[Congressional Record Volume 157, Number 21 (Thursday, February 10, 2011)]
[House]
[Pages H659-H673]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                ANNOUNCEMENT BY THE SPEAKER PRO TEMPORE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair would remind all Members to direct 
their remarks to the Chair.

[[Page H660]]

                              {time}  1950

  Mr. HASTINGS of Washington. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield 3 
minutes to the gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. Fleming), the subcommittee 
chairman of the Fisheries, Wildlife, Oceans and Insular Affairs 
Subcommittee.
  Mr. FLEMING. Mr. Speaker, first of all, I want to bypass the 
hysterics that have been going on tonight from some of our speakers and 
let's talk about the things that are important to Americans.
  I have the great honor of representing the people of the Fourth 
District of Louisiana. I have a deep and abiding appreciation for the 
coastal wetlands and the thousands of jobs that are dependent on the 
health of the Gulf of Mexico. We in Louisiana understand that the 
offshore oil and gas industry is critical to our long-term economic 
survival.
  Despite the tragedy of the Deepwater Horizon accident, the citizens 
of Louisiana support environmentally safe offshore energy development, 
and they are growing increasingly frustrated, if not angry, at the 
Obama administration's de facto moratorium that occurs today in the 
gulf, time delays that recently resulted in a Louisiana Federal judge 
finding the Department of the Interior in contempt of court. This 
moratorium has caused the loss of thousands of jobs; it has increased 
our growing dependence on imported oil, and it has contributed to the 
accelerated increase in the price of gasoline.
  We have also heard an ongoing drumbeat of misinformation about 
hydraulic fracturing, which is a longstanding practice that has been 
effectively regulated by the States for over 60 years. In my own 
congressional district, hydraulic fracturing is necessary for the 
development of the Haynesville Shale play.
  As a result of this energy activity, our local and State tax revenues 
have increased by at least $900 million in 2009 alone, and more than 
57,600 new jobs in Louisiana have been created. Let there be no 
mistake; if you add unnecessary and strangling bureaucratic red tape to 
hydraulic fracturing, the net result is less jobs and less energy for 
this country.
  As the chairman of the Subcommittee on Fisheries, Wildlife, Oceans 
and Insular Affairs, I will be conducting comprehensive oversight 
reviews, hearings on several job-destroying regulations and policies 
that are being promoted by the Obama administration.
  The most far-reaching and least understood of these policies are 
those being proposed by President Obama's National Ocean Council, which 
will add additional layers of bureaucracy as well as a new zoning 
process for the coastal and marine environments. Yes, actual zoning out 
in the ocean. The council is in the process of creating a new layer of 
oversight over both recreational and commercial activities. This effort 
will either override or replace a number of existing State-initiated 
cooperative efforts with a federally led planning process based on new 
Federal guidelines. In addition, the administration has undertaken a 
process to zone the Nation's oceans and coastal areas. This process 
could reach far inland and could override local planning and zoning 
processes.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The time of the gentleman has expired.
  Mr. HASTINGS of Washington. I yield the gentleman 15 seconds.
  Mr. FLEMING. Clearly, this will have an effect on the jobs and 
economic livelihood on coastal and fishery-dependent communities and 
could have a devastating economic impact on a range of ocean users. So, 
for that reason, I stand in support and urge my colleagues to support 
this resolution as well.
  Mr. MARKEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 3 minutes.
  Mr. Speaker, the independent bipartisan commission on the BP oil 
spill issued its final report last month. And what did it conclude? 
Well, that the Deepwater Horizon that went to the bottom of the Gulf of 
Mexico, creating the worst environmental disaster in our country's 
history, was not an isolated incident; that the problems were systemic 
across the entire oil and gas industry.
  That report was a blistering, scalding indictment of the deregulatory 
environment which was created at the Department of the Interior that 
led inexorably, inevitably to this catastrophe, this environmental 
catastrophe.
  But are we here tonight debating legislation to implement the reforms 
that the commission presented to the Congress in order to prevent 
another catastrophe like this? No, we are not. We are instead debating 
whether or not we should have fewer regulations, whether or not 
regulations that actually protect against incidents like this hurt job 
creation.
  Well, ladies and gentlemen, what we learned from the Deepwater 
Horizon catastrophe was that lax regulation doesn't save money; lax 
regulation costs money. Lax regulation does not create jobs; lax 
regulation destroys jobs. And in this case, lax regulation led to the 
loss of 11 lives and 155 other individuals who were seriously injured. 
Lax regulation, ladies and gentlemen, leads to catastrophe.

  Boosterism breeds overconfidence, and overconfidence breeds disaster. 
That's what happens in our financial markets. That's what happens in 
environmental and health regulation when you just trust the private 
sector to always do the right thing. Ladies and gentlemen, this is what 
happens when the government doesn't move in to protect the little guy, 
to protect ordinary citizens.
  The reason that we were able to move from the average age of death at 
48 years of age in the year 1900, after 5,000 years from the Garden of 
Eden until 1900, to 79 years of age just 100 years later is we started 
to regulate for public health and safety for ordinary people. 
Methuselah always lived to 900 years. The wealthy always did well. But 
only when regulation started to be put on the books to protect the 
meek--the water, the air, and the environment in which people live--did 
ordinary families start to benefit as well. That's what they want to 
take off the books. That's the agenda of large companies across our 
country.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The time of the gentleman has expired.
  Mr. MARKEY. I yield myself 1 additional minute.
  How do you create jobs? We haven't heard that yet. We haven't heard 
that yet. Well, they say drilling. Well, last year there were 4,700 new 
leases that were granted by the Bureau of Land Management, but the oil 
industry only began drilling on 1,400 of them, only one-third.
  Now, we don't really have to worry going forward in the future, 
because at $100 a barrel plus, ladies and gentlemen, the $40 billion in 
tax breaks that the Republicans want to give to the oil industry over 
the next 5 years, we don't have to worry that they are going to go 
drill, because they are going and drilling.
  But why are we giving them $40 billion? Why aren't the Republicans 
out here as free market devotees saying let's take that $40 billion of 
taxpayers' money away from the oil industry? Why aren't they doing 
that? Why are they going to allow the taxpayers to be shaken upside 
down at the gas pump and have money come out of their pockets for the 
rest of this year as the price of a gallon of gasoline goes to $3.30, 
$3.40, all the way up to $4 a gallon again?
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The time of the gentleman has again expired.
  Mr. MARKEY. I yield myself 1 additional minute.
  Because the real agenda here is to create as many red herrings as 
they can about the real agenda. As a matter of fact, we can put an 
aquarium out here there are so many red herrings. As a matter of fact, 
so many red herrings are being created by the Republicans in this 
debate that they wouldn't be an endangered species there are so many 
things that are taking us off the real agenda that they are taking 
about. And the real agenda is to make sure that we do not invest in 
wind, that we do not invest in solar.
  And, by the way, in the Waxman-Markey bill that was passed that year, 
$60 billion was put in to the Waxman-Markey bill for clean coal 
technology; $75 billion was put into that bill for nuclear technology 
that they could apply for low-interest loans to build new nuclear power 
plants in our country, plus wind, plus solar, plus geothermal, plus all 
the other things that we could do domestically in our country.

[[Page H661]]

  What we are talking about here, though, is a different agenda 
altogether. It's an agenda that will just allow the oil industry to go 
back to business as usual without the regulations to protect the public 
health and safety.
  I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. HASTINGS of Washington. Mr. Speaker, could I inquire how much 
time remains on each side?
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman from Washington has 9 minutes 
remaining. The gentleman from Massachusetts has 6\1/2\ minutes 
remaining.
  Mr. HASTINGS of Washington. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield 3 
minutes to the subcommittee chairman of the Water and Power 
Subcommittee, Mr. McClintock, from California.

                              {time}  2000

  Mr. McCLINTOCK. I thank the gentleman for yielding.
  I know I speak for all of my Republican colleagues on the Water and 
Power Subcommittee when I say that we are excited and eager to 
undertake the mission outlined in House Resolution 72 to identify the 
Federal regulations in this field that are impeding job creation and 
that are slowing the economy. The only problem we have got is deciding 
where to start.
  A generation ago, the principal objective of our water and power 
policy was to create an abundance of both. It was an era when vast 
reservoirs and hydroelectric facilities produced a cornucopia of clean 
and plentiful water and electricity, on a scale so vast that many 
communities didn't even bother to measure the stuff. But that objective 
of abundance has been abandoned in favor of the rationing of shortages 
that have been caused by government. The result is increasingly scarce 
and expensive water and power that now undermines our prosperity as a 
Nation. Nowhere is that more evident than in the Central Valley of 
California.
  This last Congress sat idly by as this administration deliberately 
diverted 200 billion gallons of water away from the most abundant 
agricultural region of our Nation, all to satisfy the environmental 
left and its pet cause, a 3-inch minnow called the delta smelt. This 
willful diversion cost over 20,000 farm workers their jobs. It 
inflicted up to 40 percent unemployment rates in the region. It 
destroyed more than a quarter-million acres of the most fertile 
farmland in America. And it forced up the price of groceries for us 
all.
  Or we could start with the Klamath, where this administration is 
pushing to tear down four perfectly good hydroelectric dams that 
generate 155 megawatts of the cleanest and cheapest electricity on the 
planet, enough to power over 150,000 homes, because we are told of 
catastrophic declines of salmon.
  When I suggested building a salmon hatchery instead, I was informed 
there already is one. It produces 5 million salmon molt a year, 17,000 
of which return to that river as fully grown adults to spawn. But they 
are deliberately ignored in the population counts. To add insult to 
insanity, as they tear down these dams in the name of saving the 
salmon, they are also tearing down the fish hatchery that actually is 
saving the salmon.
  Or we could begin in Colorado, where they have sacrificed over 1,000 
megawatts from the Glen Canyon Dam for the humpback chub--at the 
expense of a long-neglected species called homo sapiens.
  Mr. Speaker, Ronald Reagan was right: In this crisis, government is 
not the solution to our problems, government is the problem. The good 
news is that it's entirely within our power to correct, and it was 
clearly the mandate of the American people last fall, and we will act 
on that mandate beginning with a series of hearings and actions 
directly related to this much-needed resolution.
  Mr. MARKEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 1 minute. I do so just to say 
that Democrats see high unemployment and we look forward. We recognize 
that American ingenuity, innovation, and hard work can dig us out of 
this hole by creating high-paying, long-term domestic jobs in new 
vibrant industries.
  The Republican majority, they see high unemployment and they look 
backwards. They seek to increase the already massive profits for huge 
international corporations and hope that on their way to the bank they 
hire a few people here and there.
  Ladies and gentlemen, the great challenge of our time is to not allow 
China and Germany to replace OPEC as the place from which we have to 
import our energy technologies. If there is no plan which is 
forthcoming from the Republican majority, which so far has not 
presented itself, because they have yet to have one bill that actually 
creates one job come here onto the House floor in the first 5 weeks 
that they have controlled the majority, then I am afraid that the next 
generation of young Americans will wonder why all the solar and wind 
technology is being manufactured in China, and they here in America are 
unemployed.
  Mr. HASTINGS of Washington. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield 1\1/2\ 
minutes to the valuable new member of our committee, Mr. Gosar from 
Arizona.
  Mr. GOSAR. Mr. Speaker, rural Arizona is under attack from 
overregulation, out-of-control spending, and government redtape. The 
small businesses that power my district can no longer compete. I just 
wrapped up a weeklong tour of my district, and one thing was clear: The 
Federal Government is in the way and inhibiting my district from 
creating jobs. Government agencies have over-regulated our businesses 
out of existence.
  Take for example the Schultz Pass Fire in Coconino County. Last year, 
a 12-year-old girl, Shaelyn Wilson, lost her life because of the 
government's inability to use our forest resources in a commonsense 
fashion. As a further insult, this manmade, bureaucrat-dictated 
disaster resulted in a fire that could have been prevented, and now we, 
the American taxpayer, will be forced to pay for it for the next 50 to 
100 years.
  Enough is enough. A bureaucrat in Washington, D.C., should not 
dictate decisions that are best left to local communities that have to 
suffer the tragic consequences of government's actions.
  Mr. MARKEY. Mr. Speaker, we only have one speaker remaining on our 
side, so until the majority is down to one speaker, we would like to 
reserve the balance of our time.
  Mr. HASTINGS of Washington. Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to yield 2 
minutes to another new valuable member of the Resources Committee, Mr. 
Johnson of Ohio.
  Mr. JOHNSON of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in strong support of 
House Resolution 72. For too long, the EPA, the Department of the 
Interior, and other permitting agencies have held vitally important 
energy projects hostage to their unreasonable job-killing demands.
  In eastern and southeastern Ohio, our unemployment rates are among 
the highest in the State, and we are falling behind the rest of the 
Nation. But we are blessed with an abundance of natural resources that 
we could tap into to create thousands of high-paying jobs and economic 
opportunity, if the government would simply get out of the way.
  Over the last week, I met with my constituents at three town hall 
meetings, and there was one message that came through loud and clear: 
Get the government out of the way so we can get back on the right 
economic track.
  Right now, there is a company that wants to invest $6 billion in 
eastern Ohio for a clean energy project that would turn coal to liquid 
while capturing 85 percent of all carbon dioxide produced. This project 
would create at least 2,500 direct jobs that would help revitalize the 
local economy. But at each and every turn, Federal regulators have 
moved the goalposts, making it more and more difficult for this project 
to get off the ground.
  Mr. Speaker, eastern and southeastern Ohio cannot afford to lose the 
jobs this project would create. We can't afford for the company to call 
it quits due to what can only be described as Federal harassment.
  It is time that the Federal Government gets out of the way so we can 
unleash our natural resources, both onshore and offshore, to create 
high-paying jobs and put us on the road to energy independence. We have 
got to get serious, Mr. Speaker, about our energy future.
  I encourage my colleagues to support this important resolution.
  Mr. MARKEY. Mr. Speaker, I am the last remaining speaker on our side. 
I reserve my time.

