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. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, the most important words in our Constitution are the first three words, ``We the People.'' With those words, our Founding Fathers laid out the vision, the principles, and the foundation for our new Nation's government. It would be, as President Lincoln so eloquently described, ``a government of the people, by the people, and for the people.'' It would not be a government by and for the privileged. It would not be a government by and for the powerful. It would not be a government by and for the elite, and it certainly would not be an authoritarian government.

I believe it is more important than ever for us to recommit ourselves to that vision, a vision of a nation that measures successes, not at the boardroom table but at the kitchen tables of hard-working Americans across this land, the vision of a nation that derives its power and authority from the people.

In order to do that, we must resist President Trump's dangerous tilt toward authoritarianism. Throughout his candidacy and now within the walls of the White House, President Trump has viciously and repeatedly attacked the media. He has inflamed people's anger toward immigrants, toward religious minorities, toward refugees, and he has undermined or attacked individuals who publicly stand up to him and the shortcomings of his policies. These are four strategies used by authoritarian leaders from time immemorial to consolidate power. These are strategies that are incompatible with our constitutional ``we the people'' construction of government, and we must call out and resist these strategies.

President Trump's authoritarian leanings were there from the beginning. Like many figures throughout history, he rode into office as much on a cult personality as on the merits of his policies. It started with the nicknames and the unrestrained insults, calling opponents crooked and lyin' and phony, calling critics dumb as a rock, incompetent, crazy, or dishonest. He escalated the calls to toss out or hurt protesters at his rallies. At one point, he promised to pay the legal bills of a man arrested for punching a protester at a rally in North Carolina. Then there were the ``lock her up'' chants that he repeated himself, calling for imprisoning a political opponent. Threatening to throw your opponent in jail if you win is a strategy usually seen only with dictators.

Mr. Trump himself best summed up his populist cult personality when he said at one campaign event: ``I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn't lose any voters, OK?'' The scary thought is that he was probably not so far off the mark. This aggressive and unswerving loyalty is a challenge to our ``we the people'' democracy.

Let's take a look at Senior White House Policy Adviser Stephen Miller's declaration on Face the Nation last month. He said: ``Our opponents, the media, and the whole world will soon see as we begin to take further actions, that the powers of the President to protect our country are very substantial and will not be questioned.''

That is an interesting statement to make: The President's powers will not be questioned. What a bold, un-American, authoritarian statement to make because here in America, our Nation, our national government, is premised on the concept that we can challenge our leaders. It is not only a privilege, it is a responsibility. Yet Mr. Trump has repeatedly attacked this fundamental American principle and those who exercise it.

Take, for instance, his attack on freedom of the press. Demosthenes, an ancient Greek statesman, orator, and legal scholar of the third century B.C. once said: ``There is one safeguard known generally to the wise, which is an advantage and security to all, but especially to democracies as against despots--suspicion.''

What Demosthenes was saying is that in a democracy we don't take the statements of our political leaders simply at face value. We test those statements against the facts to find our way to the truth. In the United States, a free and open press is how we exercise that suspicion and find our way to the truth.

Thomas Jefferson believed that. He said: ``Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press.'' Our liberty depends upon the freedom of the press.

Benjamin Franklin echoed that belief when he said: ``Freedom of speech is ever the Symptom as well as the Effect of a good Government.''

John Adams wrote: ``The liberty of the press is essential to the security of the state.'' It is so essential, in fact, that the Founding Fathers enshrined our commitment to a free and open press to the very First Amendment to the Constitution, that ``Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.'' Yet what we have seen time and again from President Trump is an endless attack against the fourth estate, against the press. He said: ``The media is very unfair. They're very biased.'' He complained on FOX News last August.

He attacked the New York Times in that same interview, not for the first or last time, saying: ``You look at The New York Times, I mean the fail--I call it `The Failing New York Times.' ''

Apparently any news story critical of the President is now ``fake news.'' He tweeted in February: ``Any negative polls are fake news.''

And when asked about leaks from the intelligence community during last month's press conference in the East Room, he said: ``The leaks are absolutely real. The news is fake because so much of the news is fake.''

His staff has gotten into the action, too, pushing at one point the Orwellian term, ``alternative facts.'' During an interview on NBC's Meet the Press, Kellyanne Conway said: ``Sean Spicer, our press secretary, gave alternative facts,'' and, in the administration, ``we feel compelled to go out and clear the air and put alternative facts out there.''

The White House has taken their fight with the media so far as to block access to outlets they disagree with, banning outlets such as CNN, POLITICO, the New York Times, and Los Angeles Times from an off- camera press briefing last month.

But of all of President Trump's relentless attacks against the media, the most disturbing to me was when he tweeted in February: ``The FAKE NEWS media (failing @nytimes, @NBCNews, @ABC, @CBS, @CNN) is not my enemy, it is the enemy of the American People!''

President Trump, I have a message for you: A free and open press is not the enemy of the American people. A free and open press is the salvation of our democratic Republic. It is an essential warrior in our Republic against fake news, charlatans, and those who would use fake news and attacks on the press to advance authoritarian government.

I thought my colleague from Arizona, Senator McCain, made a very apt analysis when he said that suppressing free speech is how dictators ``get started . . . when you look at history, the first thing that dictators do is shut down the press.'' Senator McCain went on to say: ``If you want to preserve democracy as we know it, you have to have a free and many times adversarial press.''

So this is a major concern, this attack on the media, and particularly an attack on news organizations that work to vet their reporting before they

share it with the American people. In other words, we are in the ironic situation that the very groups under attack by President Trump are the groups that work hardest to get true facts, actual facts, vetted facts, carefully fact-checked information to the American people. That is the foundation for a national dialogue: carefully vetted information so that we know when we read it, it is reliable. That is the type of news we need more of in this Nation.

Mr. Trump's authoritarian tactics aren't just limited to his war on the media. His second approach is to attack and scapegoat immigrants, religious minorities, and refugees ever since he stood in the lobby of Trump Tower and said:

When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending their

best. . . . They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime.

They're rapists.

Since then President Trump has made it his mission to turn the American people against Mexican immigrants, to make them the enemy. He has talked about the ``bad hombres'' flooding across our southern border, stealing our jobs, committing crimes, and murdering American citizens. In his mind, the people coming from Mexico are all dangerous, violent cartel members transporting an endless supply of drugs across our country in order to ruin America. But this storyline is completely at odds with the facts. First, drug cartels do not ship their products into our country through the backpacks of immigrants.

Recently I traveled with a congressional delegation to the U.S.- Mexico border to examine this issue. The experts on the border told our delegation that drugs come into the United States through freight, in trucks, and through tunnels--not through backpacks. What this means is that a proposal to build a wall, whether it is 20 feet high or 30 feet high, will be absolutely useless in diminishing the flow of drugs into our country.

