Providing for consideration of the bill (H.R. 998) to provide for the establishment of a process for the review of rules and sets of rules, and for other purposes, and providing for consideration of the joint resolution (H.J. Res. 83) disapproving the rule submitted by the Department of Labor relating to "Clarification of Employer's Continuing Obligation to Make and Maintain an Accurate Record of Each Recordable Injury and Illness".

Mr. Speaker, pursuant to House Resolution 150, I call up the joint resolution (H.J. Res. 83) disapproving the rule submitted by the Department of Labor relating to ``Clarification of Employer's Continuing Obligation to Make and Maintain an Accurate Record of Each Recordable Injury and Illness'', and ask for its immediate consideration in the House.

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 materials on H.J. Res. 83.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in strong support of H.J. Res. 83, and I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, America's workers deserve responsible, commonsense, regulatory policies to ensure safe and healthy working conditions. Let me say that again. America's workers deserve responsible, commonsense regulatory policies to ensure safe and healthy working conditions.

They deserve a Federal Government that holds bad actors accountable, and a government that takes proactive steps to help employers improve safety protections and prevent injuries and illnesses before they occur. Just as importantly, they deserve to know that Federal agencies are following the law.

For years, Republicans have called on OSHA to reject a top-down approach to worker protections and, instead, collaborate with employers to identify gaps in safety and address the unique challenges facing workplaces.

Unfortunately, under the Obama administration, our concerns usually fell on deaf ears. In fact, one of the administration's parting gifts to workers and small businesses was a regulatory scheme that reflects not only a backwards, punitive approach to workplace safety, but one that is completely unlawful.

Here's why. Under the Occupational Safety and Health Act, employers have long been required to record injuries and illnesses and retain those records for 5 years. The law explicitly provides a 6-month window under which OSHA can issue citations to employers who fail to maintain proper records; 6 months. It is written in the law. This approach helps ensure workplace hazards are addressed in a timely manner.

However, in 2006, OSHA took action against Volks Constructors for recordkeeping errors that occurred well beyond what the law allows, well beyond 6 months. The errors were from nearly 5 years earlier. That is why a Federal appeals court unanimously rejected OSHA's overreach. The opinion for the Court stated: ``We do not believe Congress expressly established a statute of limitations only to implicitly encourage the Secretary to ignore it.'' Even President Obama's Supreme Court nominee, Judge Garland, agreed OSHA's action was ``not reasonable.''

What came next was an outright power grab. OSHA decided to take its unlawful action one step further. This time it would not only ignore the law, but rewrite it. The agency finalized the ``Volks'' rule, unilaterally extending the statute of limitations from 6 months to 5 years. OSHA undertook for itself the power that only this Congress has to write laws.

The agency created significant regulatory confusion for small businesses. Many would likely face unwarranted litigation because of unlawful regulatory policies. Of course, further judicial scrutiny also means hardworking taxpayers will foot the bill when OSHA is forced to defend its lawless power grab once again.

Simply put, OSHA had no authority to do this. We have a Constitution that grants Congress, not Federal agencies, the power to write the law. But that is not the only reason we are here today. We are also here because this rule does nothing to improve workplace safety.

Maintaining injury and illness records is vitally important and can help enhance worker protections. But that is not the goal of this rule. This rule only serves to punish employers. As we have said repeatedly, OSHA should, instead, collaborate with employers to help them understand their legal responsibilities and ensure safe measures are in place to prevent workplace hazards in the future.

Fortunately, Congress has the authority to reject this failed approach to workplace safety and block an abuse of executive power that began under the Obama administration.

I urge my colleagues to support this resolution, and I hope we can all work together to encourage a more proactive approach that prevents injuries and illnesses from happening in the first place.

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

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

Mr. Speaker, I would like to read very briefly a quote from the court's decision: ``We find this statute to be clear and the agency's interpretation unreasonable in any event''--in any event.

There is no way to rewrite this regulation to comply with the law that is clear. There is no way for the agency's interpretation to become reasonable. It is unreasonable according to the court in any event.

My friend from Virginia talked about the fact that OSHA just updated the regulation to impose a continuing obligation. OSHA does not have that authority. Only this Congress has that authority. No agency can unilaterally decide to change a statutory provision that the court has said is clear. He said this applies to only a few categories of employers. It applies to nearly every category of employers that has 10 employees or more. So you could have an employer with 50 employees, and they are subject to this regulation. This applies to virtually any employer.

OSHA has 6 months to enforce this law--6 months--from any violation. Now, why 6 months? Because it is important to investigate these things quickly and determine whether there has been a violation because things get lost and people leave their employment. Congress made the decision for 6 months because that was a period of time in which OSHA could perform its duties reasonably, and we could get justice the way it ought to be done.

We can amend OSHA, but we have not chosen to do so. Until this Congress chooses to change OSHA, the agency has to comply with the clear wording of the statute as it has been passed by this Congress. The agency does not have the right to do this. It would be a waste of taxpayer money and time to force an employer to go challenge this in court when we already know what the result is going to be. It is not up to the committee or to the Congress to go back and review an agency interpretation we know, as a matter of law, is wrong.

So this is a responsible act to take, and I would suggest to the agency and to my fellow Members of Congress that if we want to reconsider a statute of limitations we do it on this floor and not in that agency.

Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as she may consume to the gentlewoman from

North Carolina (Ms. Foxx) who is the chairwoman of our committee.

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

Mr. Speaker, the gentleman from Virginia referred to continuing violations. There is no provision in this law for continuing violations.

Looking again at the court's decision. They said this: the statute of limitation provides that ``no citation may be issued . . . after the expiration of six months following the occurrence of any violation.''

They go on to say this: ``Like the Supreme Court, we think the word `occurrence' clearly refers to a discrete antecedent event--something that `happened' or `came to pass' `in the past.' ''

By any common definition, there was no occurrence; i.e., no discrete action, event, or incident, no coming about, and no process of happening within the requisite 6 months. You can't take that wording and slip into it a continuing violation requirement unless you change the statute. The agency can't change the statute.

The court, in its decision on the Volks rule, also looked at something very important, and that is: Why do we require this agency to do its work in a good period of time?

It says: ``Nothing in this statute suggests Congress sought to endow this bureaucracy with the power to hold a discrete record-making violation over employers for years, and then cite the employer long after the opportunity to actually improve the workplace has passed.''

In other words, we gave the agency 6 months to do its job, and it should do its job.

Now, other people have looked at this, people who are experts in workplace safety. I refer you, Mr. Speaker, to a letter that was written on October 27, 2015, by the American Society of Safety Engineers, which I include in the Record.

American Society of

Safety Engineers,

Park Ridge, IL, October 27, 2015.

Re ASSE Comments on OSHA Notice of Proposed Rule

Clarification of Employer's Continuing Obligation to Make

and Maintain an Accurate Record of Each Recordable Injury

and Illness [Docket No: OSHA-2015-0006].

Hon. David Michaels,

Assistant Secretary, Occupational Safety and Health

Administration, OSHA Docket Office, U.S. Department of

Labor, Washington, DC.

Dear Assistant Secretary Michaels: As you well know, the

more than 37,000 member safety, health and environmental

(SH&E) professionals of the American Society of Safety

Engineers (ASSE) intimately know the details of collecting

workplace injury and illness data, recording that data for

employers, and the careful work needed to report that data to

the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA).