[[Page H662]]

  Mr. HASTINGS of Washington. Mr. Speaker, I am very, very pleased to 
yield 2 minutes to another new member of the Natural Resources 
Committee, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Flores).
  Mr. FLORES. Mr. Speaker, one of the top concerns I am hearing from my 
constituents is the state of our economy and jobs, and that is why I 
rise today in support of this resolution directing the committees of 
the House to examine and exercise oversight of Federal agency 
regulations and their impact on the economy.
  The U.S. Department of Energy recently announced that we currently 
have the highest gas prices in this country that we have ever had 
during the month of February, and it makes no sense for the Department 
of Interior to continue to resist access to our own sources of American 
energy. This is critical, because our country's economic health is tied 
to having a robust energy sector.
  Obama administration officials estimated it would cost roughly 23,000 
jobs if they enacted the deepwater drilling moratorium, but it went 
ahead anyway. And to add further insult to Americans, it also included 
a shallow water regulatory permit slowdown. Recently a judge held the 
Department in contempt for administration's drilling moratorium.

                              {time}  2010

  Congress and this administration can and should encourage private 
sector job growth, not hinder it with unreasonable regulations. We risk 
losing more scarce jobs and more investment capital every single day 
due to the ever-increasing weight of our Federal bureaucracy. Many of 
these regulations place significant burdens on manufacturers and small 
businesses at a time when our economy can least sustain them. According 
to the Small Business Administration, Federal regulations cost American 
businesses between $8,000 and $10,000 per year per employee and between 
$15,000 and $37,000 per American household each year.
  One of the worst offenders of this regulatory epidemic under the 
Obama administration is the Environmental Protection Agency. 
Unfortunately, the expansion of their power is not without cost. To 
name a few of EPA's pending egregious actions and estimated 
consequences:
  One, a ban on the pesticide Atrazine, which will result in a 
potential loss of 45,000 ag-related jobs;
  Two, a mandate requiring the use of expensive and/or economically 
unsound renewable energy sources, causing a $5.2 trillion cut in our 
GDP, a $2,400 cut in household incomes per year, and the loss of more 
than 1 million American jobs;
  Number three, new unsubstantiated ozone standards costing $1 trillion 
in compliance costs and 7.3 million jobs lost.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Herger). The time of the gentleman has 
expired.
  Mr. HASTINGS of Washington. I yield the gentleman an additional 15 
seconds.
  Mr. FLORES. And to add insult to injury, when asked if their 
regulations had a cost benefit analysis, they said that they didn't 
need them, that their rules were the most cost-effective in government. 
I strongly beg to differ. I think that the arrogant nature of the EPA 
and the administration is not doing American business any favor or 
American jobs any favors. Something has to be done to stop this 
epidemic.
  I urge my colleagues to join me in supporting this resolution.
  Mr. MARKEY. I yield myself the balance of my time.
  I say to the gentleman from Washington State that just 2 weeks ago we 
passed by unanimous consent the oversight plan which the majority has 
for the Department of the Interior, and the minority signed off on that 
oversight plan over all of the regulations and all of the various 
agencies that come under the jurisdiction of our committee. We did not 
fight that.
  This debate tonight is something that doesn't really even have to 
take place. The committee--our committee, the Natural Resources 
Committee--is already fully empowered to do all of the oversight that 
they believe is necessary, and we will be there joining with them where 
it is necessary to conduct that oversight.
  Coming back, though, to the central point, that's something that we 
all agree upon. What the American people want is to see what the agenda 
is for creation of jobs in our country. That's what has been lacking on 
the House floor since the Republicans have taken over the House of 
Representatives. And that's the most important agenda for our country. 
And I don't believe that we can accomplish that goal if the Republicans 
continue with their objective of $100 million in profits going to oil 
companies at the same time that they want to give $40 billion worth of 
tax breaks to them.
  That is not really a good policy for our country. That's not going to 
create any new jobs. It would be better if we took that $40 billion, 
moved it over to wind and solar and all-electric vehicles; that we 
moved it over to take care of the low-income people whose oil prices 
are just skyrocketing across this country, so that people don't freeze 
in their own homes. That would be a better use of that $40 billion 
instead of handing it over to the oil and gas industry. We would create 
more jobs, we would protect people and keep them safe in their own 
homes, and we would have a better balance for where this country should 
be going. Instead, we're here debating oversight of these agencies, and 
we agree with the need to do so.
  We probably disagree over the extent to which we should deregulate 
them. In fact, if we deregulate too much, if we take too many 
regulations off the books, we're just going to see a repetition of the 
same kind of environmental disasters that have ravaged our country over 
the years, the same kind of economic collapse that was a result of 
turning a blind eye to the shenanigans that went on in the financial 
marketplace with the big Wall Street firms that were not given the 
proper oversight, and on and on down the line.
  So I want to just say again to the majority that we want to work with 
you on our committee. We want to work with you on the oversight that is 
necessary. That's why we signed off on the plan to do the oversight. I 
just think that we have wasted an hour here on an issue that we already 
agree upon; that we should be partnering to make sure that wherever 
there is chicanery, wherever there is wrongdoing that we should partner 
together to root it out.
  But I'm afraid that this is part of a larger agenda that really seeks 
to destroy the wind and solar industries in our country, to cut 
dramatically the low-income heating assistance that we give to the 
poorest people in our country, to keep the $40 billion in tax breaks on 
the books for the largest oil and gas companies in our country even as 
they are going to enjoy $100 billion worth of profits this year given 
to them by tax breaks that are a hundred years old, with the price of a 
barrel of oil now at $100 a barrel.
  That is absolutely absurd, ladies and gentlemen. It is a squandering 
of the limited resources that we have in our country that should be 
spent on creating new jobs in the renewable energy sector and creating 
jobs by the millions that young people in our country want to create. 
They want to able to tell OPEC, We don't need your oil any more than we 
need your sand.
  And as Mubarak is teetering, the one message that we can send to the 
Middle East is the same message that President Kennedy sent to Kruschev 
in 1961, We are going to use our technological might in order to fend 
off this threat that is posed to our country economically, militarily, 
diplomatically, environmentally. We are going to use this as an 
opportunity.
  That is not what this debate is about. That's where we should move 
over the next weeks and months. My hope is that we can do it together.
  I yield back the balance of my time.
  Mr. HASTINGS of Washington. Mr. Speaker, how much time do I have 
remaining?
  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Culberson). The gentleman from 
Washington has 1\1/4\ minutes remaining.
  Mr. HASTINGS of Washington. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance 
of my time, and I appreciate my friend from Massachusetts' willingness 
to work with us on this very important issue.
  But I want to make it very, very clear because there are some on the 
other side that were suggesting that we want to do something that we're 
not even debating here, and that is to wipe

[[Page H663]]

every regulation off the book. No, what we are trying to do here is to 
look at the regulations and see where perhaps they are not being 
carried out as Congress intended them. And I think specifically what we 
want to do, since this President took office, even though we should 
have done that with past Presidencies on both sides of the aisle, but 
since this President took office, the scope and reach of the executive 
branch has greatly expanded as has been documented by just about every 
speaker and even acknowledged by speakers on the other side. And the 
question, Mr. Speaker, is: Why? And what is the cost to our economy and 
American jobs?
  Congress has an obligation to look into this and to hold the 
administration accountable--and any administration, for that matter, in 
the future. So, Mr. Speaker, what we are doing here tonight and what 
this resolution on the floor that we are debating by virtually all 
committees in the House is simply starting that process. And I look 
forward to working with my friends across the aisle because we appear 
to have common ground.
  With that, I yield back the balance of my time.