I will tell you what else they told us. They said that an end zone defense does not work against drugs. If you want to stop the flow of drugs, you have to work carefully with regard to everything from the moment they are being manufactured or shipped into Mexico until they migrate north. That means you have to work in close cooperation with the security agencies of Mexico, with the police, and with the intelligence agencies of Mexico. That cooperation requires a very close coordination between respected partners, and disrespecting the partners of Mexico is the best way to damage the ability to intercept drugs that are coming into the United States.

We also know that the underlying premise of there being a flood of Mexican immigrants coming into our country is false. A 2015 study from the Pew Research Center found that between 2009 and 2014, there was a net outflow of 140,000 Mexican immigrants from the United States. They were migrating from the United States to Mexico, a net outflow. A more recent Pew Study determined that the number of undocumented Mexican immigrants in America has declined by more than 1 million since 2007. If you take the span during the Obama administration, there was an outflow, not an inflow--the exact opposite of the story line the President is presenting.

What about those violent crimes being committed by undocumented criminals? The data does not support the President. In fact, the New York Times reported that ``several studies, over many years, have concluded that immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than people born in the United States.'' Between 1980 and 2010, among men aged 18 to 49, immigrants were one-half to one-fifth as likely to be incarcerated as those born in the United States.

When you look closer, the attacks on immigrants fall apart, as I have pointed out, but that is what authoritarian leaders do. They create a false enemy, and they use the perception of that enemy to generate hate and fear. They use that hate and fear to consolidate power. It is our responsibility as citizens, as the press in the United States, and as legislators to resist this authoritarian strategy of President Trump.

Another of his strategies is to attack religious minorities in our country and abroad. Take for instance his pledge on the campaign trail for a ``total and complete'' shutdown on Muslims entering the United States. As we know, Mr. Trump followed up on this approach after the election by asking Rudy Giuliani to help fashion a legal Muslim ban.

During a FOX News interview, Mr. Giuliani said:

Trump called me up. He said, Put a commission together.

Show me the right way to do it legally.

To attempt to meet constitutional muster, Trump aimed his ban at immigrants from seven Muslim-majority nations.

Rudy Giuliani went on to say in that same FOX News interview:

What we did was we focused on, instead of religion,

danger--the areas of the world that create danger for us,

which is a factual basis, not a religious basis. Perfectly

legal, perfectly sensible. And that's what the ban is based

on.

But, as William Banks, the director of the Institute for National Security and Counterterrorism at Syracuse University, observed, ``Since 9/11, no one has been killed in this country in a terrorist attack by anyone who emigrated from any of the seven countries.''

The President's own Department of Homeland Security recently reported that citizens from the countries listed in the Muslim ban are ``rarely implicated in U.S.-based terrorism.'' In fact, the report concluded that individuals who died in the pursuit of or who were convicted of terrorism were far more likely to be U.S.-born citizens than to be immigrants.

Here is the great irony and the tragedy of President Trump's effort to demonize Muslims: Instead of protecting the United States, he is damaging the security of the United States. His attacks feed perfectly into and therefore strengthen ISIS's recruiting strategy of claiming that the United States is at war with Islam. Video of his speeches and public statements, especially Trump's call for a Muslim ban, has already been featured in ISIS's recruiting tools. In addition, it weakens the Muslim leaders we are seeking to partner with in taking on ISIS. It undermines those leaders' support from their own countries in their cooperating with the United States.

Trump's strategy does double damage to American security, and I wish his impact against religious minorities stopped there. I wish it stopped long before there because it is incompatible with the fundamental premise, the fundamental values of the United States of America, which is religious freedom. Yet, throughout the course of his campaign, he gave voice time and again to the views and opinions of White nationalists and anti-Semites. He did not directly attack the Jewish community, but his White nationalist rhetoric and actions have had the effect of doing it indirectly. When he needs news or information, he turns to the White nationalist Breitbart News--a fake news source which has infamously attacked American Jews with stories like ``Bill Kristol: Republican spoiler, renegade Jew'' and another one that attacked Anne Applebaum of the Washington Post, which read: ``Hell hath no fury like a Polish, Jewish, American elitist scorned.''

But President Trump does not just tap into the Breitbart White nationalist themes; he brought the former executive chair of Breitbart, Steve Bannon, into the White House as his chief strategist and then appointed him to the Principals Committee of the National Security Council. This individual has no business being anywhere near the Capital of the United States and certainly not on the Principals Committee of the National Security Council. Bannon is a man who has not only been embraced by White supremacists for his views, but according to testimony from his ex-wife, he has said he does not want his children going to school with Jewish kids and had once asked a school administrator why there were so many Hanukkah books in the library.

If you think this theme has not had a real effect on our country, you are wrong. When Donald Trump was elected, the KKK and other White nationalist groups celebrated. They felt free to come out of the shadows. They felt bold enough to hold an annual White nationalist conference right here in Washington, DC, at the Ronald Reagan Building, steps from the White House, because they finally felt like they had one of their own in the Oval Office.

These nationalist groups are so emboldened that we have seen more

than 100 bomb threats called in to Jewish community centers around the country since January. We have witnessed the desecration of Jewish headstones in cemeteries in St. Louis and in Philadelphia.

Last month the President, speaking to a roomful of State attorneys general, said he condemned these threats. I applaud him for condemning them. But then he turned around and said: ``You have to be careful, because the reverse could be true.'' What did he mean by that? Commentators have suggested that the President meant by ``the reverse could be true'' that the bomb threats, the Swastika graffiti, and the desecration of Jewish burial sites might actually be the work of Jewish Americans to generate criticism of President Trump. There is no evidence of that, and I certainly do not believe it to be true. What I do believe is that a ``blame the victim'' tactic is reprehensible and in itself an anti-Semitic strategy.

The President has also dedicated a significant amount of time to trying to make the country fear refugees, to demonize refugees. Many of us grew up in a world in which Lady Liberty's words of ``give us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free'' stirred our hearts because, unless you are 100 percent Native American, you are tied in through your parents, your grandparents, your great- grandparents, your ancestors. You are tied to those who immigrated to the United States, who came here, often fleeing persecution, often fleeing famine. This Nation gave them a place to stand and in which to build a new life and thrive and hand down a better, stronger nation to their children. That is a property of our history. That is a value deeply rooted in our hearts.

