National Park, but I am sure there is some company somewhere that would have some interest that is countervailing to the interests of job creation in our community, and that is why we need to have a transparent and accessible process of listening to stakeholders in as expeditious a way as possible.

We need a system that allows the Fort Collins native who hikes through the Rockies every weekend or the New Yorker who visits the snowcapped mountains every spring the ability to participate in protecting those natural resources and the protection of our public health.

We need to listen to the small businesses, the hospitality sector, and the restaurants and lodges that serve our tourism communities, but by allowing an unfair advantage to out-of-State corporate interests, we threaten the very principle that makes us American, the ability to participate in our decisions of government at the level closest to where we are affected.

H.R. 50 is a dangerous precedent for policy. It allows additional red tape to be thrown at government agencies, representing unnecessary delays and costs that prevent us from creating jobs and growing our economy.

We need to move forward with a middle class agenda for our country rather than continuing to live in this Groundhog Day scenario of repetitious bills that don't discuss how to grow our economy or grow the middle class.

Yesterday, this body attempted to repeal the Affordable Care Act for the 56th time. Today, the Republicans are making two attempts at what I consider to be a very similar thing, damage the regulatory process at all costs, which we already did and we are doing again.

They want to see additional red tape and bureaucracy added--whether it is clean air, whether it is clean water, whether it is consumers, whether it is protecting our children--regardless of the particular area with which we operate.

Instead of having a cumulative look at regulations, we should have a look at cumulative impacts of all the legislation that has been brought before this body and how that impacts small businesses and regulations.

Earlier this year, the House passed the Regulatory Accountability Act. That bill alone added 65 new checkpoints to the regulatory process. This bill would prevent transparency and allow big business to weigh in on regulations--before small businesses, before consumers, before other stakeholders--and add an additional tier and red tape to the regulatory process.

We need to move forward with improving our regulatory structure. I don't think there is any disagreement about that. Some of that can be done through executive action and some in a collaborative, bipartisan way to streamline the regulatory process to reduce hurdles for small businesses while meeting the goals of protecting the American public. Unfortunately, these bills do neither of those.

I encourage my colleagues to oppose the rule and the underlying bills.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, if we defeat the previous question, I will offer an amendment to the rule to allow for consideration of legislation that would help veterans make it in America by establishing a pilot program to encourage the hiring of veterans in manufacturing jobs.

To discuss our thoughtful proposal, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from Washington (Ms. DelBene), a leader on veterans issues.

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

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

When you hear the gentleman from Georgia or the gentlewoman from North Carolina talk about the intent behind these bills, they sound great. We all want a streamlined regulatory process and to help make it more efficient.

Unfortunately, when you look at what these bills do, they do the opposite. They add another tier to regulation, with Big Business having a new say in and above what small businesses and community members can do. They add red tape and legal requirements to regulation that don't exist now under statute.

It, again, seems to me like the opposite of trying to get input so our regulations best affect the needs of each community, and we have diverse needs across this country.

My district is 62 percent Federal land, so when decisions are made on Federal land, like a travel management plan, and on where people can bike and where they can hunt and fish, we want to have our say. The last thing we want is some out-of-state corporate interest determining in some process before we even get our say on how these Federal lands are used.

It is absolutely critical that we empower our communities, and this bill does the opposite in the name of adding more bureaucracy and red tape to the regulatory process, presumably, in an attempt to delay or make it less effective than it is.

Now, we value, as Americans, the work that the Clean Water Act does, the Clean Air Act, the EPA, our essential protections around public health. They are very, very important. And I think our colleagues agree that they don't want to take those on head on.

But this bill would prevent some of those very agencies from doing the work that we have charged them to do, keeping our air clean, our water clean, and they need to be able to do that work and involve local impact in making sure that they do it in a way that protects American health and helps grow our economy and create jobs.

We need to make sure that we don't have dumping of industrial waste in the Colorado River, poisoning millions of recreational users. We want to make sure that drilling sites don't use chemical compounds that are toxic or cause birth defects.

We can and we must do better. The march of science moves forward. If there are thoughtful improvements to the regulatory process that will help reduce costs and reduce red tape, rather than add red tape, we are happy to have those discussions. But, unfortunately, these bills fall short of that mark. That is why I oppose the rule and the bill.

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

My colleague, Ms. DelBene, has offered a concept around a pilot program to encourage the hiring of veterans in manufacturing jobs, the type of middle class agenda that the American public wants this Congress to work on, rather than one that cuts them out of the very rulemaking that is designed to protect us Americans from our health hazards and protect our public lands.

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

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

Mr. Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.