                              {time}  2020

  Mr. DAVIS of Kentucky. I yield myself such time as I may consume.
  Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of H. Res. 72. It instructs the 
Committee on Ways and Means, as well as nine other committees, to 
review existing, pending, and proposed regulations and orders from 
Federal Government agencies and to focus on their impact on the 
Nation's economy.
  In listening to the stories I hear tonight from both sides, one thing 
that I would like to say for the record is that oftentimes our 
discussion about regulations gets caught up in unnecessary emotion and 
ideology.
  One point that I would like to make is that so much of what we 
address are process issues. When we increase complexity--and I'm 
speaking as an engineer, not as a Member of Congress--we can reduce 
effectiveness. I am not opposed to regulation, but I am a strong 
supporter of sensible regulation, of honestly looking at the secondary 
and tertiary effects of regulations that either come from poor 
legislation that was too broadly written or from compromises so great, 
so elastic that the bills were thrown over the wall to agencies that 
may or may not act within the intent of Congress and are not working 
closely with those who are regulated.
  I think it is of constitutional importance for our body to make sure 
that we work together with those who are regulated and with those who 
are the executive agencies that we oversee to ensure that there is a 
high-quality outcome and that our communities are not unreasonably 
burdened with the objective that is defined. Much of that context has 
gotten lost from the original intent of many of the agencies that have 
come into being over time.
  I will tell you that the motivation for me, after my professional 
career prior to Congress, that the motivation for me in addressing this 
issue of regulations doesn't come from feeling that standards are 
wrong, but that so many regulations impede or prevent actual job growth 
and innovation.
  The question that I'd asked time and again over the period of the 
last Congress, particularly last year, was: Where are the jobs?
  With this growth of a regulatory state, what we do not understand are 
those impacts on business owners, who need predictability in order to 
hire people. We can have fine sounding language about the intent of 
legislation, which might sound okay here in the Chamber, but as we know 
from the health care bill and others, many Members didn't read the 
bill, didn't understand the secondary effects that would come from 
implementing policy, and left regulators with a near impossible task. 
And many of the rules that have begun to come out on this are nearly 
impossible to implement effectively and in a cost-effective manner.
  I would say that any reforms in government should be bipartisan. This 
should be one of those--first for the institution and second for the 
people we represent to create jobs. We can remove a great deal of that 
unpredictability and give certainty rather than create an adversarial 
relationship between the executive branch and the people who create the 
jobs and who pay the taxes, and I am speaking specifically to our small 
business owners.
  This resolution is necessary because the ever-expanding regulatory 
code is far too complex and burdensome. Regulations are the off-budget 
hidden cost of government impeding Americans' ability to create jobs. 
The Small Business Administration estimates the annual cost of Federal 
regulations in the United States exceeded $1.75 trillion in 2008, 
almost double the amount of all individual income taxes collected last 
year.
  Both sides agree all the time on the ability to refine regulations. I 
would say that the Government Reform Act was only used one time in its 
existence since 1995 to stop a regulation that was going to be 
considered unnecessary or too costly.
  There is a program through the Small Business Administration to 
address regulations and their costs over time. In coming out with their 
top 10 regulations for review in that time, the only thing that has 
been done out of thousands and thousands of regulations that have been 
reviewed or pushed for reform was to simply remove a withholding of 
payment to architects and construction companies doing government 
contracts. That's not affecting the core of this, which is our tax-
paying base--the ability to create the jobs that generate the taxpayers 
that fund the government.
  At a time when our economy is struggling to recover, we can't afford 
to have anything other than a sensible and competitive regulatory code. 
It must be the mission of this Congress and our government to improve 
the competitiveness of the United States and the global economy and 
thus create jobs.
  The resolution we consider tonight represents an important first step 
in the process by learning to develop eyes to see the roots of the 
problem and the impositions on businesses. Again, this is not anti-
regulation. It is asking the question: Why are we accepting a 
regulation? What are the impacts of it going to be? It is allowing 
those who are being regulated to be part of this discussion, and more 
than comments from the Federal Register that are very rarely heeded by 
the agency community.
  It is important for us to reform the code and to reform the process 
of how we view that code so that there is transparency and 
accountability and a check and balance that the American people have, 
not only on us but on the executive branch as well.
  We've just entered our 21st straight month of at least 9 percent 
unemployment or more. As Americans across the country continue to look 
for work, Members of Congress have a responsibility to ask ourselves: 
Are we adequately addressing job creation by removing the barriers to 
growth and creating conditions that encourage businesses to hire? In 
industrial engineering language, we would call that asking the 
questions: Is this a non-value-adding regulation? Does it add value to 
safety in a true and tangible form?
  For example, half of all the regulations in OSHA have nothing do with 
actual safety. They have to do with paperwork compliance standards that 
could shut a business down. This is not a statement against the 
importance of industrial safety. It's simply asking the question so as 
to remove excesses and remove extraneous overhead. The agencies will be 
more efficient, and we will be much more effective in creating jobs in 
the private sector.
  For the past 2 years, the answer to one question is simply that we 
have not been adequately addressing job creation by removing these 
barriers to growth and encouraging businesses to hire. From the failed 
stimulus package to the misguided attempt at health care reform to 
financial regulatory reform, American businesses have been hit with an 
explosion of new taxes and regulations. They increase the cost of doing 
business, and therefore make it more difficult for businesses to hire.
  For small businesses that have less than 20 employees, the regulatory 
burden amounts to an average of $10,585 per employee per year. These 
small firms have been responsible for 64 percent of the net new hires 
over the last 15 years and could play a role in lowering our 
unemployment rate if the

[[Page H664]]

regulatory burden on them were reduced and brought into a scale of 
context for their size versus a very large business. Excessive 
regulations can also have a direct impact on American families, many of 
whom are already struggling to make ends meet, by increasing the cost 
of food, medicine, doctor visits, and utility bills for basic services 
such as electricity, water, and sewer rates.

  I am encouraged that President Obama has recognized the potential 
negative economic effects of regulations and rules in both his State of 
the Union address and in a recent op-ed in The Wall Street Journal that 
followed an editorial about a bill that I introduced last year called 
the REINS Act.
  This is not a partisan issue. Both Republican and Democratic 
administrations have contributed to the massive growth of government 
and to expanding the volume and complexity of the regulatory state. 
However, I am concerned that the President's recent rhetoric on 
regulation may be just that--rhetoric. Despite these comments, the 
administration has used the regulatory process, not the Congress, to 
advance elements of its agenda that cannot be passed in the Congress.
  After Speaker Pelosi forced the job-killing cap-and-trade bill 
through the House of Representatives, the legislation was stopped in a 
democratically controlled Senate. In December of 2009, however, the 
Environmental Protection Agency took matters into its own hands, 
without the express approval of the Congress, to begin moving to 
regulate greenhouse gas emissions.
  This raises serious questions of our ability to control and provide 
oversight of the executive branch on behalf of the constituents we 
represent. These regulations would have disastrous consequences for a 
weak economy. They would result in higher energy costs, which, in turn, 
will result in increased utility rates for struggling families and for 
the small businesses and manufacturers that employ millions of 
Americans.
  Any time a regulation or rule enacted by an executive branch agency 
can have this kind of impact and broad-reaching implications on our 
economy, it should be subject to the review of the Congress to be 
accountable to our citizens and not a faceless bureaucrat in an agency.
  This was the idea behind H.R. 10, the REINS Act, legislation that I 
introduced to provide greater accountability and transparency in the 
rulemaking process. On all rules that have a direct economic impact of 
over $100 million, the REINS Act would require an up-or-down, stand-
alone vote by both the House and the Senate and require that they be 
signed by the President before they can be enforced on the American 
public.
  While the REINS Act reforms the process of how these regulations are 
approved going forward, the resolution we are debating tonight 
addresses those rules already on the books or those that have been 
proposed. President Obama has also ordered his agencies to review rules 
and proposals that may be hindering job creation or economic growth. 
However, H. Res. 72 is superior to the President's review in several 
important ways.
  First, the resolution before us would ask the House committees to 
review regulations rather than the agencies that created them and 
enforce them. The fox should not guard the henhouse. Before even 
beginning the review required by the President's Executive order, the 
EPA announced that it was confident that the review process would not 
result in the repeal or alteration of a single current or pending rule.
  That is not internal oversight, and it goes against the clear, 
express will of the American people and their elected Representatives 
and Senators. In fact, when House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell 
Issa called on business and trade associations to identify regulations 
that burden their businesses, EPA rules were cited more than any other 
Federal agency.

                              {time}  2030

  By passing this resolution, we will begin a regulatory review that is 
both objective and analyzes costs and benefits in real numbers.
  Before being elected to Congress, I ran a small manufacturing 
consulting business. What we did for a living was process improvement 
and flow management. In other words, we took inventory of a 
manufacturing facility's processes. We understood the flow. We sought 
to decrease complexity, remove processes that didn't add value, and 
increase the overall throughput and efficiency of the facility, thus 
protecting the existing jobs and creating more jobs in return. That's 
exactly what H. Res. 72 asks the House committees to do with the 
Federal regulatory process.
  Removing and altering outdated, costly or ineffective rules will 
streamline our regulatory code and make our economy more competitive 
and inviting to investment and job creation. Even saving a small 
percentage of the $1.75 trillion that is currently spent on regulatory 
compliance each year by job creators would free up capital which can be 
reinvested into our economy to create jobs.
  Please join me in supporting this resolution so that we can begin the 
process of reforming the Federal code and get our economy moving and 
hiring again.
  Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. LEVIN. I yield myself as much time as I shall consume.
  This is about oversight, and what the majority is doing is losing 
sight of the needs of tens of thousands of workers in this country. 
What they are doing is overlooking the needs of the workers of this 
country.
  Our committee has jurisdiction over trade adjustment, and what's 
happened this week regarding trade adjustment assistance is really 
incomprehensible and, I think, disgraceful. This Congress is going to 
leave town tomorrow. On Saturday, the extension of TAA expires, the 
2009 extension. And what's going to happen? Tens of thousands of 
people, who will be laid off because of trade, will no longer be able 
to be certified--tens of thousands. They will be out of luck when they 
hit bad luck through no fault of their own.
  We've received all kinds of communications from people in my State, 
and I'm sure there are people like this in every single State. We heard 
from a machinist laid off, qualified for TAA, and is now pursuing a 
career as a technician. He's in a program that goes on for a few years. 
Before TAA was overhauled in 2009, States could not have approved 
training of that length nor have approved the prerequisite training.
  We heard of another worker, a service worker in the State of 
Michigan, laid off, qualified for TAA, and is now pursuing an 
associate's degree. She's planning to complete her program in June of 
2012. Before the TAA reforms of 2009, service workers were not even 
eligible for TAA.
  We also know of another person who was laid off, a die helper, who's 
qualified for TAA to continue training on a part-time basis. Only 
because of the extensions of 2009, the changes, the improvements, could 
this person have been in that training.
  And then another worker in Michigan--and you know, workers throughout 
the country are like this--who learned that she would be laid off, 
petitioned for TAA and began pursuing an M.A. degree before she 
actually lost her job.
  There are thousands of people who are going to be in this position, 
and because the majority in this House have failed to act, there are 
going to be tens of thousands of people who will have no place to turn 
in terms of training.
  Since the 2009 improvements, about 177,000 people have been able to 
receive training--170,000--and now, beginning Monday, tens of thousands 
will not be able to be certified for help.
  Now, this isn't only in the State of Michigan. It's not only in the 
State of Ohio. It's not only in the State of Indiana. It's not only in 
Pennsylvania. This is true throughout the country--true throughout the 
country--and essentially, the majority here is leaving, turning their 
backs on the people of this country.
  So what happened this week was the following: that a few groups 
outside of this institution decided they did not want to support the 
2009 expansion of benefits; and a group within this House, the 
Republican Study Committee, issued a document urging Republicans not to 
support the extension. There are many, or some, Republicans in this 
House who were ready to support it, but they pulled back the bill,