The President, instead, has dedicated his energy to attacking refugees, those, like our ancestors, who came here, fleeing persecution and fleeing famine, especially Syrian refugees, who are fleeing for their lives in search of a safe haven. He has falsely claimed they represent a ``great Trojan horse'' that threatens the safety of Americans. Mr. Trump says these victims of war have to be subjected to extreme vetting because we have no idea who these people are or where they come from. The fact is that we do know who they are. We know exactly where they come from because before they can come here as refugees, they already go through extreme vetting. It takes 18 months to 2 years of vetting, on average, before refugees are given tickets to come to the United States of America, and if at any point during that 18 to 24 months something does not add up, they do not get the tickets.

Now, if ISIS or another terrorist organization wants to get people who are dangerous into our country, they do not go through an 18- or a 24-month vetting process. No. They come on tourist visas or student visas or business visas. Going through the refugee process would be the worst possible way to do it.

As an analysis by the Migration Policy Institute reminded us in October of 2015, of the 784,000 refugees who have been resettled in our country since September 11, 2001, 3 have been arrested for planning terrorist activities. None of them got past the planning phase, and only one of those three was talking about potential attacks here in the United States. The others were talking about sending money and weapons to al-Qaida. In other words, no one has been injured by those 784,000 refugees.

These are just some of the pieces of the President's authoritarian strategy to demonize groups, to create hate, to create fear, and to try to consolidate power. As a result of his activities, we have seen waves of hate crimes and violence and bigotry sweep across our Nation.

Latino and Latina students in our schools and in our classrooms have been forced to confront classmates' bullying and taunts, chants of ``build the wall'' and ``go back to your country,'' and graffiti sprayed on walls to ``build the wall higher.''

We have heard reports of verbal and physical attacks against people of the Muslim faith.

A woman at San Jose University lost her balance and choked when a man attempted to rip off her head scarf.

A Muslim student at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign campus reported having a knife pulled on her.

A Muslim teacher in Georgia found left on her desk a note that read that a head scarf is not allowed anymore and that she should hang herself with it.

Within the last 8 weeks, four mosques around the country have been burned to the ground.

Just recently, a man in Kansas went into a bar, hurled ethnic slurs at two Indian engineers, and shot them, killing one and seriously injuring the other.

As I mentioned earlier, since January, there have been more than 100 bomb threats against Jewish community centers.

Throughout history, we have seen this tactic used by an executive here, an executive there, by a dictator here, a dictator there, in country after country, to characterize minority communities as a threat to be feared in order to make the body politic afraid, to make them angry, and to make them willing to support authoritarian exercise of power.

What is our job? It is our job to expose this strategy, to call attention to this strategy, to address the myths that are used to instill fear and the falsehoods that are used to instill hatred. It is our job to oppose this authoritarian game plan in every way possible.

The third leg of President Trump's authoritarian attacks are ones that go against public opposition to him and attack the protests of the people of the United States. What was the President's response after millions of people in cities all around the country--and all around the world, for that matter--joined the women's march to stand up for the fundamental values of peace, tolerance, and equality? His response was a rebuke and a dismissal. He tweeted:

Watched protests yesterday but was under the impression

that we just had an election! Why didn't these people vote?

Well, President Trump, they did vote, and they all voted overwhelmingly for your opponent, by a 3 million-vote margin.

We saw similarly disparaging responses from Republican lawmakers like the Facebook post from a State Senator in Mississippi who said:

So a group of unhappy liberal women marched in Washington,

D.C. We shouldn't be surprised; almost all liberal women are

unhappy.

After countless citizens around the country began showing up at townhall meetings to make their voices heard, what was his response? He dismissed these engaged citizens as ``so-called angry crowds,'' and then he tweeted: ``Professional anarchists, thugs and paid protesters are proving the point of the millions of people who voted to make America great again!''

I have held a lot of townhalls since January, many of them filled beyond capacity with regular citizens who are deeply distressed by what they are seeing in our country. At one townhall, more than 3,500 people showed up. We had so many people that the hundreds of folks who couldn't get in had to stand outside the building in the cold, listening. We took a speaker and put it in the window so those outside could hear, and they watched through the windows.

This is ``we the people'' government. This is American citizens saying: Your strategy, President Trump, is not OK. Your strategy to divide us into factions in America and to pit one faction against another, to demonize groups, to incite hate is just wrong.

I find it truly disheartening to see the President attacking citizens exercising their voice, which is often the most basic civic duty.

President Jefferson said there is a mother principle for our government, and the mother principle is that the actions of the government will only reflect the will of the people if each and every citizen has an equal voice. We know, in the modern day of campaign financing, some citizens and, indeed, often some noncitizens--that is, massive rich corporations--have a very loud voice compared to the average citizen. So citizens, to compensate, are saying: We are going to show up. We are going to take our time and our energy and we are going to join together and we are going to send a lot of emails to Capitol Hill, a lot of letters to Capitol Hill, but we are also going to show up in the parks and the streets to

march in order to say this strategy, this authoritarian strategy, or this strategy to take away healthcare from millions of Americans is absolutely unacceptable. And the President somehow is living in a fantasy world where he thinks they are paid? I don't think so. I don't think this last weekend, when 800 people showed up at Redmond, OR, to my townhall, that a single one of them was paid--not a single one.

When we look across the country and we see the 7-year-old who wanted to be at a townhall because he doesn't want us to cut funding for PBS in order to build a wall, he wasn't paid, or the Muslim immigrant who risked his life for our Nation in Afghanistan as a military interpreter and now wants to know ``Who is going to save me here,'' he wasn't paid.

American citizens are using their voice as designed in our ``we the people'' Constitution, but in the mind of our President and in the words of his adviser, Stephen Miller, his powers are very substantial and will not be questioned, not even by the citizens and voters of this great Nation.

Well, they are being questioned, massively, by citizens raising their voices in every possible way.

American citizens everywhere are deeply disturbed by what they are seeing unfold in our Nation. They fear we are headed down a dark and dangerous path that will betray the founding principles of our ``we the people'' government, and they have every right to be anxious and concerned.

There have been allusions made by a number of experts to Mr. Trump's actions and the early days of Vladimir Putin's regime and especially his relentless war with the media. All of these are reasons citizens are fired up, raising their voices to oppose the authoritarian tactics of this administration.

While the President seeks to dismiss the legitimacy of these voices, I stand here today to praise those Americans for standing up, for taking on their responsibility as citizens to create a powerful, courageous chorus, a public stand against the authoritarian strategy of President Trump--his strategy of attacking the media, his strategy of attacking immigrants, his strategy of attacking refugees, and his strategy of attacking religious minorities.

A friend sent me a message the other day saying:

I'm more devastated daily. I can't believe the Republicans

are not stopping this, saying something. How can this be

happening? Don't the Republicans see what's happening? I weep

for my kids.

