[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 70 (Tuesday, May 18, 2004)]
[House]
[Page H3096]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                          TAXATION'S EVIL TWIN

  (Mr. DeLAY asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute.)
  Mr. DeLAY. Mr. Speaker, this week the House will take up the second 
component of our careers initiative to unshackle the national economy 
and unleash the potential of the American people on the global market.
  Last week, we passed three major bills to help doctors, patients and 
consumers retake control of the American health care system from 
government bureaucrats and trial lawyers. This week we are setting our 
sights on an even bigger target, the invisible monster of the Federal 
regulatory state.
  Today, in America, Federal regulations cost American consumers and 
companies more than $800 billion a year, about $8,000 for an average 
American family every year. That is more than that family spends on 
food. Those $800 billion could be saved, invested, used to train 
employees or create millions of new jobs.
  We in the Republican majority think it is about time that that money 
was put toward those better uses than being swallowed up by Beltway 
bureaucrats and outdated rules and regulations. That is why we will 
take up legislation this week that reforms four aspects of the 
Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970, to bring parity and common 
sense back to the regulatory review and citation process.
  We will also take up major legislation specifically targeting the 
massive amounts of paperwork that consume not only hundreds of 
thousands of man-hours and millions of trees every year, but upwards of 
$320 billion as well. Because when you think about this kind of job-
killing, career-stagnating menace, Mr. Speaker, you realize that 
regulation is just taxation's evil twin. All you have to do is imagine 
the Internal Revenue Code dressed in black with an eye-patch and you 
have got the Federal Register.
  For decades, layer upon layer of rules and regulations, many of them 
duplicative and many more of them self-contradictory, have been foisted 
upon the American people, their employers and their employees. The time 
has come for Congress to begin moving toward universal regulatory 
reform and looking for new ways to reduce and eliminate bureaucratic 
red tape.
  This week, we will begin that process and allow the American people 
to go back to work for their customers and clients instead of their 
Federal overseers in Washington, D.C.

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