[[Page H665]]

and the document from the study committee has this as one of the 
reasons why we should not step up to the plate.
  They said, under TAA programs, the government picks winners and 
losers because TAA favorably discriminates towards workers who lost 
their job due to trade. Well, picking winners and losers, what TAA does 
is to fill in gaps that were not filled in previously and often gaps 
that were increased because of the inaction of the now-majority of this 
House.
  And talking about winners and losers, the losers are going to be the 
unemployed people of this country, unemployed through no fault of their 
own, unemployed, looking for work, who will not be able to be certified 
for TAA. This is a disgrace. And there are some people who will 
continue to be eligible for TAA who are going to have to now pay more 
for their health care if they can afford it.
  When we put this together a few years ago, this is what Senator 
Grassley said about the reforms, and I quote, Today's achievement is 
the result of the dedication, hard work, and commitment of many 
individuals. It is the culmination of years of effort, and I am 
confident that the result will serve to benefit American workers in 
Iowa and across the United States for years to come, end of quote.
  The failure of the Republicans to bring this bill to the floor this 
week means that what Senator Grassley said will serve to benefit 
American workers in Iowa and across the United States for years to 
come, that's going to end on Monday, because Saturday is a weekend. 
People who are laid off because of trade are going to hit a wall, a 
wall.
  So we are in favor of oversight. We made that clear earlier. We are 
also sure we should not be shortsighted about the needs of productive 
people who want to work and cannot find a job.
  The person speaking on behalf of the Republicans, my distinguished 
colleague on the Ways and Means Committee, talked about those who are 
out of work through no fault of their own. You mentioned 9 million. 
There's a record number of people in this country who have been 
unemployed for a longer period of time than has been true in the past, 
and now all they ask for, unemployment comp in many cases--they're 
looking for work--and a chance to be retrained. On Monday, for 
thousands that chance will be gone.

                              {time}  2040

  That should not have happened.
  Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that the gentleman from 
Washington (Mr. McDermott) manage the balance of the time on the 
Democratic side.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Hastings of Washington). Is there 
objection to the request of the gentleman from Michigan?
  There was no objection.
  Mr. DAVIS of Kentucky. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to a 
distinguished fellow member of the Ways and Means committee, the 
gentleman from California, Chairman Herger.
  Mr. HERGER. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentleman from Kentucky 
for his leadership in working to bring more congressional oversight to 
the regulatory process. The heavy hand of overbearing environmental 
regulations has struck my northern California rural congressional 
district in full force. The Endangered Species Act, in addition to 
regulations under the Clean Water Act, Clean Air Act and other 
environmental laws continue to be enforced by Federal agencies and 
activists to curtail irrigation water for family farms and ranches, 
force communities and developers to spend hundreds of millions of 
dollars on environmental ``analysis'' and even threaten public health 
and safety by delaying forest management to reduce catastrophic 
wildfire and much needed infrastructure such as flood preventing levees 
and transportation improvements. Another set of job-crushing 
regulations surrounds the 3 percent withholding tax that is set to go 
into effect next year. This tax will cost far more in unfunded mandates 
on small businesses and State and local governments than it will ever 
raise in revenue for the Federal Government.
  Mr. Speaker, tomorrow I will be reintroducing bipartisan legislation 
to repeal the unfair 3 percent withholding tax. I would like to enter 
into the record a letter from the Government Withholding Relief 
Coalition highlighting this provision's regulatory burden and urging 
its repeal. I strongly support this resolution and look forward to 
stopping the regulatory assault on my constituents and our Nation's 
economy.
                                            Government Withholding


                                             Relief Coalition,

                                                 January 28, 2011.
     Re: regulations and their impact on the economy and jobs.
     Hon. Darrell E. Issa,
     Chairman, Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, House 
         of Representatives, Washington, DC.
       Dear Chairman Issa: The Government Withholding Relief 
     Coalition and its 116 member associations appreciate your 
     interest in regulations that negatively impact the economy 
     and jobs. We welcome the opportunity to highlight one 
     specific issue that was the genesis for the creation of this 
     coalition: the 3% tax withholding mandate. This requirement 
     is set to go into effect on January 1, 2012 if it is not 
     repealed. It will cost jobs and waste significant amounts of 
     time and money for companies as well as governments to 
     implement.
       The 3% withholding law, which was enacted in Section 511 of 
     the Tax Increase Prevention and Reconciliation Act of 2005 
     (P.L. 109-222) as section 3402(t) of the Internal Revenue 
     Code, mandates that federal, state, and local governments 
     withhold 3% of nearly all of their contract payments, 
     Medicare payments, farm payments, and certain grants. 
     Compliance with this law will impose significant, unnecessary 
     financial burdens on both the public and private sectors, 
     with a disproportionate impact on small businesses.
       The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) issued a proposed rule 
     in December 2008 and is scheduled to issue a final rule to 
     implement this counterproductive law in the near future. 
     However, this is just the beginning of the regulations that 
     need to be altered and issued. The Federal Acquisition 
     Regulations (FAR) will need to be changed, and regulations 
     for Medicare payment, farm payments, and grants will also 
     need to be modified. These are merely the federal regulations 
     that will need to be changed, but since this requirement 
     flows down to state and local governments (as an unfunded 
     mandate), every state and many city, county, and municipal 
     governments will need to change their regulations and 
     companies will have to learn to comply with these numerous 
     and likely divergent implementing regulations.
       The provision is already proving costly and will increase 
     exponentially as the implementation deadline moves closer. If 
     this tax is not repealed, it will cost companies and 
     governments at all levels substantial amounts of money. These 
     exorbitant expenditures will be at the expense of hiring new 
     employees, expanding businesses, and providing government 
     services at a time that neither the public nor private sector 
     can absorb such unnecessary costs.
       The Department of Defense in April 2008 estimated that it 
     would cost more than $17 billion in the first five years to 
     comply with the 3% withholding requirement, which far exceeds 
     any estimated revenue gains due to tax compliance. While this 
     estimate may be reduced depending on how the law is 
     implemented, needless to say, the costs will be huge across 
     all levels of government.
       The Coalition believes this law and its corresponding 
     regulations are a prime example of wasteful requirements that 
     have a negative impact on the economy and job-creation. As 
     you develop your agenda, we strongly urge you to consider the 
     damaging effects of the 3% withholding tax and include its 
     repeal among your priorities for this year.
           Sincerely,
                          Government Withholding Relief Coalition.
        Aeronautical Repair Station Association, Aerospace 
     Industries Association, Air Conditioning Contractors of 
     America, Air Transport Association, America's Health 
     Insurance Plans, American Bankers Association, American 
     Clinical Laboratory Association, American Concrete Pressure 
     Pipe Association, American Congress on Surveying and Mapping, 
     American Council of Education, American Council of 
     Engineering Companies, American Heath Care Association, 
     American Institute of Architects, American Logistics 
     Association, American Moving and Storage Association, 
     American Nursery and Landscape Association, and American Road 
     & Transportation Builders Association.
       American Society of Civil Engineers, American 
     Subcontractors Association, American Supply Association, 
     American Traffic Safety Services Association, American 
     Trucking Associations, Armed Forces Marketing Council, 
     Associated Builders and Contractors, Associated Equipment 
     Distributors, Association of National Account Executives, 
     Association of School Business Officials International, 
     Business and Institutional Furniture Manufacturers 
     Association, California Association of Public Purchasing 
     Officers, Coalition for Government Procurement, Colorado 
     Motor Carriers Association, Computing Technology Industry 
     Association, Construction Contractors Association, and 
     Construction Employers' Association of California.
        Construction Industry Round Table, Construction Management 
     Association of America, Design Professionals Coalition, 
     Edison

[[Page H666]]

     Electric Institute, Electronic Security Association, 
     Engineering & Utility Contractors Association, Federation of 
     American Hospitals, Financial Executives International's 
     Committee on Government Business, Financial Executives 
     International's Committee on Taxation, Finishing Contractors 
     Association, Gold Coast Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, 
     Government Finance Officers Association, Independent 
     Electrical Contractors, Inc., International City/County 
     Management Association, and International Council of 
     Employers of Bricklayers and Allied Craftworkers.
        International Foodservice Distributors Association, 
     International Municipal Lawyers Association, Management 
     Association for Private Photogrammetric Surveyors, Mason 
     Contractors Association of America, Mechanical Contractors 
     Association of America, Medical Group Management Association, 
     Messenger Courier Association of the Americas, Miami Dade 
     County, Modular Building Institute, Munitions Industrial Base 
     Task Force, National Asphalt Pavement Association, National 
     Association for Self-Employed, National Association of 
     College & University Business Officers, National Association 
     of Counties, National Association of Credit Management, and 
     National Association of Educational Procurement.
       National Association of Government Contractors, National 
     Association of Manufacturers, National Association of 
     Minority Contractors, National Association of State Auditors, 
     Comptrollers and Treasurers, National Association of State 
     Chief Information Officers, National Association of State 
     Procurement Officials, National Association of Wholesaler-
     Distributors, National Beer Wholesalers Association, National 
     Corn Growers Association, National Council for Public 
     Procurement and Contracting, National Defense Industrial 
     Association, National Electrical Contractors Association, and 
     National Electrical Manufacturers Association.
       National Emergency Equipment Dealers Association, National 
     Federation of Independent Business, National Institute of 
     Governmental Purchasing, National Italian-American Business 
     Association, National League of Cities, National Precast 
     Concrete Association, National Office Products Alliance, 
     National Roofing Contractors Association, National Small 
     Business Association, National Society of Professional 
     Engineers, and National Society of Professional Surveyors.
       National Utility Contractors Association, National Wooden 
     Pallet and Container Association, North-American Association 
     of Uniform Manufacturers & Distributors, North Coast Builders 
     Exchange, Office Furniture Dealers Alliance, Oregon Trucking 
     Association, Plumbing-Heating-Cooling Contractors--National 
     Association, Printing Industries of America, Professional 
     Services Council, Regional Legislative Alliance of Ventura 
     and Santa Barbara Counties, Santa Rosa Chamber of Commerce, 
     Security Industry Association, Service Disabled Veteran Owned 
     Small Business Council, and Sheet Metal and Air Conditioning 
     Contractors National Association, Inc.
       Shipbuilders Council of America, Small Business & 
     Entrepreneurship Council, Small Business Legislative Council, 
     TechAmerica, Textile Rental Services Association of America, 
     The Associated General Contractors of America, The 
     Association of Union Constructors, The Distilled Spirits 
     Council of the U.S., The Financial Services Roundtable, U.S. 
     Chamber of Commerce, United States Telecom Association, 
     Veterans Entrepreneurship Task Force, and Women Impacting 
     Public Policy.