Millions of Americans across the country are feeling those same fears. It is up to all of us here, imbued with the awesome responsibility to speak for and represent the people of this Nation, to stand up against advancing authoritarianism. It is right for us to fight for a free, open democratic republic, with a ``government of the people, by the people, for the people.''

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, last Thursday was a sunny, cold day in Chicago, but I looked forward to it because there was an event that I wouldn't miss. We have a hospital there known as the Rehab Institute of Chicago. It is one of my favorites, and we have some great hospitals. The Rehab Institute of Chicago literally focuses on people who have had serious accidents, strokes, injuries and who are trying to get rehabilitated so they can function and walk.

I really got to know this hospital years ago when I had a town meeting in Chicago and talked about our returning veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan. Many of them were coming home with serious injuries from roadside bombs and the types of injuries that can change your life.

A man came up to me, and his name was Ed Edmundson. He was from North Carolina. I was kind of surprised that he was at a Chicago town meeting. He explained to me that he heard about the town meeting because he had a son named Eric who was a disabled veteran and was at the Rehab Institute of Chicago. It turns out that Eric was seriously wounded by a roadside bomb in Iraq, and during the course of the surgery afterward, there was an accident. The net result of it was that he had very limited mobility and he could no longer speak.

Eric, if I remember, was about 23 years old. He was married and the father of a little girl. Well, the VA did the best for him, and they finally came to his mom and dad and said: We can't do anything more. We need you to pick out a motorized wheelchair for Eric because he needs to be in a nursing home. His father said: He is 23 years old. He is not going to a nursing home. We are not quitting. His dad then set out to find the best hospital in the United States and came to the conclusion that the Rehab Institute of Chicago was the place.

So he came to invite me to come up and meet Eric at the hospital, which I did a couple of days later. Eric was there with his mom and dad, and he started the rehab. I went back to see him a week or so later to see how he was doing. His mom said, as I came into the room: Eric has a gift for you. I thought: A gift for me? The gift was that Eric, with a little help, was able to stand on his own feet. It was a breakthrough. Some people had said it would never happen again.

His dad said to me that Eric planned on Memorial Day to put on his full dress uniform from the Army and walk out of the front door of that hospital with a little help and show folks that they shouldn't have given up on him. They asked me if I could be there. I said: I will move Heaven and Earth; I will be there. I wasn't the only one. There were a lot of people there--the mayor, elected officials, and every TV camera in Chicago--as Eric Edmundson walked out of the front door of the Rehab Institute in Chicago.

You never forget those moments, do you? Here is a young man who risked his life for America, came back gravely injured, and through his father and mother's determination--and his own strength--he found the best place for treatment. This rehab institute does research to find ways that give people who have spinal injuries and other injuries another chance.

Well, last Thursday they opened up the new Rehab Institute of Chicago, and it is renamed. It is the Shirley Ryan AbilityLab. It is not a hospital. They call it an AbilityLab, and the reason is that they try to integrate research with actual doctors, clinicians, and patients all in the same place--not separate universities and hospitals and so forth. It is a bold idea. It is a new concept, but if anybody can pull it off, it is Dr. Joanne Smith, who heads up now the Shirley Ryan AbilityLab.

Do you know what I learned as I got out of the car to give the speech and to cut the ribbon at this new research facility? I learned that the President of the United States, Donald Trump, had just announced his new budget. Do you know what was included in his new budget? A new spending line for the National Institutes of Health. That agency is the premier medical research agency in the world, and we are lucky to have it right here in the United States. We are lucky that Congress has given more money to NIH for biomedical research last year. Senator Blunt, a Republican of Missouri, who heads up the subcommittee with Senator Murray of Washington, planned on giving more this year, and we are still trying.

Do you know what President Trump suggested for next year's budget for the National Institutes of Health? He suggested cutting their appropriation by $5.8 billion. It is a $32 billion appropriation. Cutting it by $5.8 billion will bring the level of biomedical research in the United States of America down to the lowest point it has been in 16 years. That is President Trump's idea of a priority--the most dramatic cut in biomedical research in the last 16 years.

I announced it when I did the ribbon-cutting speech. First, I thanked all the folks at the Shirley Ryan AbilityLab, Dr. Smith, and Shirley and Pat Ryan. I told them if there is ever a time both political parties ought to come together and tell this President that you are just flat-out wrong, this is it. This is it because the medical research that is taking place in the National Institutes of Health is not just for those who are sick today but for those who may be diagnosed later today or tomorrow.

You know what the most frequently asked questions will be when you get that heartbreaking diagnosis? Doctor, is there anything you can do for me? Is there a medicine? Is there a procedure? Basically, is there any hope? If the NIH, or the National Institutes of Health, isn't properly funded and isn't doing its job, that answer is not always going to be a good one.

Young medical researchers don't get rich, but they love what they do. To keep them on the job doing what they should do with all of their talent and

all of their skill and all of their education, we have to promise them that we are going to continue to fund medical research in a serious way, without the peaks and valleys.

President Donald Trump does not understand that. Mick Mulvaney, head of the Office of Management and Budget, who came up with this terrible budget, doesn't understand that. To them, they are just numbers on a page. We will just cut biomedical research to the lowest level in 16 years.

A few minutes ago I had a visit from some folks from Chicago, IL. They were with the National Multiple Sclerosis Society. They come to see me each year. You will see them around the halls wearing their orange ties and orange scarves. They came to talk about multiple sclerosis, which for many of my close friends is a disabling disease they fight every day. It is a disease of the central nervous system. It interrupts the flow of information within the brain and between the brain and the body. Symptoms range from numbness to tingling, to blindness and paralysis. The progress, severity, and specific symptoms of MS of any one person can't be predicted.

The good news is that we are engaged in research that can make a difference, research that gives us hope. They talked to me about Donald Trump's cuts to the National Institutes of Health. I told them I was going to do everything in my power to restore that money so that the research continues.

Incidentally, there is another issue. It isn't just fighting the disease and doing the research. It is what is happening to the cost of the drugs that these people need to maintain their lives and that give them hope. In 2004 the average wholesale price of available MS disease- modifying therapies was $16,000. By 2013, the average price had gone up to $61,000. In 2017, the average price is up to $83,600. All of the top 10 specialty medication classes, which include MS, increased in spending, and all had increases in the price of medication. Some of these drugs have been on the market for years, and now the pharmaceutical industry is driving the costs up across the board.

When we talk about healthcare in America, it is interesting how little time we spend talking about the cost of pharmaceuticals. But how wrong we are. When the head of Blue Cross in Chicago came to see me, she said: Senator, I will bet you didn't know last year Blue Cross Blue Shield spent more money in their hospitalization plans for pharmaceuticals and medications than they spent for inpatient hospital care for those who were covered--more money on drugs than inpatient hospital care.