Perhaps more than any stakeholders, our members understand

the value of this data in managing workplace safety and

health risks as well as its appropriate use by OSHA in

developing better means to focus the agency's resources on

the most difficult risks facing American workers. Our members

use injury and illness data to help them protect workers.

They expect no less of an effective OSHA.

That being said, ASSE cannot support the requirement that

employers have a duty to record an injury or illness

continues for the full duration of the rccord-retention-and-

access period--five years after the end of the

calendar year in which the injury or illness became

recordable--that OSHA proposes in its July 29, 2015 Notice of

Proposed Rulemaking (NPR) Clarification of Employer's

Continuing Obligation to Make and Maintain an Accurate Record

of Each Recordable Injury and Illness [Docket No: OSHA-2015-

0006]. ASSE respectfully opposes the adoption of a Final Rule

as proposed in this rulemaking for the reasons that follow.

nature of violations

ASSE members do not look at the issues raised in this

rulemaking with the same viewpoint of the occupational safety

and health bar that, no doubt, will provide substantive legal

arguments against the case OSHA makes for addressing the

Volks II decision through this rulemaking. Rather, our

members' view is a practical one that comes from years of

experience on the job as the professionals charged with

meeting OSHA's recordkeeping requirements.

Our members know the inadvertent mistakes they themselves

can make in recordkeeping and reporting. They also know what

they typically find when they are hired by a company to help

improve workplace safety and health. As they assess the

workplace's risks and past safety performance to help them

develop safety and health management plans, the reporting

mistakes our members typically find are not very often the

worst cases that, unfortunately, seem to be creating this

rulemaking. The errors in reporting they see are, by far,

minor, isolated, and, if continuing, it is only in the sense

that a typo can be repeated day after day.

They also see mistakes that come from a widespread lack of

understanding of OSHA's detailed reporting requirements. When

seasoned safety and health professionals consistently use

ASSE's educational conferences, our social media, and

opportunities to meet with OSHA staff through the ASSE-OSHA

Alliance to get the best and latest information about OSHA

recordkeeping requirements, we know that, even for them, the

task of meeting those requirements can be too often

confusing. Given that the vast majority of employers report

to OSHA without the help of a safety and health professional,

it is not difficult to see that the significant increase in

records retention that OSHA is attempting to require of

employers here will not succeed in a significant impact on

safety and health among American workers.

unintended consequences

No reporting error is excusable. But a company's errors to

which OSHA is determined to have access to for a period that

can be up to six years through this rulemaking will not very

often correlate to the risks facing workers, especially the

risks a safety and health professional is trying to address

for the company in the present. The statements OSHA makes

about the value of data collected through current injury and

illness recordkeeping are merely conclusory and are counter

to our members' experience.

Measured against our members' belief that the additional

data will provide little help to them or OSHA, they are

particularly concerned that this rulemaking can only succeed

in driving more employers towards greater expectations that

safety and health professionals will focus energy and

resources on collecting and reporting the lagging indicators

that OSHA requires, taking them away from risk assessment and

management tasks and their efforts to move their employers

towards performance measurements based on leading indicators

that we know can better measure a company's safety and health

performance.

Many of our members, especially those who work in or for

mid-sized and small companies, face a difficult uphill climb

in selling their employers risk management and moving from

lagging to leading indicates. We know OSHA values these

approaches also. But when OSHA uses its limited resources to

focus on measures that do not reflect cutting-edge safety

principles and push our members' efforts backwards, OSHA is

making their job more difficult. Our members value OSHA but

want an OSHA that works with them to advance the best ideas

for advancing workplace safety and health. Requiring this

data to be available for OSHA's use for nearly six years does

not meet our members' hope for an effective OSHA.

direct burden

ASSE is also concerned that the OSHA's estimates of the

direct burden this rulemaking will place on employers are

inadequate. The economic analysis states that there will not

be a new cost burden. This was based on a 2001 analysis that

it takes 0.38 hour to record an injury or illness, with a

total cost per case of $17.75. From an informal survey of

involved ASSE members, a more realistic estimate is that an

hour is needed for each case over the five-year period,

taking into account the variety of tasks involved, including

determining if there was medical treatment beyond first aid,

verifying lost and restricted day counts, and adjusting for

changes in the status of a case. An updated economic analysis

is needed, which we urge OSHA to conduct before a Final Rule

is proposed.

a measure of the problem

Related to our members' concern over the rulemaking's

direct burdens on employers is OSHA's failure to discuss in

the NPR why OSHA faces such difficulty in obtaining adequate

data from employers. No doubt, employers are responsible for

meeting OSHA's reporting requirements. Our members suspect

that OSHA's reporting rules and. deadlines are not effective

and cost employers unnecessarily.

Before requiring more extensive reporting, it would be

helpful both to OSHA and the safety and health community to

know more about why employers do not report. How many

employers blatantly disregard the requirements and how many

are simply making errors? What do employers and their workers

not understand about the requirements? What training or level

of expertise would help fill the gaps in reporting that OSHA

believes exist? We urge OSHA to examine these issues as an.

extension of its economic analysis. With more knowledge,

there may be better ways to address recordkeeping that can

support better employer reporting.

conclusion

As we say above, our members want a strong and effective

OSHA, But their view of an effective OSHA is an OSHA that can

embrace the best our members already understand about how to

achieve safe and healthy workplaces. An OSHA injury and

illness prevention plan standard that is truly risk-based

would help make OSHA more effective. Greater reliance on

control banding to achieve better protection limits, as we

have recently suggested to OSHA, would. Establishing

professional competencies to define ``competent person'' in

OSHA standards would. Finding a better way to update

consensus standards in OSHA's standards would. Rethinking

OSHA's reporting requirements to help move employers towards

leading indicators and more advanced ways to measure safety

performance certainly would. The areas where OSHA and our

members agree on making OSHA more effective are many. Adding

lengthier reporting burdens that will do little to help OSHA,

employers or occupational safety and health professionals

better manage workplace safety and hcalth will not.

As always, ASSE is more than willing to discuss these

concerns further. Thank you for listening to our members'

views.

Sincerely,

Michael Belcher, CSP,

President.

What it says is that this regulation does nothing to enhance workplace safety. That is from the American Society of Safety Engineers.

Also opposing this regulation is the Coalition for Workplace Safety. I include in the Record a letter from them dated February 17 of this year.

Coalition for Workplace Safety,

February 17, 2017.

Hon. Paul Ryan

Speaker, House of Representatives,

Washington, DC.

Hon. Kevin McCarthy,

Majority Leader, House of Representatives,

Washington, DC.

Hon. Steve Scalise,

Majority Whip, House of Representatives,

Washington, DC.

Hon. Virginia Foxx

Chairwoman, Committee on Education & the Workforce,

Washington, DC.

Hon. Bradley Byrne,

Chairman, Subcommittee on Workforce Protections, Washington,

To the point, there is nothing in this statute that allows for continuing violations, and there is nothing in this regulation that provides for workplace safety. This is a power grab by an agency in violation of its authorizing statute and by a clear decision of this circuit court of appeals.

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

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

Mr. Speaker, I would remind the gentleman that the experts on this, the American Society of Safety Engineers, have said that this regulation does not enhance workplace safety. So if we are about workplace safety, this regulation isn't it. Let's talk about something that will help with workplace safety, not something that is a lawless power grab by a Federal agency.