  Mr. McDERMOTT. I yield myself such time as I may consume.
  Mr. Speaker, as we come out to discuss this resolution, H. Res. 72, I 
couldn't but think of a story from the middle part of the United States 
of America. There was a Methodist minister who fell ill, very, very 
seriously ill, and the head of the board of deacons called the board 
together to have a discussion about what they should do about the 
problems of the ailing minister. They had a long discussion. It took, 
not as long as this debate will take, but it took 2 hours. And at the 
end, by a vote of 4-3, with 17 abstentions, they wrote a letter to the 
minister urging him to get well.
  Now this resolution has about as much effect as that letter to that 
minister in central Illinois. Two years ago--and what a difference a 
day makes--January 28, 2009, this Congress passed the American Recovery 
Act. Seven hundred billion dollars that stopped the economic collapse 
in this country, that got us started on recovery from the problems 
created by the previous administration. We did that in less than a 
hundred days.
  We've been here a hundred days. There used to be a TV program I liked 
when I was a kid called This Is The Week That Was. Now let's review 
this week that was. I arrived back from Seattle and on the calendar 
were two bills. One was a bill to deal with, as the gentleman from 
Michigan has suggested, the problems of workers who have been displaced 
by trade, the so-called Trade Adjustment Act, TAA. That was one bill. 
The other bill was a bill to extend the Patriot Act. I don't know what 
the leadership on the other side was thinking. Maybe they can't count. 
But the bill to extend the Patriot Act went down in flames. They then 
pulled the bill on extending TAA. That was Tuesday.
  Then we came to Wednesday. That was the day they brought the bill in, 
a meaningless bill, messing with the United Nations funding, that 
didn't save one single dollar but simply said we weren't going to pay 
our dues to this, then that section of the United Nations that somebody 
didn't like, and so they decided they'd come out here and make a big 
show about the United Nations. That bill went down in flames.
  Now the week has not been a total loss. We did change the name of a 
courthouse; we did it on Wednesday, and I think we got something to go 
home and talk to our people about in our districts.
  And now we're to Thursday. Here we are spending 9 hours out here on a 
meaningless piece of legislation. It is truly a sad day for the House 
that we are spending another day not helping the people of America. Not 
helping the private sector create jobs. Not doing what the people sent 
us here to do. Early this morning, congressional representatives and 
staff came to work on Capitol Hill to work for the American people. It 
is the job every day for Members and staff to oversee the agencies of 
the Federal Government, to oversee the regulations so that the common 
good is served. It doesn't require House Resolution 72. We are here to 
track how money is being spent and that it is being done responsibly. 
That is the Congress' constitutional responsibility and has been for 
224 years.
  You would have thought that maybe the people on the other side would 
have figured this out, Mr. Speaker. We stood out here and read the 
Constitution. I guess for some of them it was the first time they had 
ever read it but they weren't paying attention or something because 
this resolution is simply restating what has always been our 
responsibility.
  Now it's been 100 days, as I said, for the Republicans in control of 
the House, and they have done not one single thing to create a job. 
Nada. Nil. Zilch. Nothing. Not a single thing to create a job in 100 
days. We have 14.9 million unemployed in this country. We have an 
intense economic competition with the rest of the world that we are in 
danger of losing if we don't get moving. We have a home foreclosure 
crisis in this country. We've got two wars. We've got huge energy and 
environmental issues to deal with and an economic system that's falling 
further and further behind the rest of the world. We do not lead the 
world in college graduates per capita. We are about sixth or seventh or 
eighth, somewhere down there. Other countries are passing us because of 
our inaction.
  And what do we do? The Republicans say, let's go out and waste the 
10th of February. Now, instead, the Republicans are having us working 
for two whole days to tell the House of Representatives to do its job. 
For heaven's sakes, what a silly piece of legislation. This bill is an 
insult to the American people. It's an insult to the people who work 
here, and they don't even seem to understand they're insulting 
themselves, as though they didn't know what their job was. It's like 
Nero fiddling while Rome burned. The House is sitting here while 
millions of Americans are unemployed. They're selling their belongings. 
They're emptying their 401(k)s. They're doing everything possible to 
stay afloat.

                              {time}  2050

  Now, this isn't 1930. In 1930, what people did was, they took what 
few belongings they had, went out, put it on the top of the car, drove 
to California, and found a job. That's what people did. But every day, 
millions of Americans can't move to take a new job because they can't 
sell their house because their homes are under water, according to the 
banks. In Seattle today, one-third of the homes are under water. Now, 
if you don't think some foreclosures are coming out of that, you don't 
understand how it works. There is a whole new underclass of unemployed, 
undertrained Americans who are not being helped to compete in the world 
economy.
  And while Americans across the country suffer, the Republicans come

[[Page H667]]

out here with H. Res. 72. They are going to do nothing. The 
Republicans, the party of ``saying one thing and doing another,'' 
promised big action on jobs during the election: If you elect us, we 
will get this country rolling again. So they have taken control of the 
House, and what do the American people get? Instead of helping the 
private sector with a smart science, technology, and energy investment 
policy, we are considering Republican legislation on pornography. That 
certainly makes a lot of sense if you don't have a job.
  Instead of compassionately and energetically helping the unemployed, 
the Republicans want to redefine the rape of women to keep some women 
who have been raped from getting abortions. You will see that one next 
week. That's going to be the great bill.
  Where's the job bill? Where are the job bills? I have no idea. There 
are more 99ers every week. Now in case you don't know what a 99er is on 
the other side, let me educate you. We have an unemployment system that 
provides for unemployment insurance for 99 weeks; and when it runs out, 
you are done. And there are four or five people for every job that 
comes up in America. So if you go out looking for a job, you have a one 
in four chance of having any chance at getting it. And yet these 99-
weekers are piling up all over the country because they've run out of 
their unemployment insurance, and the Republicans do nothing about 
creating jobs.
  Instead of intelligently debating administration plans in 
Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Republicans want to vote on meaningless bills 
like the one I talked about with the United Nations that save no money 
and don't advance the U.S. interest in anything.
  The Republicans ran on a slogan, Mr. Speaker: Government spending 
kills jobs. They are the extreme party of ``everyone for themselves,'' 
no action for the common good. And now that the Republicans have 
responsibility, all they have is their message machine. That's what 
these 9 hours are about. Just in case you haven't broken the code, they 
are all in their offices now, Mr. Speaker, cranking out press releases: 
I'm going to take on this regulation. I'm going to take on that 
regulation. And somehow they think that those messages will get them 
reelected in November of 2012. They are creating a paper blizzard. Like 
we have had some snow around here, well, this is a real blizzard.
  Now when you try to govern without ideas, it doesn't go over very 
well with the American public, and slowly the Republican leadership is 
hearing the feedback. What is the new Republican response? They say the 
need to ``retool their messaging.''
  Since we have to waste the people's time on the floor today on this 
meaningless resolution, I thought I should try and be helpful to the 
Republican effort. It's my civic duty. As a member of the minority, I 
should help the majority rule. Now, the problem the Republicans are 
having is that what they ran on, that `` Big Government is the 
problem,'' isn't true. Big Government is not the problem. No one wants 
Big Government. What do we want that for? We've all been through TSA. 
We don't want that stuff.
  But the government is not the problem. The government is made up of 
Americans, good Americans who are writing rules and regulations to do 
things that Americans want. Americans want clean water. They want to be 
able to drink the water. They want some water to irrigate their crops. 
They want water for a lot of things. And it takes regulation because if 
you let anybody take as much water as they want, some people and some 
very important things are not going to get done.
  They want clean air. Americans want clean air. They know there is an 
epidemic of asthma among children living in cities, and they're worried 
about it. And they want regulations. They want regulations in 
construction so that you don't create an epidemic of youngsters with 
asthma who fill the emergency rooms every night in hospitals in this 
country.
  Now, the American people want fairness. They want the rule of law. 
They want laws fixed that don't work. Sometimes you pass a law; and 10 
years ago, it seemed like a good idea at the time. Things change. 
Things need to be changed. Sure, we ought to be doing that. But you 
don't need House Resolution 72 to tell you to do it. Common sense would 
tell you to do it. And the American people need the collective help 
that we can give them. The American people want effective government 
that deals with people's problems.
  Now the Republican ``fear and blame machine'' is an old, tired, 
failed philosophy that from time to time can be used to scare the 
American people in an election. They did it in 2004. Remember the 
orange alerts and the Oh, God, yellow alerts. Oh, God, we've got to 
have 4 more years of the same stuff. And we got 4 more years of it. In 
2010, here they are again.
  We were over in the Ways and Means Committee today doing oversight 
with a wrecking ball. Let's wreck the bill that we passed last year on 
health care. Now Bill Frist--you are not going to call him a wild-eyed 
liberal. He used to be the majority leader in the Senate. Bill Frist 
said to the Republicans, Mr. Speaker, don't repeal it. Fix it. But what 
we're doing today is getting ready to blow the bill out of the way so 
that we can have the Paul Ryan road to the end of Medicare and to a 
voucher system. Paul Ryan vouchers for every senior citizen in this 
country is the goal. And that oversight is really set to blow apart any 
chance of developing better law than we got through here last year.
  It would work better if both sides worked together, there's no 
question about it. But if you're going to use a wrecking ball and try 
to put in a voucher system and say to all the old people in this 
country, Hey, here's your voucher. This is an $8,000 voucher. Go out 
and find yourself an insurance company that wants to give you 
insurance. Mr. Speaker, consider that idea. I mean, I don't know how 
old the Members' mothers and fathers are; but when you get to be 75 or 
80, and you go out with an $8,000 voucher and try to build health 
insurance, you can't do it, except by taking another $5,000 or $6,000 
out of your pocket.
  The seniors in this country spend already one-third of their income 
on health care. They have got plenty of skin in the game. They don't 
need any more. But the Ways and Means Committee today is doing that 
rather than trying to figure out what it is that we can do to make the 
law better. There wasn't a single question about how can you make the 
law better. All it was was an attack on the man who ran CMS. The first 
question was, Do you still believe that the national health system of 
Great Britain is the best thing since sliced bread? The question 
wasn't, Doctor, how can we help you make this law work more effectively 
for the American people?
  There is an extreme agenda here, and it won't be helped by retooling 
the message. Now, the other thing that is kind of ridiculous about this 
whole thing is, we have an Oversight Committee on the Ways and Means 
Committee. We have a very distinguished Member from Louisiana. Dr. 
Boustany is a very smart Member of Congress. He is the ranking member 
on the Oversight Committee. He does not need H. Res. 72 to tell him to 
do oversight. He is a very thorough man. He is a cardiac surgeon. I 
mean, come on. This guy is smart and able and can see what the problems 
are, and he doesn't need these 10 hours out here flogging this 
resolution so that we can then have our press releases.