So what did the Affordable Care Act, which is being debated, do about the price of pharmaceuticals? Almost nothing. What does the new Republican replacement plan do about the cost of pharmaceuticals? Almost nothing. Why? Why is there this hands-off attitude when it comes to an integral part of the cost of healthcare and an integral factor in the dramatic increases in the cost of healthcare? Because pharma has friends in high places.

Watch your television sets. There are two things to watch for, if you still watch television. The first thing is to watch for all the drugs that are advertised on television. Do you know how many countries in the world allow drugs to be advertised on television? Two. And one of them is the United States.

You see all these drugs being advertised that are going to allow you to be liberated, freed, and cured, and this and that and the other thing. Then, they run through all the disclaimers. This is the one I like the best: Be sure and tell your doctor if you have had a liver transplant: Oh, Doc, did I fail to mention I had a liver transplant?

That is the kind of thing they put on television. Why does a pharmaceutical company spend all that money advertising on television? They make money off of it.

Here is how. Americans walk into their doctor's office and say: I just saw this ad for this drug, and I think it is exactly what I need. Too many doctors, instead of taking 10 minutes to explain why it isn't the drug you need, take 1 minute to write out the script. So expensive drugs make it on the market and justify the advertising on television. That is one of the grim realities of what we are facing.

When it comes to the drugs and their pricing, we know what is happening. They are running up the costs of drugs on individuals, and they can't afford it any more. I just met with some of these MS patients, and one of them told me she had gone now for weeks without medication because, she said: Senator, it is $6,000 I just don't have.

Well, we can do better than that. We should do better than that as a nation. We ought to make certain that we don't get swept away with the pharmaceutical companies and their advertising. Those are the other things you are going to see on television now. They are really beautifully done ads. They are talking about all of us wanting to survive and how the pharmaceutical industries are finding, through their research, good drugs to help us survive. I don't quarrel with that premise. That is right, but it turns out many of them are spending more money on advertising than they are on research. So this is big business. It is big profits. They are trying to protect them. It is driving up the cost of healthcare. People like my friends with multiple sclerosis are wondering how this will end and whether they will be able to pay for the treatment they desperately need.

If this means anything to those who are listening to this debate, if it means something to you or your family, you need to speak up-- Democrat, Republican, Independent, Trump voter or not--you need to let this administration and this Congress know that medical research is a priority to you. If it is not, hold on tight because Donald Trump's budget is about to rip the heart out of the National Institutes of Health.

Whatever his ambition, whatever his goals, whatever his tweets, I could care less. When it comes to medical research, he is in for a fight.

TrumpCare

Mr. President, the Republicans promised, if they took a majority, the first thing they would do is get rid of ObamaCare. He is gone. It has to be gone too. Fifty-seven times--maybe more--in the House of Representatives, they voted to abolish ObamaCare. It didn't mean anything. He was still President then. He was going to veto whatever they passed, but they did it over and over and over. It was an article of faith, and they beat their chests and went across America saying: Get rid of ObamaCare.

Then the dog caught the bus. They got the majority in the House and the Senate, and all of those threats and promises about ObamaCare became reality. Then something else happened. People started saying to the Republican majority: And then what? What are you going to replace it with?

Well, it turns out for 6 years they have been writing speeches about abolishing ObamaCare instead of for 6 years writing plans and bills to replace it. So they slapped together a replacement plan, sent it over-- I say that because it only took them a couple of weeks. They sent it over to the Congressional Budget Office, which is kind of like the umpire here, the referee, to take a look at it.

The Congressional Budget Office gave a report on the Republican replacement plan for the Affordable Care Act. This is what it said: Under TrumpCare--ObamaCare to TrumpCare--under TrumpCare, 24 million Americans will lose their health insurance; 14 million in the first year--24 million Americans out of a nation of what, 350 million, 360 million. That is a pretty large group.

We know what happens when people lose their health insurance. They still get sick. When they get sick, they go to the emergency room when it is too bad, and the emergency room takes care of them. Then the hospital, because the person does not have health insurance, chalks up the cost of that health to charity care and passes it along to everyone else with health insurance.

Under TrumpCare, seniors, rural communities, and lower and middle- income families will see their premiums and out-of-pocket costs soar, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Under TrumpCare, Medicare's solvency will shrink by 4 years. Medicare, you remember, is the program primarily for seniors started back in the 1960s to make sure that when you got to a point in life, age 65, you may not be working, no longer have insurance through your

employer, the government Medicare plan would cover you.

Has it worked? Ask 60 million Americans who count on it. Yes. What about the results? Since the 1960s, people are living longer. We know Medicare works, but the cost of healthcare has been going up, and we worried about its long-term solvency. It turns out the Affordable Care Act, which we passed, brought some savings to healthcare and added 10 years of solvency to Medicare.

Now, the Republicans want to repeal the Affordable Care Act, and it will reduce the solvency of Medicare by 4 years--4 years sooner Medicare will go insolvent. The fiscally conservative Republican Party has come up with an answer, which leads to sooner insolvency for Medicare. Under TrumpCare, $880 billion in Federal Medicaid funding to States will be eliminated. What does it mean? Well, let me tell you the story of Judy.

Judy works at a motel in Southern Illinois. She is in her sixties. She is a hard-working lady. There is not a lazy bone in her body. She works in the hospitality room where you get the free breakfast at the motel. She is the one who smiles and cleans off the table and makes sure you are happy. I got to know her. Judy asked me about all of this stuff going on with affordable care. I asked her: Would you mind working with my office? Let's see what we can do for you.

It turns out that Judy, as hard as she works, makes a very low income. She qualified for Medicaid, which meant health insurance that did not cost her anything because her income was so low. She couldn't believe it. For the first time in her life--for the first time in her life she had health insurance--Medicaid--providing her health insurance. It was a good thing too because just shortly afterward she was diagnosed with diabetes. Now comes the proposal from the Republicans to remove so many people across America from Medicaid. Where does that leave Judy? Back where she started, working hard, with diabetes, a low income, and no health insurance. Terrible things can happen to you if you have diabetes and don't have some medical home or a doctor you can count on.

That is the reality of what TrumpCare will mean to Judy in Southern Illinois. One trillion dollars will be cut from programs that serve low- and middle-class families so the Republican approach can cut taxes for the wealthiest people in America. I am not making that up.

They are raising the premiums for working families to pay. They are cutting off seniors and others from Medicaid coverage so they can give tax breaks to the wealthiest superrich in America. It is going to cost us healthcare jobs across America. Downstate Illinois, those are good- paying jobs. The Illinois Hospital Association says we are going to lose them.