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

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

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the comments of the gentleman from California. He said that, if we pass this resolution, we will be granting amnesty to bad actors. We are not granting amnesty to bad actors. They will have no amnesty if OSHA does its job in a timely fashion. Five years is not timely under anybody's commonsense definition. They need to do their job within the 6 months that we have allowed for them to do it, and they have the tools to do their job within 6 months.

So there is no amnesty being granted here. We are expecting a Federal agency that has a lot of money and has a lot of power to simply do its job within 6 months, and they come forward and try to make a new statute of limitations because they don't do their job within 6 months.

I say to this body, I would say to people outside this body, it is time for OSHA to get its job done in the time allotted by the United States Congress and not come running out with some unilateral change in the statute which they have no power to do because, for some reason, they don't think they can do it.

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

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

Mr. Speaker, I include in the Record a letter dated February 28, 2017, from the Associated General Contractors of America; a letter dated February 28, 2017, from Associated Builders and Contractors; a letter dated February 27, 2017, from the National Association of Home Builders; and a letter dated February 28, 2017, from the United States Chamber of Commerce.

The Associated General

Contractors of America,

Arlington, VA, February 28, 2017.

Re AGC Key Vote--Support Joint Resolution Disapproving of

``Volks Rule.''

Hon. Paul Ryan,

House of Representatives,

Washington, DC.

Dear Speaker Ryan: On behalf of the Associated General

Contractors of America (AGC) and its 26,000 commercial

construction company members, I strongly urge you to support

the Congressional Review Act (CRA) joint resolution of

disapproval to stop the Occupational Safety and Health

Administration's (OSHA) expansion of the statute of

limitations for recordkeeping violations in the ``Volks

Rule.'' AGC will score this vote as a key vote for the

education of its members on its congressional candidate

scorecards.

This resolution repeals a rule that was issued by OSHA as a

challenge to the judicial branch and congressional authority.

Section 9 of the Occupational Safety and Health Act

subsection (c) says ``No citation may be issued under this

section after the expiration of six months following the

occurrence of any violation.'' That seems pretty clear and

the courts agreed. In 2012, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the

District of Columbia Circuit held in AKM LLC dba Volks

Constructors v. Secretary of Labor that section 8(c) of the

OSH Act (the section that requires accurate recordkeeping)

does not supersede 9(c) and therefore does not permit a

continuing violation for paperwork errors and that the agency

is overstepping its authority. Additionally, in 2016 the

Fifth Circuit endorsed the Volks decision in Delek Ref. Ltd.

v. Occupational Safety & Health Review Commission. When OSHA

issued its rule, it deliberately and specifically designed

the rule to counter the ruling in the Volks case. Because the

final rule directly contradicts both clear statutory language

and two U.S. Courts of Appeals rulings, it must not be

allowed to stand.

The rule is designed to be punitive. It is a regulatory

attempt to expand opportunities to cite companies for

paperwork violations. It was issued in the waning days of the

Obama Administration as an attempt to get around the existing

statute of limitations for recordkeeping violations and

expand that limitation to sixty-six months. It creates no new

recordkeeping requirements. It does not change the data

required under recordkeeping requirements. It does not exempt

smaller companies from this regulation or these

investigations. It does not create any new, safer work

practices. The rule tells OSHA inspectors and company

employees to fix typos from years ago rather than walking the

jobsite, providing safety training or otherwise preventing

tomorrow's accidents. We take worker safety very seriously

and, unfortunately, OSHA's rule would require a colossal

misallocation of resources. That is why we urge you to

support the Congressional Review Act resolution.

Thank you for your consideration of this request.

Sincerely,

Jeffrey D. Shoaf,

Senior Executive Director,

Government Affairs.

All of those groups I just mentioned support the repeal of this regulation that would come about by virtue of the bill that is before us. Why? Because we have a right to expect in this country that these regulatory agencies that Congress sets up will do their job with the significant sums of taxpayer money that they are provided by this Congress, the money that comes from the people of America to do their job in a timely fashion. And this agency comes forth and tries to act like it doesn't have the money or the authority to investigate violations and enforce the law within 6 months of a violation. That is balderdash. The American people have a right to expect more from these agencies than that.

But more to the point, the reason we are here today is really simple. We are here today to overturn a rule that is blatantly unlawful. We are here to put a stop to a rule that does nothing--I repeat nothing--to improve workplace safety. We are here to put a check on the very top of executive overreach the Congressional Review Act sought to address.

By blocking this punitive and overreaching rule, we will affirm Congress' commitment to proactive health and safety policies that help prevent injuries and illnesses before they occur. If we wait until the illness or injury has occurred, we have waited too late. OSHA has waited too late. It is time for OSHA to work with these employers, work with these people in the workplace to make the workplace safe, not show up 5 years after the fact when they don't have the authority and say: now we are going to issue a violation.

Mr. Speaker, the approach that we have demanded of OSHA for years is to proactively work in the workplace to ensure that it is safe, and we will continue to do that under this new administration. I urge my colleagues to overturn OSHA's unlawful power grab.

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

Mr. Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I call up House Resolution 150 and ask for its immediate consideration.

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

General Leave

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous materials on House Resolution 150, currently under consideration.

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to bring forward this rule on behalf of the Rules Committee. The rule provides for consideration of H.R. 998, the SCRUB Act, and H.J. Res. 83, a resolution disapproving a Department of Labor rule relating to employee recordkeeping.

The rule provides for 1 hour of debate for each piece of legislation, equally divided between the chairman and ranking member of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform and the

chairman and ranking member of the Education and the Workforce Committee. The rule also provides for a motion to recommit for both pieces of underlying legislation. Additionally, the rule makes in order 12 amendments--11 from our friends across the aisle--to the SCRUB Act.

Yesterday, the Rules Committee had the opportunity to hear from Chairman Chaffetz and Congressman Cartwright on behalf of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, and Congressmen Byrne and Courtney on behalf of the Education and the Workforce Committee.

Both pieces of legislation before us today take steps to remove unnecessary burdens that the government has levied on hardworking Americans from coast to coast. The regulatory burden in this country is staggering. In fact, the Code of Federal Regulations spans more than 178,000 pages and contains more than 1 million regulatory restrictions.

Let's let that sink in for just a moment, Mr. Speaker. Let's think about that for a second. 178,000 pages and over 1 million regulatory restrictions. An average of nearly 12,000 new restrictions are added each year.

Let me be clear. Some regulations are necessary. They are completely what we need to have. I don't believe that all regulation is bad. So before we go down that path, let me just say that this is a fact, and we can continue this.

I believe we need clean air, clean water, smart standards for how we handle nuclear energy, and worker protections, just to name a few. I also believe that we have allowed the regulatory scheme to run amok. Congress has ceded power to agencies, which have implemented more and more regulations, oftentimes with less and less benefit to Americans.

Far too many regulations offer our citizens minimal benefits at confounding cost. Taxpayers and businesses alike are withering under regulations that are outdated, irrelevant, and nonsensical.

Do we really need a regulation to mandate what kind of latch a baker uses on a flour bin? Do we really want to tell people that their dishwashers are forbidden to use enough water to actually clean their dishes, forcing them to wash their dishes twice rather than it actually conserving water?

Unfortunately, these stories aren't works of fiction. They are real regulations put in place by Federal agencies. We have to take steps to restore common sense to the regulatory process and clean up the regulation roster.