                              {time}  2100

  The American people deserve better than this. They deserve us to put 
positive proposals forward that will create jobs, that will deal with 
the foreclosures, that will deal with the health care problems they 
have, that will deal with the energy problems, will deal with what's 
happening in the world and what's going on overseas.
  And we are about to see in the budget that comes out what the 
priorities of the Republican Party are. The budget is a moral document. 
It is when you say what you really care about. And when you look at 
that document, you will see what they really care about.
  Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to vote ``no.''
  I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. DAVIS of Kentucky. Mr. Speaker, returning to the subject of 
regulations and its impact on the creation of jobs and the need to 
create jobs to create taxpayers, I yield 2 minutes to the

[[Page H668]]

gentleman from Nebraska (Mr. Smith), a distinguished new member of the 
Ways and Means committee.
  Mr. SMITH of Nebraska. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of today's 
resolution directing committees to review existing, pending, and 
proposed executive agency regulations. Congress is charged not only 
with legislating but with also overseeing the implementation of 
legislation.
  Agencies continue to promulgate blanket rules which ignore 
Congressional intent. Forty-three major regulations were published by 
executive agencies in 2010, and another 191 are currently in the works. 
These regulations marginalize small businesses and communities which 
have less ability to absorb the cost of compliance. Small towns in 
Nebraska, for instance, are spending millions of dollars installing 
water treatment facilities and electric generation units to comply with 
EPA standards which continue to be arbitrarily changed, regardless of 
the science. These people are, in good faith, purchasing lower emission 
units. They want to comply with the law, Mr. Speaker. But cities and 
residents can no longer afford higher prices because of these arbitrary 
and inconsistent regulations. It's not fair, and it's not good 
government.
  I would also like to touch on some Medicare regulation, which has the 
potential to disproportionately hurt rural hospitals. Medicare 
outpatient physician supervision requirements have a serious impact in 
my district and I'm sure many others. For the last 2 years, Medicare 
rules for outpatient hospital procedures have included a provision to 
require a medical doctor be on site for even the simplest of 
procedures, for example, a phlebotomist taking a blood sample. 
Certainly, I don't think that was congressional intent.
  Without the current temporary suspension of this rule for small rural 
hospitals, many critical access hospitals in my district would not have 
the manpower to perform outpatient procedures on a regular basis, the 
result for patients being lengthy travel to larger cities for care, be 
it routine care or otherwise.
  This regulation is also having a negative impact in more urban areas. 
Yesterday I was speaking to a group of physicians from Nebraska, and 
one shared with me his ability to remotely order a CT scan at the 
hospital when he knows such a procedure is necessary.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The time of the gentleman has expired.
  Mr. DAVIS of Kentucky. I yield the gentleman an additional minute.
  Mr. SMITH of Nebraska. However, the hospital cannot begin the scan 
until after he arrives at the hospital to oversee the scan, although 
not even necessarily perform the scan.
  As a cosponsor of the REINS Act, I also applaud this effort to begin 
curbing unchecked agency regulation hampering families, job creators, 
and the growth of America's economy.
  Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. DAVIS of Kentucky. Mr. Speaker, it is a privilege to yield 2 
minutes now to the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Paulsen), a 
distinguished member of the Ways and Means Committee.
  Mr. PAULSEN. Mr. Speaker, I want to rise also in support of this 
resolution which directs committees to review Federal agency rules and 
regulations which indeed may unfairly harm the ability to create jobs 
and grow our economy.
  I continue to hear on a pretty regular basis from my small businesses 
in my community in Minnesota about new rules and new proposed 
regulations that absolutely could hamper their operations and 
opportunity for growth. I'm just going to give a couple of examples 
real quickly.
  I've heard from financial service companies in my district about a 
rule that the Department of Labor is proposing now that fundamentally 
changes a 35-year-old definition of ``fiduciary'' under ERISA. Now, if 
implemented, this new rule would cause a major disruption to the 
marketplace and directly result in higher costs and severely limited 
access to much-needed products and services to consumers.
  I've also heard from some of my medical device companies in my 
district that are leading the world in developing these new lifesaving 
technologies. And there's a new rule now that's been proposed by the 
Department of Transportation which would require finished medical 
devices and other products that contain lithium batteries to now be 
shipped as hazardous cargo. Now, this is going to have a devastating 
impact on the production of pacemakers, defibrillators, and 
neurostimulators.
  This is a new requirement that would severely disrupt the medical 
industry's just-in-time delivery system. It's going to lead to 
bottlenecks in the supply chain, and it's going to delay access to care 
for patients all over the country, even though these devices pose no 
demonstrable safety risk.
  And it isn't just medical devices, Mr. Speaker. The regulation is 
also going to have a significant impact on shipping of everyday 
technologies. All in all, it's estimated that this new regulation alone 
is going to cost about $1 billion annually to the economy and these 
businesses.
  Mr. Speaker, these are just a few of the examples, and we've heard 
others tonight of some of the burdensome regulations that are out there 
and being proposed, and it clearly outlines the need for some oversight 
and reform.
  I ask for support of the resolution.
  Mr. McDERMOTT. I yield myself the balance of my time.
  Mr. Speaker, I'm just sitting here thinking about this whole business 
about regulation. Since I've been in Congress, when I arrived here we 
were in the midst of the savings and loan crisis which cost this 
country something like $50 billion or something to bail ourselves out 
of. It wasn't the fact that we didn't have the right rules and 
regulations; we just weren't enforcing them.
  Then we had Enron went on down in Texas, and we had the Exxon Valdez, 
and you look at all these issues.
  We need regulation and enforcement to make sure that the people are 
protected. It is our job, in part, to protect the American people from 
the capitalist system. The capitalist system is not bad. It simply 
doesn't have any morals. It is designed to make money. That's all it's 
about.
  And the regulations that are put in are, in large measure, to protect 
the American people from the excesses of the economic system. And if we 
don't do that, we don't do our constituents what they sent us here to 
do, which is to represent them and protect them. We think about 
protections in terms of, you know, things overseas and missiles flying 
in from somewhere and all that kind of stuff, but there is more damage 
done to American people by what happens here in this country by our own 
companies to the water and the air and the land and the air we breathe. 
So it is very important that we do this. We should be doing continuous 
oversight. And in some instances, we should be tightening the 
regulations.
  The banking system that collapsed collapsed because we allowed Wall 
Street to have a heyday with derivatives and said, you know, do 
whatever you guys think is right. What they thought was right was to 
gamble with our pensions and our people's savings, and the whole system 
collapsed. And we're digging our way out of it.
  And to come out here and say what we need is to remove regulations is 
simply not--doesn't make sense, and it shouldn't make sense to anybody 
who thinks about it for 1 minute. And I urge my colleagues to vote 
against this. It's useless. It's stupid. Every committee already has an 
oversight subcommittee and they will do it, and I think that there is 
no reason to pass this.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

                              {time}  2110

  Mr. DAVIS of Kentucky. Mr. Speaker, in closing, I find some degree of 
irony in the gentleman's comments that anybody saying that we need to 
do away with regulation was stupid, because the President of the United 
States stood in this Chamber last month and was citing specific 
regulations that were redundant or were inappropriate.
  The resolution that we have been debating tonight is a critical step 
toward restoring our economy and getting Americans back to work. I 
would like to point some context out on this.
  I think we have 100 percent agreement in the Chamber tonight that we 
want clean water and we want clean

[[Page H669]]

air. I'm the father of an asthmatic child, two asthmatic children, I 
might add, who has been up all night and made the trips to the ER and 
understands this. But there's a significant difference between the 
context of application there and dealing with some of the changes and 
the moving standards in the regulatory community that have huge 
economic impact on our communities.
  I would like to cite three brief examples of different contexts of 
regulations that need to be modernized or changed, or have lost their 
context.
  Again, we are not talking about an anti-regulation issue here. The 
fact is that regulations have never been aggressively attacked. What 
happens is we layer another regulation on top of an existing 
regulation. We increase the complexity of that. We create new 
organizations that do the same thing, costing more money, creating 
uncertainty. And I think we have common ground on the need for that 
reform. But let me give you the first example.
  Clean air is a great concern to me. I grew up around the steel and 
the mining industries as a small boy on the other side of the tracks 
and got to see the bad things that were done. When the EPA came into 
being, there were some good starts. Ironically, the real efforts of 
true environmental remediation began in the States. Operation Scarlet 
in Pennsylvania began changing the way the land was treated. Much of 
that was copied by the Federal Government and changed our community 
demonstrably. But those days are long gone, those good old days, and 
the complexity and the intrusiveness of the bureaucracy is even 
different to a greater degree.
  The Marathon oil refinery that's in Catlettsburg, Kentucky, spent 
tens of millions of dollars in full compliance with existing 
regulations. Long-term capital investments were made to deal with 
sulfur, nitrous oxide, and mercury, other chemicals that were in 
potential emissions, both in water and in the air. And then, after 
these huge, multiyear capital investments, the ball was moved again. It 
has crippled the ability of that specific facility to grow and to 
create jobs.
  That is what I'm talking about, context and predictability. Having 
overseen long-term capital investment plans in the manufacturing 
industry, when you have to take 10 years, you cannot afford to have 
that lack of predictability. This is what we are talking about.
  At a closer level to home, we talk about veterans a lot here, we talk 
about prescription drug problems, drug addiction issues. That's 
something I care very much about. Growing up in a dysfunctional 
household and seeing the worst of substance abuse or substance 
addiction in family members, I can say, as somebody who has volunteered 
for over 30 years to help people escape from these kinds of things, 
that regulation in fact is helping to create a worse problem.
  We work very closely with the Veterans Administration. As a former 
Army Ranger myself, I care very much about our veterans coming home. 
And the one thing I would say here, Mr. Speaker, is that we do have a 
prescription drug diversion problem with older veterans in certain 
parts of the country.
  I was approached by a group of doctors from the Veterans 
Administration who shared with me that they had been banned by the 
Veterans Administration general counsel from using the drug registries 
that are in the State of Indiana and the State of Kentucky, as well as 
all other States in the Union that have these registries, from simply 
checking to make sure that the patients weren't seeing a civilian 
doctor in another State or a civilian doctor in Kentucky and going to 
the VA to get a double or triple dosage of the same pain medications 
like Oxycodone and selling it on the street or abusing it themselves to 
a degree. The doctor said to me, ``I'm not interested in criminal 
prosecution. I don't want to kill my patients. I want to make sure they 
receive the best health care.''
  With a stroke of a pen, the general counsel of the VA has added to 
the complexity of this problem. I spoke to the head of National Drug 
Control Policy at the White House personally about this, and he said 
his hands are tied and, ``We are looking into that.'' All of this 
impacts jobs ultimately.
  Finally, I will give a context of the small business owner who gets 
trapped in this before fully closing. We have lots of great innovative 
small business owners who go out and they see an opportunity, and they 
take the risk, usually with their life savings, which may not be much. 
We only had a few thousand dollars when we started our business that 
became successful and supported a number of families for many years 
before I came to Congress.
  My friend, Nick Bell, who started Braxton's Cleaners, was an 
entrepreneur that wanted to take a chance and build a dream with that. 
His customer service is outstanding, and people flock to him for the 
responsiveness, the creativity, the initiative, the kindness of his 
people. He implemented home delivery and suddenly wanted to set up 
satellites. So many people were coming to him for business, he realized 
he needed to put another dry cleaning machine in place. One would think 
that, to support more customers, we could do that.
  He suddenly found out, as he bumped up against the Division of Water 
and the Environmental Protection Agency for the first time, that he had 
to do a soil sampling under the pad, the concrete pad of his building, 
before putting that second machine in. What he didn't know along the 
way was that an arbitrary decision was made in another Federal agency 
that dry cleaning fluid was put on a list of carcinogens. As one 
oncologist told me, you would probably have to drink about 80 gallons 
of this product daily to create the chemical pH in your body to cause 
cancer in the first place. But that's beside the point. Here is the 
context of why we have to forcibly address regulations, and I will 
point this out.