This Republican bill, TrumpCare, is bad for seniors, bad for middle- class families, bad for people with disabilities. It is not very good for kids. Half of the kids in America are born under and taken care of by Medicaid. It is bad for the States, bad for just about everyone who is not healthy or wealthy. Yet the House Republican leadership is intent on moving forward with TrumpCare this week.

The President came to the House Republicans yesterday and said: If you don't support me on this vote, I am coming after your districts to defeat you.

This approach is going to increase premiums for seniors in one of the most fundamental ways. We said in our bill that we voted for that you could not have a disparity in premiums more than 3 to 1. So the premiums charged to a 20-year-old and the premiums charged to a 60- year-old could be no different than a 3-to-1 margin. The Republicans changed that and made it 5 to 1.

That is why the American Association of Retired Persons opposes TrumpCare and why seniors across the country are waking up to the reality that they are in for a jolt when it comes to the premiums they have to pay.

Senator Susan Collins of Maine, a Republican, has said: ``This is not a bill I could support in its current form . . . it really misses the mark.'' As Senator Collins noted, this bill does not come close to achieving the goal of allowing low-income seniors to purchase health insurance.

Senator Bill Cassidy, a Republican from Louisiana, said:

The CBO score was, shall we say, an eye-popper. . . . Can't

sugarcoat it. . . . Doesn't look good.

Senator and Dr. Cassidy, Republican from Louisiana, said that. He went on to say:

That's not what President Trump promised. . . . That's not

what the Republicans ran on.

Senator Tom Cotton, Republican of Arkansas, said:

I'm afraid that if [House Republicans] vote for this bill,

they're going to put the House majority at risk next year. .

. . Just from a practical standpoint, I don't think this bill

is going to reduce premiums for working Americans. . . . I

think it's going to cost coverage for many Americans.

Why do we want to rush this process? It took us more than 2 years to write a bill, and it is still a bill that needs more work. I voted for it. To think that they can replace it in a matter of weeks, with this slap-dash approach, is not fair to America. It is not fair to people who count on health insurance for peace of mind and coverage when they desperately need it.

I see my friend on the floor. I am going to close. I released a report today, and it is one I am going to share across the board in Illinois before our delegation votes this week. This bill in Illinois means that 311,000 people I represent would lose their private health insurance. By 2020, the average enrollee in Illinois would see their health insurance costs increase by over $3,000--by 2026, almost $5,000.

The impact is particularly severe for Illinoisans ages 55 to 64. They would see their costs of premiums increase by over 50 percent. Illinois hospitals, they are against it too. They know that a lot of downstate hospitals and inner-city hospitals can't survive this Republican replacement plan.

I will close with a letter from Christine McTaggart of Watseka, IL. Here is what she said to me: ``I wake up every day since the election fearing that a complete repeal will happen and for me that translates into a death sentence.''

Christine was originally diagnosed with stage IIIb inflammatory breast cancer in September of 2012. Given this type of aggressive cancer, her prognosis was poor. She went through 16 cycles--16--of chemotherapy, a bilateral mastectomy, 33 radiation treatments, failed reconstruction and chronic tissue issues, and thyroid cancer as well.

After all of that, in 2014, she learned her breast cancer was back. This time in her bones, stage IV. In her letter to me, Christine McTaggart of Watseka wrote:

When the Affordable Care Act became law, I had no idea my

life would come to depend on policies such as pre-existing

conditions not excluding you from coverage . . . and lifetime

maximums being eliminated. If ACA were repealed, I would no

longer have coverage as my chronic ongoing treatment has far

exceeded the old lifetime maximums. . . . I would have to

choose between bankruptcy for treatments I cannot afford and

rolling the dice, waiting for death.

She ends with this:

I thank you for your tireless advocacy on this issue. . . .

My life literally depends on it.

What we need to do is take repeal off the table, and this Senator will pull a chair up to the table. Let's make the Affordable Care Act work. Let's do it in a bipartisan way. Let's not look for a slam dunk for either political party. Let's try to do the right thing for America. We are not going to make the extremes in either political party happy, but if millions of Americans have health insurance and can find a way to pay for it, then we will do our job.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, first of all, I agree with my friend wholeheartedly. We are asking for a repair. It doesn't make any sense at all to go down the path of repealing until we make an effort to make this better and protect the people who are depending on us. With that, let's see what happens. We are all willing to sit down and work on both sides of the aisle to help improve it.

Opioid Abuse Crisis

Mr. President, I rise today because of the crisis we have with the country's opiate addictions--prescription drugs--in the Presiding Officer's wonderful State of Alaska, the State of West Virginia, and every other State in the Union.

West Virginia has the highest drug overdose death rate in the Nation due to prescription drug abuse. Just in 2016, West Virginia reported 818 overdose deaths, which is 4 times the number that occurred in 2001 and is a nearly 13-percent increase just from 2015, when it was about 607. More than 700 West Virginians died from an opioid overdose last year, and 42,000 people in West Virginia, including 4,000 youth, sought treatment for illegal drug use, but they failed to receive it. There is no place for them to go.

The Presiding Officer and I have spoken about this, and I appreciate his willingness and openness to look at how we cure that. I have a bill called the LifeBOAT Act, which the Presiding Officer has been so graciously looking at. It is something that I believe would give us the funding mechanism, and it won't be a hardship. It also gives exemptions for people who have chronic pain from cancer and all the chronic illnesses that are out there. Basically, the opiate drugs that are sold on a day-to-day basis by the millions and millions--it is a one-penny revenue source, one penny per milligram. That would give us the funding mechanism we need in order to continue to have expanded services for addiction.

I have been involved in public service for quite some time, and 20 years ago, I would have thought anybody who has fooled with drugs, whether legal prescription or illicit drugs--it would be a criminal act and they should go to jail for it. Well, we have put people in jail for consumption for the last 20 years, and it hasn't cured one. So I have come to the conclusion, basically, in looking and talking to the experts, after we have had two decades of evaluating this, that it is an illness, and an illness needs treatment. We don't have the treatment centers, so we are letting people go untreated, and that is basically sinful in this country.

There are 2.1 million Americans who abuse or are dependent on opioids--2.1 million. I think to get the scope of how bad the situation is, and this epidemic, when you think about how over 200,000 people have died since 2000--200,000--any other catastrophic cause of death in this country would be of pandemic proportions, and we would do whatever it costs in order to get the National Institutes of Health to find a cure. We would. But with this, we kind of sit back idly.

According to the CDC, three out of four new heroin users abused prescription opiates before moving to heroin. It is a segue for people to move right into tougher, stronger, powerful drugs.