It is time we identify and abolish those regulations that are pointless, those that prevent people from doing their jobs, and those that are inefficient and ineffective. The SCRUB Act, Mr. Speaker, takes steps to do just that and contributes to our efforts to rein in overregulation.

The SCRUB Act, introduced by my friend from Missouri, Congressman Jason Smith, establishes a bipartisan Retrospective Regulatory Review Commission to identify unnecessary rules that are hindering economic growth. The commission will then identify which rules need to be repealed immediately and which ones can be addressed by more flexible procedures outlined in the legislation.

The commission will report these findings to Congress, and Congress can then vote on these recommendations and take steps either to begin immediately repealing regulations or implementing a CutGo process.

Importantly, the commission created by the SCRUB Act will also ensure that redundant regulations from different agencies will be reviewed. Currently, agencies implement their directives absent a systemwide view, meaning that overlapping and even conflicting regulations are enacted far too often.

From conversations with my constituents in northeast Georgia, I have witnessed how overregulation is stifling growth in our communities. The remedy for this economic anemia is to get unnecessary regulations off the books and, instead, focus on enforcing regulations that are actually achieving benefits for our neighbors.

The second piece of legislation that this rule provides for also returns us to reasonable policies that reinstate the spirit of the law. H.J. Res. 83, introduced by my fellow Rules Committee member, Congressman Byrne from Alabama, utilizes the Congressional Review Act to overturn a rule from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, or OSHA.

Worker protections are critically important, yet they lose their purpose when they fail to protect workers and jobs effectively. Too often, OSHA forgets that mission, and the rule we are talking about today is the latest example of misguided regulatory zeal.

In the waning days of the previous administration, OSHA put forth a final rule implementing punitive standards on employers, a move that contradicts the underlying statute. Under the law, employers are required to record and maintain logs of workplace injuries and illnesses that occur during a 5-year period; however, the employers can only be cited for recordkeeping violations within a 6-month time period.

Now, think about what was just said here. They have to keep it for 5 years, but they can only be cited for violations within a 6-month time period.

This arrangement is constructive. Logs should be kept up to date so that businesses can make informed decisions about health and safety in the workplace. This requirement encourages businesses to improve safety measures in a timely manner. However, the previous administration decided to rewrite the law through regulation in a way that penalizes and burdens small businesses without achieving meaningful benefit. OSHA finalized a rule that would extend the threat of penalty for recordkeeping violations up to 5 years.

Aside from ignoring existing law and court decisions that directly contradict this new regulation, OSHA has chosen to punish small businesses for paperwork violations rather than focusing resources on improving worker safety.

We can agree that keeping our workplaces safe is nonnegotiable, but OSHA has repeatedly overstepped its mission in order to collect fines and apply oppressive rules at the expense of opportunities to cultivate healthier working conditions. It is time to bring this regulatory mischief to an end, which is why I am glad to see this resolution of disapproval to overturn the most recent OSHA overstep.

Mr. Speaker, both the SCRUB Act and the resolution of disapproval provided for by this rule take commonsense steps to unlock the regulatory shackles Federal agencies have put on our economy and taxpayers.

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

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

Mr. Speaker, I enjoy coming down here. I love being a part of debating and coming here to the floor. My friend from Florida and I do that quite regularly in the Committee on Rules, and it is a good thing. He has brought up a lot of bills over the last month. He listed out a list of horribles that was all discussed on this floor. I would encourage everyone to go back and look at the other side, as Paul Harvey used to say, and the rest of the story. So for all the list of horribles, Mr. Speaker, we also need to balance on the votes that were cast on this floor and the debate had on this floor was not a one-sided affair. It was two, and the applicants were going.

The other thing that just struck me, Mr. Speaker, was this, especially dealing with the CRA, the records. It was interesting to see that this was a carefully thought-out proposal. It was not a carefully thought-out proposal. It was a reaction to a 2012 court case, the Volks case, in which the three D.C. Appellate Court judges, including Henderson, Brown, and Garland, said: OSHA, you can't do this, you can't go back and maintain the records and then only be able--what the law actually says is, punish within 6 months of this.

So this is not long and thought out. It was a way, as was established in the Volks case, actually the case said: ``We do not believe Congress''--these were the judges speaking--``expressly established a statute of limitations only to implicitly encourage the Secretary to ignore it.''

So this goes back to the heart, Mr. Speaker. If we are wanting to discuss the face of a Republican majority that is listening to the Constitution and the American people saying we need relief from some of these regulatory burdens in which good people--I will never not state that good people work in these agencies, but when you give good people a job, and you tell them to go do something and to sit in their cubicles or sit in their offices and say how can I come up with more regulatory, they are going to do it. Americans are the best workers in the world. They are going to use their talents.

The problem is when you put them in a position in which many times their talents do not equal what is happening in the real world. Mr. Speaker, you have seen that in your State. I have seen that in my State. In fact, we have seen it in Florida, as well, and other States. It is simply bringing us back to commonsense reasoning in this in saying why, when you cannot by law punish this, why are you keeping it?

The court actually also made an interesting statement as well in this, and in one of the footnotes it said: ``That OSHA did not cite Volks for a failure to retain injury records when that is the only conduct for which the statute of limitations would not have clearly expired suggests that OSHA had, at some point, correctly understood that an unmade record cannot be said to have not been retained and that an employer's obligations with respect to making and keeping records are distinct.''

The idea that you are somehow going to harm recordkeeping here--which is a separate violation, by the way, which has nothing to do with the keeping of the records 5 years, let's at least get this process straight here. If you do not, as an employer, record workplace injuries and record these incidents, you are in an issue there. You are violating the law there. So let's look at this.

OSHA has a great place. It should be the teaching arm. It should be the encouraging arm for every employer to look to for best practices and standards on how to do what I believe every employer here inherently gets up every morning wanting to do. They do not want to have a workforce that is hurt, maimed, or put at risk in their jobs every day.

Instead, OSHA has morphed, over time, and this body is partially to blame. It has morphed into something that, frankly, has left its Occupational Safety and Health Administration. It has become punitive. It has become a way of not being helpful, but yet actually hurtful in the marketplace.

So as we look at this, as we talk about this--and I appreciate my friend from Florida, and he makes a good case for his side--I am going to simply make the case for our side that when you look at regulatory burdens that shouldn't be there, when you are looking at it, as we just talked about, where every regulatory burden does not come down to clean air and clean water. Every regulatory burden we talk about does not come down to clean water, clean air, or working on airplanes or anything else. There are some that just simply are in the way in business. Like I mentioned earlier in my talk concerning how the linchpin on a baker's can actually should work. Really, Mr. Speaker?

So in this issue, let's continue to move how we are, let's continue to put forward commonsense regulations. We can disagree, and that is why that vote total on that board will show up in just a little while. But at the end of the day, who is on your side? It is the Republican majority who says: let's get to work safely, helpful, let's make sure everybody has the opportunity to continue to do what they intended to do, but do so in a sense that makes sense and doesn't continue to be punitive.

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

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

As my friend from Florida just said, I think we can sum it up very easily right here on this discussion. And, no, I did not choose not to continue the other quotes in the ruling which were, again, pretty amazing. I will just say

this. The reason is because I was saving it for now.

They said: Well, you can go ahead and do a new regulation you can make them keep for 5 years. But as an Old Scripture taught me years ago: all things may be lawful, but not all things are profitable. You can do some things, but, in the end, are they really getting at the end result of what OSHA is supposed to do? Are you protecting employers and employees? Are you making the workplace safer? And right here, we are just not seeing that.