  Mr. Bell suddenly found out that one teaspoon of water under 14 bore 
holes under the pad was discovered. In that teaspoon of water were 
several parts per million of dry cleaning fluid. Guess what. They said, 
``Well, you're going to have to remediate this.'' Mr. Bell said, ``I 
can't afford to do that.'' The response from the compassionate Federal 
agency that cares about jobs was, ``If you don't remediate it, you are 
going to shut it down.'' That made him an activist. He was going to 
have that business shut down, every family working there, over one 
teaspoon of water, and he had to spend effectively his life savings of 
$60,000 to clean up one teaspoon of water, and it took him years to 
recover.
  Those are the stories. I appreciate all the comments about caring 
about workers. I care about those. My grandfather was a mine inspector 
after he retired. I care about those issues. And I think that it's 
incorrect to try to create this demonization of those of us who just 
ask the question, why is that there? We have regulations that not only 
impede jobs, but regulations that make it so complex.
  And I will speak with authority as an engineer on this. The more 
complicated you make something, the more likely you will have errors. 
Thus, many of the things that have been cited tonight as reasons we 
need more regulations are because we have got so many that it can 
become arbitrary overnight.
  I agree with the gentleman that we need to address these issues, but 
we need to do them in a manner that is devoid of emotion and with a 
technical focus on what the numbers actually say. And, regarding 
regulations, let's measure the right things, because we don't do that. 
What worked in 1960 is not necessarily applicable with the technology 
and the tools today.
  Reviewing all current and proposed rules is the first step. We should 
do it, because successful businesses, successful schools, any 
successful institution, even, I guarantee you, the champion Green Bay 
Packers, review their playbook on a regular basis throughout the season 
to make sure that they were adaptive and agile for that great game we 
saw last week.
  Reviewing it is a necessary step for us, and it's one that by 
reviewing this will not hinder economic growth; it will help it. It 
will free people to achieve, to fulfill the spirit of regulations and 
help enhance prosperity for all Americans. On behalf of the Ways and 
Means Committee, we are eager to do our part in this task.
  The next step will be to change the way that major rules take effect 
in the first place. We need more accountability up here. That is 
nonpartisan.

[[Page H670]]

And the last administration, I am sure that the gentleman and I could 
find plenty of opportunity to point out regulations that were against 
the will of Congress that were being implemented regardless of who was 
in the majority here. For the sake of our Constitution and the people 
who sent us here, we should embrace that.
  To provide greater transparency and accountability to this process, I 
look forward to the House moving forward with the REINS Act, which will 
be a complement to H. Res. 72. I urge all of my colleagues to support 
this resolution as the critical first step of opening the eyes of the 
Congress, opening the eyes of the American people to the impact of 
these regulations honestly, and to alleviate job creators from not the 
burdens of legitimate safety standards, of legitimate standards to 
benefit our communities, but those non-value-adding overheads that are 
imposed upon us that prevent the hiring and create unpredictability.
  Let's move forward. Let's take the burden off our families from these 
excessive and unnecessary regulations, and create jobs and put America 
back to work.
  Mr. CANSECO. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of the H. Res. 72, the 
great engine of America for the last 235 years has been innovation. 
American ingenuity is a tremendous source of pride in our nation's 
history. Sadly, this aspect of American life is reeling today from a 
wave of new regulations that have been added on top of an already 
complex regulatory system that costs money, jobs, and growth across 
every sector in our economy. We've been told that more regulation is 
somehow ``good for us,'' that a select few know better than our 
citizens how to make the day to day decisions in our small businesses. 
But every time a teenager in our country is prohibited from entering 
the work force because his would-be employer has to comply with a new 
health law and can't afford his labor, we lose the chance for that 
teenager to learn valuable skills and perhaps create something special 
later in his life. Every time a small bank in West Texas is forced to 
comply with a law that came as a result of the irresponsibility of 
others, we lose the chance for that bank to extend a loan to an 
entrepreneur that is capable of creating hundreds of jobs in a small 
community. Mr. Speaker, Pecos County State Bank in Fort Stockton, Texas 
takes in 50 percent of the deposits of that town's residents. The cost 
to run their annual audit is now almost four times as much as it was 
before the onslaught of regulations we've seen passed in the last two 
years. We cannot keep placing these burdens on our small businesses.
  Mr. Speaker, I urge this Congress to begin the work of placing the 
responsibility and trust in our society back where it belongs--in the 
hands of the people. We must begin it now before it's too late.
  Mr. FALEOMAVAEGA. Mr. Speaker, I thank the Ranking Member of the 
Committee on Natural Resources, Mr. Ed Markey, for the opportunity to 
speak on this important issue. I also like to thank Chairman Doc 
Hastings for his leadership.
  Every year, thousands of federal rules or regulations governing 
almost every aspect of society are conceived through the federal 
rulemaking process. Consequently, federal agencies perform quasi-
legislative functions and, in many ways, serve as an extension of 
Congress. This notion of an unelected entity having such tremendous 
impact on society rests uneasily with democratic theory. For this 
reason, a critical feature in our democracy is to control excessive 
bureaucratic discretion and to ensure that rules and regulations 
promulgated by federal agencies are consistent with the intent of 
Congress as expressed in the law.
  The Administrative Procedure Act (APA) of 1946, exists for this 
purpose--to constrain excessive bureaucratic discretion through 
procedural requirements for agency decision making, including setting 
goals and standards for regulations, and ensuring public participation 
through notice and comment. Other statutory rulemaking requirements 
applicable to a wide range of agencies include the Regulatory 
Flexibility Act, the Paperwork Reduction Act, the Unfunded Mandates 
Reform Act, and the Information Quality Act. These statutory 
requirements established a clear process for agency rulemaking and 
standard by which the quality of regulations should be measured.
  I appreciate the concerns of my Republican friends that there are 
problems with many federal regulations. Over the years, we have seen 
evidence of excessive bureaucratic discretion that result in federal 
regulations being too burdensome, costly, counterproductive and even 
prohibitive. Critics argue that mundane requirements have led to the 
ossification of the rulemaking process, which at times could mean years 
before the final regulations are put in place.
  Meanwhile, federal regulations are derived from the laws that are 
enacted by Congress. These laws are put in place to safeguard public 
interest. Without federal regulations though, we could have situations 
such as the recent Deepwater Oil Spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The lack 
of regulatory oversight contributed to one of the biggest oil spills in 
the country, in which, the deepwater well released about 200 million 
gallons or 4.9 million barrels of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico, 
over a period of 84 days. To prevent such environmental disaster in the 
future, we need stronger federal regulations to ensure that appropriate 
standards are in place.
  Mr. Speaker, I support a more common sense approach to federal 
regulations. Federal agencies should strive to protect the public 
interest and to ensure that proposed regulations do not stifle economic 
growth and job creation. For this reason, I am pleased that President 
Obama has ordered a government wide review of federal regulations to 
root out those regulations that stifle job creation and make our 
economy less competitive.
  As the lawmaking institution in our system of government, we also 
have a responsibility to ensure that federal agencies are given the 
resources and better guidance to formulate regulations that are 
consistent with the intent of the law.
  Mr. CRITZ. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to remind this body of what the 
American people asked of us in November. They did not ask us to 
continue the parliamentary back and forth this institution has become 
known for; nor did they ask us to stand around while small businesses 
are hurting on Main Street. What the constituents of the 12th district 
of Pennsylvania asked of me, and what the American people demanded from 
this Congress, is for us to help build an environment where business 
can create jobs.
  Yet today, we are here considering a resolution that would give lip-
service to creating jobs, but have no actionable results. H. Res. 72 
simply instructs House Committees to review existing, pending, and 
proposed regulations by federal agencies. These Committees are to then 
create an inventory of these regulations to report this information. 
Mister Speaker, this is what our committees are already doing. These 
are the actions we are already taking to ease the burden on the small 
businesses in this country. What productive action are we taking by 
debating and voting on our Committees to fulfill a role in Congress 
that has already been defined for them?
  This resolution is the epitome of the redundancy. I can say with 
certainty that H. Res 72 does nothing to reduce real regulatory burden 
on small businesses. Yet we are on the cusp of adopting a rule that 
will have my colleagues charged in a debate for an extended amount of 
time. This is what Americans see as the problem in Washington. As they 
are struggling, we are engaging in debate on a symbolic measure that 
does nothing more than reiterate what we have already been charged to 
do as Members of Congress. What are we doing for our small businesses 
today?
  Small businesses create two-thirds of net new jobs each year in this 
country. It is our duty to make sure that we help generate the best 
environment to allow these job creators to thrive. Some of the reasons 
we were all elected to the 112th Congress was to help these small 
businesses and help our economy. What we are considering today, will 
produce no actionable result for either of these two goals.
  There is no question that the small businesses of America face a 
large burden when it comes to federal regulations. Federal regulations 
now cost Americans $1.75 trillion each year; that's up 50% from their 
annual costs in 2005. Federal agencies continue to add thousands of 
pages of new regulations which add to the already challenging task of 
creating a small business. It's estimated that these federal rules cost 
$10,585 per worker for businesses with less than 20 workers. This 
cannot be the environment in which we expect our unemployment rate to 
turn around. It will take a bipartisan effort to reduce this burden and 
guarantee that our economy continues to thrive.
  As a member of the Small Business Committee, I am determined and 
ready to work with my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to review 
these challenges and barriers faced by job creators in this country. 
But I am sure this can be accomplished with the rules already set in 
place for this body. What will hinder this process and do nothing for 
small business is a debate on the House floor for nine and a half 
hours, as this rule sets in place, on instructing members to do what 
has already been asked of them. After that time, how can Congress say 
that it helped foster the environment for small businesses to create 
jobs? How many jobs can we say have been created as a result?
  What our small businesses need is action. What the American worker 
needs is action. What our economy needs is action, and today, with this 
resolution, we have no action. I urge

[[Page H671]]

my colleagues to vote no on this rule, which will result in no jobs for 
the small businesses of America.
  Mr. SHUSTER. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in strong support of H. Res. 
72, a resolution directing certain standing committees to inventory and 
review existing, pending, and proposed regulations and orders from 
agencies of the Federal Government, particularly with respect to their 
effect on jobs and economic growth.
  While it is clear that across government there are tremendous amounts 
of red tape that we must cut in order to more effectively and 
efficiently spur job creation, I would like to focus on four specific 
issues under the jurisdiction of the House Transportation and 
Infrastructure Committee.