Heroin use has more than doubled among young adults ages 18 to 25 in the past decade, and 45 percent of the people who used heroin were also addicted to prescription opiate painkillers. Between 2009 and 2013, only 22 percent of Americans suffering from opioid addiction participated in any form of addiction treatment.

Think about the enormity of this epidemic. The United States of America, our great country, makes up only about 4.6 percent of the world's population; yet we consume 80 percent of all opiates produced and consumed in the world. How did it happen? The Presiding Officer and I grew up in a time when this wasn't prevalent, but how did it happen?

I will tell you one thing: We have to cure it. It is ravaging and destroying every part of this great country. We are taking so many productive people out of the workforce because they are addicted. If you talk to your police and law enforcement anywhere in this country, they will tell you that 80 to 90 percent of all of the calls they make in the form of justice are due to opiate or drug use. It is horrible what it is costing us in real time, in real dollars, in real people's lives.

There is another bill I have out there, too, and I call it last chance. It really deals with this. If we know we have a problem--we have people whom we don't have in the workforce because three things keep you out of the workforce: You are either addicted or convicted or lack of skills. You have an addiction; you have been convicted of a crime, so you have a record; or you have a lack of skills or a combination of the three.

I can tell you that the addiction and conviction usually go hand in hand. People who are addicted often have a larceny or maybe even a felony on their record, and it is so hard for them to get back into the workforce. If you get them in a treatment center, there is no carrot to say: Stick with this because you are going to be clean.

It takes a lot of fortitude for a person to stay with the program when they have such an addiction and a craving. But if they know that at the end of that 1 year in a treatment center, there is a chance for them to expunge their record if it wasn't a violent crime, if it wasn't a sexual crime--but it was probably grand larceny, because usually they will steal from their family, and then once the family gets tough with them, they will steal from any type of extended family, and then they will steal from the neighborhood or anywhere they can get the money to support their habit.

What my bill says is that after 1 year in a certified treatment program, they complete another year of mentoring, helping other people get off and stay off and maybe not start, then they are able to, with their sponsors--people who say: Yes, they have completed this program; yes, they have mentored for 1 year--they can go before the arresting officers and the sentencing judge to see if they can get that expunged to give

them a clean start. It is the Clean Start Act. I call it last chance, but officially it is called the Clean Start Act. It is one way to get this workforce in America producing again because if not, the only thing they have waiting for them is a minimum wage job, and the skill sets most of them have are going to go unused and unproductive. So these are things we are working on.

When you look at the misuse and abuse of opiates and what it costs our country, think about this. This was in 2013, the last figures I have--an estimated $78.5 billion in lost productivity, medical costs, and criminal justice cost. In 2013, it cost our country $78.5 billion. So we are paying for it. It is like ``Pay me now or pay me later.'' We are paying for it.

That one penny on every milligram of opiates that are produced and consumed in this country would raise about $1.5 to $2 billion a year. I would hope it would raise none, but it would raise that much because of the amount of consumption we have. We consume 80 percent of all of the world's opiates. With that, we can start creating treatment centers and curing people.

For the past year, I have been coming to the Senate floor to read letters from West Virginians and those struggling all throughout our country with opioid abuse. They all mention how hard it is to get themselves or their loved ones into treatment. Sometimes it takes months, and sometimes it never happens. Most of the time, it never happens. This problem stems from a lack of a system to help those who are looking for help. We need permanent funding. We talked about that. That is why I introduced the LifeBOAT Act.

Today I am going to read a letter from a mother from West Virginia-- she is no different from a mother from Alaska, I can assure you--who lost her daughter to drug abuse after she struggled to get her into treatment facilities she desperately needed. This is Leigh Ann Wilson's story.

On behalf of the families who have lost their children to

addiction, I ask that any health law reforms contain a

serious effort to ensure effective addiction treatment for

all who need it, whatever it takes.

Just yesterday, the Boston Globe published a special report

about my daughter, Taylor Leigh Wilson.

Leigh Ann's daughter is named Taylor Leigh Wilson.

My youngest child was one of West Virginia's promising

young people, a former Girl Scout, Cabell Midland High School

graduate and Marshall student who wanted to turn her love of

books into a career as a librarian. But drugs destroyed her

life despite her willingness, and months of effort, to get

treatment.

Taylor's overdose was the first--

You have to listen to this because you are just not going to believe what happened in Huntington, WV, on this day.

Taylor's overdose was the first of 28 that would be

reported in Huntington in the span of five hours on Aug. 15,

2016. The horror of that afternoon made national news. Then

the reporters left. Our nightmare, though, was just

beginning.

Taylor and I would spend the next 41 days trying to get

help. We drove door to door in search of inpatient treatment

beds to isolate her from the heroin world. All we found were

waiting lists; out-of-state centers that wouldn't take West

Virginia Medicaid; and doctors who discouraged Taylor from

inpatient treatment, saying she could do without it.

Then Taylor put her name on Prestera's waiting list for

Suboxone, a drug proven to reduce withdrawal symptoms. No one

told her how long she might have to wait. Though evidence

suggests that the combination of counseling and prescription

drugs to reduce cravings can be very effective, our lawmakers

have restricted the availability of this medication.

On September 28, 2016, Prestera Center called to inform me

that Taylor had been accepted into the Suboxone program.

That was September 28, and, as I told you, this overdose happened on August 15.

On September 28, Prestera Center called to inform me that

Taylor had been accepted in the suboxone program. I had to

tell her that she had overdosed and died 3 days before. The

next February I got a call from Prestera Pinecrest following

up on Taylor's application for recovery housing and to see if

she was still interested.

Before she passed away, Taylor herself told the Boston

Globe reporter that the real story that needs to be told is

why there are no treatment beds when our state has a crisis

epidemic.

Your State, my State--almost every State in America has this.

Why must it be so hard to get addiction treatment in a

state with the nation's highest drug death rate--818 deaths

last year, most of them from [legal prescription drugs]?

Think about how this epidemic has gotten to this proportion. We have a drug that is put on the market by the FDA. This is an organization, a Federal agency, that is supposed to make sure that we have for consumption a safety net built into it. So the FDA gives their stamp of approval: This is a product that can be used, and it should be of help. Then it goes to the DEA to find out who is allowed to dispense it without any type of education or any type of work to make sure that there is competency in our doctors who are prescribing it--or I might say overprescribing it. Then it goes to the doctor, who is the most trusted person outside of our family, who says: This is going to help you. This is good for you. This is what we are talking about--what is killing West Virginians and Americans every day.

If you need heart surgery, you have insurance providers around the State that would compete for your care. That is what she is saying. There is someone there; for any other treatment or any other need for treatment of any illness, we can find help, but not for this.