I think what is also interesting as we look at this is let's just have common sense in this. You still cannot punish up to 6 months. The court actually even said also, as well, as much the same on page 13 of their opinion.

I think what we have to look at here is, in looking at this, let's talk about the issues of common sense; let's talk about regulatory burden that works instead of regulatory burden that does not.

I reserve the balance of my time.

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

As we come to the close of this time of rule debate, I think we have laid this out. I think, again, it is very clear, Mr. Speaker, what we determine and what we go forward with in the process.

As we move forward, it is interesting to me--and I would be, too, if I were in the minority and didn't really have a plan except the one that has been tearing up the health insurance market, that has been hurting others. And now as we look to actually make movement on a replacement and repeal of that, I would say that I would watch for divisions. I would watch for cracks and the fissures. I would do whatever I could.

But the truth of the matter is that, over the next month, in this body, we are going to move forward with what we have said we are going to do. We are going to be working on those aspects. We are going to be bringing it to the floor, and the American people can make the judgment for themselves.

People will continue to discuss. It is healthy in our country to have that discussion. It is healthy that we move forward. It is also healthy we examine all of the facts.

This rule today, though, simply deals with common sense. Let's look at our regulatory burden. Let's look at issues that--again, it is one thing to look at a rule that is there for protection. Workplace safety is enhanced by making you record what is going on and making you be able to then correct what may be a problem in your business. But simply keeping records for 5 years when you can't be punished but for 6 months of those is simply putting a burden on business to keep records that are really at the end of the day not accomplishing your bottom line.

It goes back to what I said earlier, Mr. Speaker. I believe that OSHA is a valuable organization when doing what it is supposed to be doing: protecting workplace safety, doing things that actually matter, doing things that actually help. But many times in my businesses that I go to, they have put in rules over the years that say that we are now in a continuing violation.

In other words, if one time they come in and they say that an electrical outlet is not plugged in properly to an extension cord, you fix that. When they come back 2 or 3 months later and see something on the other side of the building that deals with electrical, then they will say, well, it is a continuing violation, not the violation previous, and they triple the fines.

OSHA now, and the good folks who work there, I believe, truly want to help. They truly have set out best practices. But they have grown to the point where we have allowed them to become not the help that they should be, but are basically and many times a hindrance and a menace to our businesses, from the farms to the factories, to the coal mines, all that. It has just gotten out of hand.

So my discussion, Mr. Speaker, is this. How do you get regulatory burden that actually makes sense?

We are not going to stand here and argue over a rule that makes sense. I will never sit here and say that we should not record workplace injuries and let businessowners then be fined if they are doing something wrong. We will never argue about that.

But when it comes to the point of excessive recordkeeping that, at the end of the day, does nothing except burden the business, how do you explain that as helping workplace safety? If my son is in the pool and can't get to the side and I do nothing, I can have great intentions; but unless I get in and bring him to the side, then I have actually done something.

A rule that has no end result to the bottom line of what you are doing is simply waving and saying, ``Oh, I am doing something,'' instead of getting back to the purpose that OSHA should be about. When businesses and OSHA cannot work together collaboratively to seek and to set a process in which businesses are safer and employees are healthier, then OSHA is failing and they have become punitive in nature.

Why don't they come in and help businesses? Why don't they come in and start? And if there is a business that continues the process of being bad actors in the marketplace, then take them out, fine them, do what you need to do. But I, myself, believe that most businessowners-- and I was one at one point--that we don't go in every day wanting to hurt employees. We don't want to do that. We want to have a safe workplace that presents a good product, that presents a good service, that presents the activity that continues our economic engine.

Let's quit defending rules that don't work. Let's quit wasting time defending rules and having our agencies in this city determine that all they want to do is generate rules because that is their job description. Let's see the things that actually work. If they want to be policy experts, then let them run for office. But if you are going to at least look at it, do it by the law.

Mr. Speaker, these rules before us today provide two very important bills that take steps to get our economic engine going again. They do, as we have talked about, look at unnecessary rules. They look at things that need to be examined.

But we also can't simply pretend existing nonsensical regulations don't exist, because they are being enforced at the expense of innovators and job creators across the country, and they are being enforced without using any common sense.

A case in point, did you know that trains have to have an F painted on the front of them so that people can tell which end is the front? I don't know about you, but I believe Americans can tell the front from the back of a train.

We have got to identify existing business regulations like this that are outdated and simply don't make sense

anymore and start taking steps to repeal them. The bills before us today are a step in the right direction.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to support this rule and the underlying bill.

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

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

Mr. Chairman, my amendment would protect all rules relating to the enforcement of the Clean Air Act, which are in danger now under H.R. 998, the SCRUB Act, which seeks to authorize a brand new $30 million Presidential commission of unelected and unaccountable bureaucrats to wipe out agency rules across the whole field of government.

Mr. Chairman, last night in this Chamber, the President of the United States came and articulated policy areas where he said his administration ``wants to work with Members of both parties.'' One of these was to promote clean air and clean water. I was happy to hear it because earlier in the day he signed an executive order to clear the way for weakening safe drinking water standards through redefinition of which small bodies of water are covered under the Clean Water Act.

Now, the amendment I propose provides a chance for all of us to start fresh in demonstrating our seriousness about this new bipartisan commitment to protect the water we drink and the air that we breathe.

The SCRUB Act proposes to create a commission to do what Federal agencies and commissions already do, which is to review and update their rules. That is why a lot of us are deeply skeptical about spending $30 million to create a new roving commission to hack away at rules protecting the public interest.

This commission would be made up of five members appointed directly by the President at his discretion and four members by the President from congressional nomination, too, from each party.

The advocates for this legislation say it is not about dismantling the rules that protect the water that our children drink or the air that our children and our grandparents breathe or the food that all of us eat. It is just about getting rid of unnecessary and obsolete and profligate regulations. And I take them at their word that that is what it is about.

So let's all agree that the new supercommission that you seek to establish under the SCRUB Act will not touch, in any way, the rules adopted under the Clean Air Act. If that is not the purpose of this legislation, to undermine the Clean Air Act regime, as its advocates repeatedly insist, then there should be no problem having us formalize this commitment on a bipartisan basis.

Right now, the SCRUB Act does not explicitly protect clean air--or clean water, for that matter--from the prospects of a roving bureaucratic attack. Thus, it exposes all of us to unnecessary harm, threatening to scrub away the rules that protect the air we breathe.

What will that mean for 17 million Americans with asthma, for the millions of people with lung cancer and other respiratory diseases, for more than 30,000 people struggling with cystic fibrosis? All of these people are potentially in danger simply because of an overblown ideological attack on regulations, which are just the rules that we adopt as a constitutional democracy to protect ourselves from harm.

In answer to objections about the bill, the majority says that Congress will still have its say; but if you read it carefully, you see that congressional authority has actually been placed in a straitjacket. The bill requires an up-or-down vote on the commission's recommendations as a complete omnibus package rather than voting on each proposal individually.

So if you agreed with loosening some regulations, for example, in the Title X Family Planning program, which has a lot of rules, but you don't want to eviscerate the regulatory infrastructure under the Clean Air Act or the Clean Water Act, you would have to vote on the entire package at once. This makes Congress into an embarrassing rubber stamp for a nine-person body effectively controlled by the executive branch.