This has been such a silent killer that I know--and my family included. Everyone I talk to--anybody I talk to knows somebody in their immediate family or extended family or a close family friend. All of our young interns here know the same. They know people. But we keep it quiet; especially if it's in our family, we keep quiet because it is embarrassing. We don't want anybody to know that we have failed as a family structure. Something fell apart for this to happen. Why would someone have to turn to drugs when they have a loving, caring family? We just don't understand, so we keep quiet about it.

It isn't a Democrat or Republican or liberal or conservative cause. This is a killer that has no boundaries; it attacks everybody. That is what I am saying. When you see a mother who is doing everything she can to get her daughter somewhere just to save her life and can't get her in--we are talking about this one penny: What is a one-penny tax, Joe? I can't vote for any new taxes.

I am not asking you to vote for a tax. I am asking you to look any of your constituents in the eye and say: We have a program that is lifesaving for you or your family member. God forbid if you ever need it, but we have it.

We don't hesitate to put taxes on cigarettes. We didn't hesitate. Everybody voted for taxes on cigarettes. Everybody has voted for taxes on alcohol. I am asking for one penny--one penny to save thousands and thousands of lives in America. I guarantee that there will not be one person to vote against it--a Republican or Democrat who would not vote for something that is going to put permanent funding for treatment centers in the most needed areas in America and saves people's lives.

There aren't enough resources to accommodate the addiction

problem in the heroin capital of the United States, Taylor

[herself told] a reporter. If no one changes it this whole

city will go under.

Let me tell you what this city of Huntington is doing right now. I met with them last week when I was home. They are going to have a center of excellence starting with Marshall University, the city of Huntington, Calvert County, and the entire organization. All the policymakers are working together because this is something they are fighting every day. This center of excellence is built around this. We know we have a problem. We have people overdosing. We are trying to save lives. We are trying to get them clean, and we are trying to get them back into the workforce.

The center of excellence is going to start at conception for a mother who may be using and conceives a child. How do we get her clean? How does she have a healthy baby versus a drug-addicted baby?

We have Lily's Place down there, and what they are doing in neonatal care is unbelievable. They are trying to get this baby weaned off the addiction that the mother passed on in her pregnancy. Then we want to make sure that mother goes back home with the baby in a clean home because, if not, the cycle will continue. This is what the center of excellence is going to do.

The success we think we are going to have, starting at ground zero in Huntington, WV, will be able to be shared all over the country because they are going to take a holistic approach. You just can't say: I am going to treat the addict. I am going to treat the cause. It goes further than that. These children are being born to a drug-infested mother and a father or a person who is paternal or into a family that is still drug-infested. It does nothing but perpetuate the cycle. This is what we have to stop if we want to save the country.

Here is what I tell children, and I will tell all of our young interns. I go to schools and talk every day. I tell them that there is not another country that will take on the United States of America militarily. No one compares with the greatest military that the world has ever known, that history has ever recorded, the United States of America. It is not going to happen. Nobody can take on this great economy of ours--the greatest economy in the world, $19 trillion, almost $20 trillion GDP. The closest economy we have next to us is China, with an economy that is about half of ours, $10.5 to $11 trillion. Then it drops off the scale with Japan and then Russia. Russia is at $2.5 to $3 trillion. No one compares to the United States of America for the economy and military might we have as a superpower-- the only superpower left in the world, the United States of America. We are the hope of the world, the United States of America.

I tell them: They don't think they have to fight you. They don't have to take over our economy. They think we will give it to them. They think we will give it to them because we have a lack of skill sets. Our education attainment is not as high as what they are doing, and our addiction problem means we will not be clean enough to be able to perform. They will just sit back and wait because time is on their side. They can sit back and wait for us to turn it all over. And you might be the last generation that lives in our country as the only superpower, the United States of America. God, I hope that doesn't happen, but we have to fight this. We just can't continue to keep talking about it.

We have a good piece of legislation. Think about this: I introduced this bill a year ago--introduced it to honor Jessie Grubb and her mom and dad. Her dad served in the State legislature with me. We have been friends for a long time. Jessie was 30 years old. She was a promising young girl. She got sexually molested when she was in college. She came home, hid it from them, was depressed, got started on--they gave her some pain pills, some drug suppressants so she could cope with it. She got addicted. She overdosed a few times. She was trying to cure--she was 30 years old. She had gone to Michigan. She was in treatment. She had been clean for 6 months. She was a runner, an athlete. She was doing her first marathon.

She had a hip injury, and she went to the hospital. When she went to the hospital, her mom and dad went up there. So here was the mom, the dad, and the girl; they went to admissions. She said: I want you all to know, I am so proud that I am a recovering addict, and I am 6 months clean. I want to make sure you all know that. The parents reiterated it.

She goes into this, and there are no laws--nothing. They ask her all different types of questions: Are you allergic to penicillin--whatever it may be? They make sure that her chart is marked right, so that another attending physician or another attending nurse or the night shift or whatever looks and sees that they can't do that because it says she is allergic to that or they shouldn't give her this because of her condition.

She goes in and she gets treated and she has an infection. They want to treat the infection, so they put a port in to treat the infection because that is how she would be treated with that.

The discharging physician did not know she was a recovering addict. He saw a healthy young lady with an injury and knew that she was going to have pain, so he prescribed her some pain medication. He prescribed her 50 OxyContin on the afternoon she was discharged, and she overdosed and died by 1 in the morning.

Jessie's Law basically says that if the guardian or parent and if the patient both come in and identify their problem and they want you to mark their charts accordingly, that should be done. Pretty simple, right?

Let me tell you what has happened. For 1 year it has been stalled because of HIPAA privacy laws. All this was going on; 1 year was up, and I called David. They had written me a letter that said: Do you think anything will ever happen?

So we went back again and started working on it. Here's what we did to change it. I said: David, we are going to have to take the parents or guardians off of it. If the patient themself asks for that, freely and willingly asks for that, we think that will pass muster, and all the different interest groups out there that are so concerned will basically accept that.

So we have that piece of legislation called Jessie's Law. God forbid, if someone has a constituent or a loved one and it is not known, they can lose that child, just like that.

These are all things that we are dealing with after the effects of addiction. Huntington, WV, and Marshall University are going to take on an effort that I think is heroic: How do we start from the beginning, conception, and make sure that child doesn't grow up to be an addict, make sure that family can get clean enough, and make sure they can be given the responsibility to care for that child so that they can grow up not in an addicted environment? That is what we are trying to do. We are at ground zero.

I am hopeful for this great country and this new generation that we are counting on that they can keep themselves clean and still continue to be the hope of the world, and they truly are.

With that, I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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.