Dear colleagues, let's not play games with the health and safety of our constituents. If this bill passes as is, rules that govern the very air we breathe would be subject to the SCRUB Act's unelected, unaccountable, and unbounded practitioners. My amendment closes a gaping and dangerous hole in the legislation. I ask my colleagues to think about public health and safety first, and not the magical thinking and scientifically ungrounded cost-benefit analysis promised by the SCRUB Act.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I yield such time as he may consume to my colleague from Maryland (Mr. Cummings).

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

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Speaker, I have a motion to recommit at the desk.

I am, indeed.

Mr. Speaker, this is the final amendment to the bill, which will not kill the bill or send it back to the committee. If adopted, the bill will immediately proceed to final passage, as amended.

The purpose of this amendment is simply to carve out from the provisions of the legislation any rules that we have adopted in order to prevent conflicts of interest and in order to promote financial transparency and disclosure by executive branch employees.

Mr. Speaker, since I became a Member of the House in January and joined the Judiciary Committee, we have been subjected to an onslaught of bills seeking to free corporate polluters, lead paint and asbestos manufacturers, and other abusers of the rights of consumers and citizens from having to face the people they injure in court and having to comply with the rules that have been worked out over the decades to protect our air, our water, our land, our people, our health, and our workplaces.

In most cases, we don't even get hearings on these bills. In the Judiciary Committee, I have not seen a victim of toxic torts or lead poisoning or medical malpractice testify, but their rights are being flattened every single day by the legislative bulldozer that is running amuck.

These bills are flying at us with lightning speed--no hearings, no real debate, no time to study the measures, no time to do the proper information gathering for our constituents.

Now the SCRUB Act would establish an unelected roving commission with unlimited subpoena power. It would be controlled by the President who gets to appoint a clean majority--five members at his own discretion; and four more, two Republicans and two Democrats. So when they say it is bipartisan, remember what that means: Seven spots for majority appointees and two spots for minority appointees. More importantly, this roving commission can be lobbied behind closed doors by the special interests that want to splice and dice the regulations that we have worked out over the decades to protect the public against harm.

In all of the rules that our democracy has put in place--not just old rules, not just obsolete rules, not just silly rules--all of them are going to be in the crosshairs of this roving commission--no exceptions, no firewalls, no protections for rules governing public health and safety--like the Clean Water Act or like the Clean Air Act. They just rejected the amendment to carve that out. There are no protections, significantly, and this is what the amendment is about, for rules guaranteeing transparency in government and integrity in government.

My motion to recommit, Mr. Speaker, would incorporate into the underlying legislation an amendment that I advanced in committee that goes to the heart of the crisis of confidence in Washington, in America today. I think every Member of this body can support it without betraying any of their principles or their party. On the contrary, I think it strengthens all of our principles and it strengthens our parties by building public confidence in the political system as a whole. It makes sure we can keep draining the swamp, as the President of the United States said in this Chamber last night.

My amendment states very simply that the Commission may not target for destruction any rules relating to any law governing a potential conflict of interest of an employee or officer of the executive branch, or any law governing the financial disclosures of executive branch employees, and bribery.

Right now, we know there is a dangerous crisis in popular confidence in the national government. This administration has brought to Washington a web of complicated conflicts of interest, real or potential, attendant to a global business empire that engages in business with foreign governments, foreign and domestic corporations, and a huge host of regulated entities.

Just a mile from where we sit today, for example, the Trump Hotel is renting out guest rooms, ballrooms, meeting rooms, and whole floors to foreign governments, embassies, and large corporations in flagrant violation of the Emoluments Clause, article 1, section 9, which requires the President to come ask us--Congress--for permission to receive payments from foreign governments.

They even have a director of diplomatic sales now. Furthermore, the standard lease that the Trump Hotel has with the General Services Administration forbids any elected official of the United States Government or the District of Columbia from deriving any profit or value from the lease. Clearly, there is a breach in this lease right now. The problem is that the President is not only the tenant, he is, for all intents and purposes, the landlord too because he controls the GSA and appoints its director. So President-landlord Donald Trump would have to go to court to sue tenant businessman Donald Trump for breaching the lease by collecting money under it as a public official. This just scratches the surface of a welter of ethical conflicts.

Mr. Speaker, this is the final amendment to the bill which will not kill the bill or send it back to committee. If adopted, the bill will immediately proceed to final passage as amended.

Since I became a member of this House in January, my Freshman colleagues and I have been engaged in two activities. First, we've been sitting in hearings and trying to make sense of bills that fundamentally change the legal and regulatory structure of America--and we've done so without hearing from witnesses, without time to study measures, and without time to do the proper information gathering that I believe is necessary to serve our various constituencies. Second, we've come to the floor at the end of each day to cast votes on deregulation. This house has been in the business of loosening rules on everything. We've

made it easier to pollute, easier to harm consumers--all in the name of cutting regulatory costs. And so it's no surprise that a bill like this sailed through the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform to the floor.

This bill would establish an unelected commission with unlimited subpoena power and partisan majority to chop through the Federal Register with a chain saw. There are no exceptions, no firewalls, no protections for rules and regulations governing health and safety and there are no protections for rules guaranteeing transparency in government.

My motion to recommit would incorporate into the underlying legislation, an amendment I offered in committee. It's straightforward and unburdensome. In fact, when I offered it in committee one of my colleagues on the other side indicated that the priority of this bill is ``major rules with massive costs.''

If passed, this MTR would make certain that no provision of the SCRUB Act could be used to eliminate rules relating to laws that govern conflicts of interest of executive branch officers or employees. That's it--it reinforces existing law and clarifies provisions of this bill.

Surely, we can agree that rules designed to help maintain the public trust in those representing them in the Executive Branch are sacred enough to be explicitly protected. And if anyone should ask why it's so important, we don't have to look too far. This administration is a walking, talking billboard for the need to protect laws that protect the public trust.

I urge my colleagues to support this common sense measure.

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

Mr. Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.

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

Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to H.J. Res. 83, the Congressional Review Act resolution of disapproval that will undermine workplace safety and health. It does so by overturning a clarifying rule issued by OSHA on December 9, 2016, to ensure accurate occupational injury and illness reporting.

Now, first of all, it is strange that we are reversing a rule through the Congressional Review Act that creates no new compliance or reporting obligation, imposes no new costs. It simply gives OSHA the tools to enforce an employer's continuing obligation to record injuries and illnesses.

Spurred by the court of appeals decision, which blocked OSHA from citing continuing violations outside the 6-month statute of limitations, OSHA updated its recordkeeping rule. This new rule makes it clear that employers have a continuing obligation to record serious injuries and illnesses on an OSHA Log if they failed to comply with the requirement to record the injury at the time the injury or illness occurred.

Since the enactment of OSHA in 1970, accurate data on workplace injuries and illnesses has been recognized as an

important tool for protecting worker safety and health.

Since 1972, employers in higher hazard industries have been required to record the occurrence of each serious occupational injury or illness within 7 days on a ``Log of Work-Related Injuries and Illnesses.''

An annual summary of this law must be posted for 3 months starting in February of each year in a conspicuous place where employees' frequent records must be kept for 5 years.

While most employers faithfully comply with OSHA's rules, there are a number of well-documented incentives for employers to underreport workplace injuries. These incentives include lower workers' compensation rates, more favorable treatment in public contracting, and a lower chance of having a future OSHA inspection.

Underreporting means that workplace hazards are masked, making it less likely that employers or employees become aware of patterns that would indicate the need to take corrective actions to prevent future injuries. If injuries and illnesses are not on the log, OSHA may overlook hazards at a worksite during an inspection and consequently leaving workers exposed to correctable dangers.

Mr. Speaker, because of underfunding, OSHA only has sufficient resources to inspect a workplace once every 140 years on average. So the likelihood that they might show up in the next 6 months is obviously remote. To be effective, OSHA must have reliable injury and illness data to target its scarce resources towards work sites where employees are facing the greatest dangers. Understated injury rates may mean that OSHA will bypass work sites that need to be inspected.

Without reliable recordable injury rates, private contractors and public sector officials will not be able to make sufficiently informed decisions when assessing the safety records of prospective contractors and subcontractors.

Mr. Speaker, OSHA's practice for the last 40 years and the decisions of the bipartisan and independent OSHA Review Commission have upheld the principle that every day an employer fails to record an injury was a continuing violation for the purpose of calculating time limits under OSHA's statute of limitations. That is not totally open-ended but limited to the 5-year requirement that employers are required to maintain these injury records.

In spite of this 40-year precedent, a 2012 D.C. Court of Appeals decision known as Volks Constructors upended the 40-year precedent when it held that OSHA did not have the authority to issue a citation for an occurrence of a violation that extended beyond the 6-month statute of limitations as set forth in OSHA. The court noted that OSHA's previous regulation provided for no specific articulated continuing obligation to record injuries beyond 7 days.

There was a concurrent opinion in the Volks decision which made it clear that a regulation, which expressly provides for an employer's continuing obligation, would be lawful.

Now, when you talk about what the court decided and what Mr. Garland wrote, that was on the previous regulation, not on this one.

Informed by the guidance of the court, OSHA has issued a new rule which does make it clear that an employer's duty to maintain an accurate record of workplace injuries and illnesses is, in fact, an ongoing obligation.

So let's be clear, eliminating this rule means that employers who want to underreport injuries will face no sanctions if the injuries go back more than 6 months. Rolling back this rule essentially creates a vast safe harbor for noncompliance and creates the perverse incentive for underreporting.

The premise behind the resolution today is that it is unlawful. If that is the case, Congress should repeal the regulation. But no court has reviewed this new rule, only the predecessor. There has been no appeal of the new rule that has been lodged since the new rule was issued in December.

The proper course of action is to have the courts decide the legal question since arguably they are in the best position to interpret the laws and evaluate the precedents. This especially makes sense since one of the concurring opinions in the Volks case identified abundant legal precedent for tolling the statute of limitations when there are continuing violations in other laws that are nearly identical to the reporting requirements in OSHA. These include the Consumer Credit Reporting Act and the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act.

On the other hand, if the purpose of passing this resolution is just to eliminate the possibility of OSHA's clarifying rule could ever be found lawful, then it is obvious that H.J. Res. 83 is an ideological attack without any regard for consequences to worker safety.

On the other hand, if there is a bona fide view that OSHA lacks the adequate legal basis for the rule, then the constructive solution would be to amend OSHA and provide for the clarifying statutory authority. We should not be repealing the rule because we know what happens when this deterrent is eliminated. After OSHA lost its authority to enforce the violations outside the 6-month window under the Volks decision, there was a 75 percent reduction in the number of citations issued for underreporting, and that is according to OSHA data.

So, Mr. Speaker, there has been no hearing held on this final rule or this resolution. There has been no assessment of the consequences of underreporting of injuries which will occur if this resolution is adopted, and there has been no evaluation of any alternative way to ensure accountability for employers who flout the law. There has just been a headlong rush to push this resolution to the floor just a few days after its filing.

So given the complete lack of deliberation regarding this new rule, this Congressional Review Act resolution is premature, at best, but it will definitely have regrettable consequences to the health and safety of the people that we are charged to protect.

Mr. Speaker, I urge a ``no'' vote.

I reserve the balance of my time.

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

Mr. Speaker, prior to yielding, I just want to make a comment that the court struck down the previous rule, not the rule which is the subject of this resolution. The previous rule did not have a specific citation about a continuing obligation. This rule does. The excerpts from the Garland concurring decision says:

None of this is to say, as the petitioner suggests in its

opening brief, that a statute of limitations like OSHA's

statute of limitations can never admit to a continuing

violation for a failure to act. To the contrary, where a

regulation or statute imposes a continuing obligation to act,

a party can continue to violate it until that obligation is

satisfied.

This regulation specifically cites the obligation as a continuing obligation.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson Lee).

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume before I yield to the gentleman from Florida.

The law requires the keeping the records for 5 years. If there are bogus records, you ought to have an obligation to keep them correct. That has been the interpretation for 40 years, up until this decision.

We need the money to do their job. If they do their job, if we provide them with some funding, they can show up more than once every 140-some years.

We keep talking about a court decision that affected another resolution, not this one.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Soto).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Takano), a hardworking member of the Committee on Education and the Workforce.

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

Mr. Speaker, there are 2,000 inspectors at OSHA. There are 8 million work sites. We can't expect them to visit every 6 months when the funding only allows them to visit each workplace once every 140-some years. You would have to show up at each place every 6 months to catch these violations within that timeframe.

Mr. Speaker, for 40 years, the obligation to record these injuries has been considered a continuing obligation. If the purpose is to overrule the regulation because it is inconsistent with the statute, then we should fix the statute. But this resolution just gives relief to those who fail to record injuries and illnesses in violation of their legal obligation to do so.

As Americans discover the plan to repeal this OSHA rule through a resolution of disapproval, there are a lot of professional organizations, in addition to the ones that have already been introduced, that have been alarmed by this resolution.

The American Public Health Association has written:

Injury and illness records are invaluable for employers,

workers and OSHA to monitor the cause and trends of illnesses

and injuries. Such data is essential for determining

appropriate interventions to prevent other workers from

experiencing the same harm. . . . For decades, the public

health community and government agencies have identified a

widespread undercount of work-related injuries and illnesses.

This includes investigations by the GAO, the Bureau of Labor

Statistics and academic researchers. H.J. Res. 83

will have dire consequences for injury prevention and

undermine 40 years of occupational injury surveillance in the

United States.

The AFL-CIO has written:

In the absence of enforcement, there is no question that

the underreporting of injuries, already a widespread problem,

will get much worse, undermining safety and health and

putting workers in danger.

A group of 66 professional workplace safety groups wrote:

The OSHA clarifying rule on maintaining accurate records

imposes no new costs to business, but is critical to assuring

that workplace fatalities and injuries are prevented.

Mr. Speaker, I include these letters in the Record.

Mr. Speaker, I ask for a ``no'' vote.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Chair, I claim the time in opposition.

Mr. Chairman, as we pointed out yesterday, the SCRUB Act requires the commission to identify regulations that should be repealed. The commission focuses on rules and regulations that are out of date, no longer useful, and otherwise unnecessary or obsolete.

As I stated yesterday, no regulations should be exempt from this bill. Not all consumer protection regulations are created equal. If the regulation is important, effective and still relevant, then let it stand. If the regulation is not effective, no longer valuable and unnecessary, then why keep it around?

This amendment is just another wrong-headed carve-out that will end up hurting student loan borrowers more than it could possibly help them.

And for those reasons, Mr. Chairman, I urge my colleagues to oppose this amendment, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, everybody wants to see gainful employment for our students, our college students especially.

Those institutions that have preyed on these students also are as a result of a regulatory environment that has allowed that to happen. That same regulatory environment would be under review, under oversight by the SCRUB Act. For those reasons particularly, we need to make sure that we do not have this amendment, but, more importantly, that we do allow for the underlying bill.

For those reasons, again, I urge opposition to this amendment by my colleague.

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

Mr. Chair, this amendment would exclude from the commission's review regulations under title I, part A of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, as amended.

ESEA provides financial assistance to local educational agencies and schools with high numbers or high percentages of children from low- income families to help ensure that all children meet challenging State academic standards.

No regulation should be exempt from the review process, especially those regulations that impact low-income students across the country. It is imperative that we have smart, targeted, cost-effective regulations that actually help the people that need the help.

Imposing ineffective regulations on schools and educational agencies cost taxpayers money--this must be given the opportunity for oversight, as is given under the SCRUB Act--and overburden our already exhausted educators, and can cause more harm rather than good.

Why not take a look at these regulations and just consider whether they are working? And, if they are, then let's leave them alone. But if not, then, let's change them there.

There is no reason why we should create, again, a special carve-out from the commission's consideration. For those reasons, Mr. Chairman, I urge my colleagues to oppose this amendment.

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

Mr. Chairman, since 1965, when the ESEA was passed, we have gone from chalkboards to iPads. Things have changed. The regulatory environment has changed.

May I remind my colleagues that, under the SCRUB Act, the bipartisan review committee would make these recommendations for changes in the regulatory scheme to Congress, who would have the final say as to whether any regulations need to be changed.

Again, for those reasons, Mr. Chairman, I urge my colleagues to oppose this amendment.

I yield back the balance of my time.

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

Mr. Chairman, this bill, again, requires the commission to identify regulations which should be repealed. The commission focuses on rules and regulations that are, again, out-of-date, no longer necessary, no longer useful, or otherwise obsolete.

Regulations promulgated under the Clean Air Act need to be examined and updated just as much as any other regulations. Reviewing and revisiting regulations promulgated decades ago allows the opportunity to improve upon existing standards.

According to the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the Environmental Protection Agency regulations cost the public $353 billion a year. Given the high costs associated with EPA regulations, excluding these regulations from this review process just doesn't make any sense. $353 billion--more than one-third of a trillion dollars--needs review.

Importantly, this bill has several significant procedural hurdles to pass before any regulation would be repealed: the commission must determine the regulation is no longer necessary; the commission must recommend repealing the regulation; and, most significantly, Congress would need to vote to get rid of the regulation. No regulation would be repealed without a vote by Congress.

This is reinstating the authority that this body has, and for these foregoing reasons, Mr. Chairman, I urge my colleagues to oppose this amendment.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, this bill, when passed, does nothing to remove any regulation. What it does is exactly what we were elected to do: provide transparency and oversight over existing regulations to determine whether they are necessary or not. For those reasons, Mr. Chairman, I would again urge opposition to this amendment.

I yield back the balance of my time.

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

Mr. Chairman, this amendment is the prime example of why we need the SCRUB Act. ``Federal Management of Programs that Serve Tribes'' was added to the Government Accountability Office biannual high-risk report released earlier this month. The GAO reported: ``For nearly a decade, we, along with inspectors general, special commissions, and others, have reported that federal agencies have ineffectively administered Indian education and health care programs and inefficiently fulfilled their responsibilities for managing the development of Indian energy resources.''

Look, the GAO found numerous challenges, including poor conditions at schools, inadequate healthcare oversight, and mismanagement of energy resources that limit the ability of tribes to create economic benefits and improve the well-being of their communities.

Clearly, the Federal Government is not getting this right, and we need to exercise our oversight. We need more attention to this issue, not less.

Exempting regulations relating to tribal governments is simply wrong. It keeps in place outdated and ineffective regulations that are burdening our tribal governments. For these reasons, Mr. Chairman, I urge my colleagues to oppose this amendment.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, the regulations that we are talking about in the GAO report that are so ineffective, that have been a failure, are those regulations that have been imposed by unelectable bureaucrats in the bureaucracy that we are trying to reach back and gain not only oversight, but transparency as well. The SCRUB Act needs to be there for that particular purpose, and, for those reasons, this amendment should be opposed.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, let me begin by saying that my colleague from Maryland, the ranking member of the full committee, has been and continues to be probably one of the strongest advocates for whistleblower protections, and I thank him and laud him for that. But I must disagree with him in regard to this amendment.

No one regulation is the perfect and ideal regulation that will last into perpetuity. All regulations need to be reviewed, and that is what this rule does. The commission focuses on rules and regulations that are out of date, no longer useful, and are otherwise unnecessary or obsolete.

Regulations that were promulgated with the original intent of protecting whistleblowers need updating and consideration as much as any other regulation does. Reviewing and revisiting regulations promulgated decades ago creates the opportunity to improve upon existing standards.

Excluding whistleblower regulations from this exercise means that whistleblowers would lose out on the chance to streamline regulations and reduce burdens that might be harming whistleblowers. In fact, this process could actually help protect whistleblowers in its oversight and transparency.

Importantly, this bill has several significant procedural hurdles to pass before any regulation would be repealed. The commission must determine that the regulation is no longer necessary; the commission would then recommend repealing the regulation; and, again, most significantly, Congress would need to vote on the regulation in order to get rid of it.

Again, for these reasons, I urge my colleagues to oppose this amendment.

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

Mr. Chairman, again, nothing in the SCRUB Act does anything to remove any of the protections that already exist for whistleblowers. This essentially makes it open for review, but, more importantly, as I agree with my colleague from Maryland, we need to protect the whistleblowers. And if it be the focus of Congress to do just that, then we must, irrespective of the SCRUB Act, focus on strengthening those laws that protect our whistleblowers to make our government run more transparently, more effectively, and more efficiently.

Again, I urge my colleagues to oppose this amendment.

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

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

Mr. Speaker, it is interesting because creatively my friend from Maryland is trying to do unsuccessfully what they have done all along unsuccessfully, and that is just create a carve-out of regulations for review by the SCRUB Act.

Now, what regulation is so perfect it should never be reviewed again? None. And that is why the SCRUB Act is so important. You see, this bill went through regular order.

In the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, we went through a markup, and my friends across the aisle had an opportunity to make their amendments. We came to the floor. They had an opportunity to make their amendments. Two were accepted--made it a bipartisan bill.

But, more importantly, let's take the impact of this bill and what it does to our economy. The Small Business Administration says that annually each business must pay $20,000 a year in compliance costs because of our regulatory environment. The Competitive Enterprise Institute says that that is $15,000 per household.

Members, we were elected to be accountable to those who elected us; not to allow some unaccountable, unelectable bureaucracy to make rules and regulations that have filled up 178,000 pages of the Code of Federal Regulations.

Let us do what we were elected to do, and reach back and take that authority that we have given to these regulatory agencies. Let us pass this SCRUB Act so that we will have the opportunity to not only review, but eliminate those regulations that are no longer necessary, inefficient, and ineffective.

Members, I ask for you to oppose this motion and vote for the underlying SCRUB Act and let us regain the authority that the people have given us.

I yield back the balance of my time.