                         FMCSA Hours of Service

  Proposed changes by the U.S. Department of Transportation to hours of 
service rules for truck drivers would have a substantially negative 
impact on productivity and the U.S. economy.
  The rules currently in place are working well and do not need to be 
changed. Since the current rules were implemented seven years ago, the 
trucking industry's safety performance has improved at an unprecedented 
rate. Both the number and rate of fatal and injury accidents involving 
large trucks have declined by more than one-third and are now at their 
lowest levels in recorded history. The remarkable reduction in the 
number of truck-involved fatal and injury crashes occurred even as 
truck mileage increased by almost 10 billion miles between 2003 and 
2008, the latest year for which data is available.
  If the proposed changes are implemented, trucking companies will need 
to put additional trucks and drivers on the road to deliver the same 
amount of freight, adding to final product costs and increasing 
congestion on the nation's already clogged highways. Small business 
truckers would be especially hard hit.
  On two prior occasions, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety 
Administration (FMCSA) estimated that similar changes would cost the 
U.S. economy $2.2 billion, inclusive of safety benefits. However, in 
the new proposed rule FMCSA has changed its methodology for estimating 
both the benefits and costs of changes to the hours of service rule, 
effectively decreasing estimated annual costs by $1.5 billion and 
increasing estimated annual benefits by $1.1 billion in order to 
produce a positive benefit-cost ratio. Further, the agency's own 
analysis shows that the net benefits of retaining the current daily 
driving time limit exceed the net benefits of reducing allowable 
driving time by one hour, the option favored by FMCSA. Frankly, it is 
very difficult to understand how FMCSA rationalizes its proposal on 
this fact alone.
  In addition to encumbering the industry and a struggling economy, the 
proposed changes would significantly challenge law enforcement. Because 
the proposed rules are complex and restrictive, motor carriers could 
have difficulty understanding them and enforcement officers could have 
difficulty accurately identifying violations. For instance, in order to 
determine if a driver can legally claim to have met the conditions of a 
weekly rest provision, enforcement officials would have to ensure that 
at least 168 hours had elapsed since the beginning of the most recent 
weekly rest period, and that the break included two consecutive 
nighttime periods between midnight and 6 a.m. Such complexity will only 
serve to hamper both industry compliance and motor carrier enforcement.
  Now is not the time to impose costly new regulations that would 
impede the nation's economic recovery and increase the cost of almost 
every product Americans produce and buy.
  Along with my good friend, the gentleman from Missouri, Mr. Graves, I 
am circulating a letter on this issue to be sent to the Secretary of 
Transportation, Ray LaHood. I encourage all of my colleagues to join in 
signing on to this important letter.


  Subcommittee on Railroads, Pipelines, and Hazardous Materials Issues

  As the Chairman of the Subcommittee on Railroads, Pipelines, and 
Hazardous materials, there are three issues under my jurisdiction that 
I want to draw attention to--two related to railroads and another 
related to hazardous materials.
  Put simply, the United States has the greatest freight rail network 
in the world. Our system is the most efficient and cost-effective in 
existence, and relies on virtually no subsidies from the federal 
government. Over a century ago, America's railroads opened the door for 
economic expansion, literally ushering in the great advancements in 
industry that sparked America's emergence as an economic power on the 
world stage. By linking our coasts, rail opened markets for goods and 
services in parts of our nation before rendered inaccessible. America's 
railroads revolutionized transportation, gave promise to freedom of 
movement and made business more efficient. That heritage continues to 
this day.
  Today, we find ourselves in the midst of a new era of a freight rail 
renaissance. With 140,000 miles of track carrying almost two trillion 
ton-miles annually, freight rail is an immense jobs generator and a 
major driver of the nation's economy. In fact, the industry supports 
directly or indirectly over 1 million jobs, and 43 percent of all 
freight carried each year in the U.S. is moved by train--with demand 
projected to grow. In order to meet this demand, it is essential that 
there is continued growth in rail capacity.


                      Surface Transportation Board

  Yet given their successes and self-reliance, the railroad industry 
appears to be in the crosshairs of the Surface Transportation Board 
(STB). The question is this: will America's railroads continue to be 
given the freedom necessary to grow their industry without direct 
interference by the federal government or will the STB attempt to move 
to re-regulate the industry?
  Re-regulation would be a potentially catastrophic public policy that 
could erase 30 years of positive growth in rail, and threaten to reduce 
the railroads to the ruinous decreases in services and disinvestment 
not seen since the 1970's. I firmly believe that if the Surface 
Transportation Board attempts to re-regulate this vital industry, it 
will be only a matter of years before our once self-reliant railroads 
will be forced to rely on taxpayer dollars to invest in infrastructure, 
safety and efficiency as federal mandates mount.
  The Surface Transportation Board has recently announced two hearings. 
One will review rail traffic exemptions while the other will assess the 
competitive marketplace in which the railroads operate. In connection 
with those hearings, we would like to express our collective view about 
the importance of the freight rail industry as a critical component of 
our nation's transportation system, and impress upon you the importance 
of maintaining the existing regulatory balance between the railroads 
and shippers.
  The passage of the Staggers Act in 1980 created a balanced regulatory 
system that has allowed the rail industry to build the world's best 
freight rail system, while protecting shippers in areas where there is 
no effective competition. Since its passage, average inflation-adjusted 
rail rates measured by revenue per ton-mile are down over 50 percent 
and freight railroads have re-invested more than $480 billion back into 
their operating networks. That could not have been done--and will not 
be done in the future--unless the STB maintains the current regulatory 
balance as contemplated by the Staggers Act.

  Recently I joined with my senior colleagues on the Transportation 
Committee, what we call the ``Big 4''--the Chairman of the full 
Committee, Mr. Mica, the Ranking Member of the Full Committee, Mr. 
Rahall, the Ranking Member of the Railroads Subcommittee, Ms. Brown, 
and myself, the Chairman of the Railroads Subcommittee--in sending a 
letter to the Chairman of the Surface Transportation Board regarding 
maintaining the existing regulatory balance between the railroads and 
shippers.
  In our letter, we made it clear that any policy change made by the 
STB which restricts the railroads' abilities to invest, grow their 
networks and meet the nation's freight transportation demands will be 
opposed by the Transportation Committee.


                         Positive Train Control

  Notably, these debates are occurring at a time when the rail industry 
is at a crossroads dealing with massive new mandates and proposals that 
threaten to undermine our rail renaissance. Recent unfunded mandates on 
the freight rail industry to retrofit equipment with Positive Train 
Control (PTC) equipment are expected to cost in excess of $10 billion, 
with limited, if any, operational benefit. This mandate will divert 
scarce capital from critical investments in one of the most capital-
intensive businesses in the world.
  The Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) issued a Final Rule in 
January 2010 to implement the statutory requirement in the Railroad 
Safety Improvement Act of 2008 to implement Positive Train Control 
(PTC) systems by December 31, 2015 on mainline rail tracks that carry 
passenger trains or hazardous materials that are toxic by inhalation.
  Positive Train Control is a technology (or combination of 
technologies) that is designed to automatically stop or slow a train 
before accidents caused by human error can occur. The accidents PTC is 
intended to prevent include:
  Train-to-train collisions;
  derailments caused by excessive speed;
  unauthorized incursions by trains onto sections of track where 
maintenance is taking place;
  trains moving through track switches left in the wrong position.
  A fully functional PTC system must be able to precisely determine the 
location and speed of trains, warn train operators of potential 
problems, and take action if the operator does not respond to a 
warning. The type of accidents that PTC systems are designed to prevent 
are very rare. Of all train accidents on rail

[[Page H672]]

mainlines over the past seven years, only around 4 percent would have 
been prevented if PTC systems had been in place.
  According to the FRA, freight railroads will have to spend up to 
$13.2 billion to install and maintain PTC systems over the next 20 
years, but PTC will yield just $608 million in benefits over the same 
period--a cost-benefit ratio of 20 to 1.
  An April 2010 study by the consulting firm Oliver Wyman found that 
the so-called ``business benefits'' of PTC--reducing train delays and 
being able to move more trains through congested sections of track--are 
actually very low or nonexistent. In fact, systems very similar to PTC 
that are currently being implemented in Europe do not support that 
claim that PTC will yield significant business benefits for U.S. 
railroads.
  The manner in which FRA determined which track will be required to 
have PTC installed has caused a great deal of concern in the railroad 
industry. Many provisions of the Final Rule go well beyond the 
statutory requirements of the Railroad Safety Improvement Act. These 
provisions add hundreds of millions of dollars to costs, but will not 
improve safety in any meaningful way.
  In the final rule, the FRA orders railroads to install PTC on rail 
lines that carried toxic-by-inhalation hazardous materials in 2008. 
Nothing in the law refers to using 2008 as the base year for 
determining where PTC must be installed.
  As it currently stands, the Final Rule will require that 
approximately 70,000-80,000 miles of rail miles have PTC systems 
installed, about half of the total Class I railroad 160,000-mile 
national freight network.
  The decision to use 2008 as a base year for determining which tracks 
require PTC implementation makes no sense, because hazardous materials 
routing in 2015 will be vastly different than in 2008, for the 
following reasons:
  Significant hazardous materials rail routing changes were recently 
implemented in response to a Department of Transportation/Department of 
Homeland Security joint regulation requiring railroads to ensure that 
toxic-by-inhalation chemicals are transported on routes posing the 
least overall safety and security risk.
  Additionally, marketplace dynamics are changing the transportation of 
hazardous materials. For example, many chemical companies are phasing 
out production of chlorine, or moving their production sites to where 
the chemical will be used, thereby dramatically changing the amounts 
and routes over which these toxic-by-inhalation materials are moved.
  Finally, the rule does not provide for a ``de minimis'' exception, 
where a rail line carrying very little of these materials could be 
exempted from the PTC requirement. Such an exception would 
significantly reduce costs without compromising safety in a meaningful 
way.
  The PTC mandate applies to all passenger railroads on the general 
railway system, including Amtrak and 26 different commuter railroads.
  Amtrak's capital needs and operations are fully subsidized by annual 
appropriations. Commuter railroads also receive capital funds from the 
Federal Transit Administration for repair and modernization of their 
systems, but these federal funds represents only about 40 percent of 
total funds spent on their systems, which are primarily supported by 
local governments.
  The cost of installing PTC is a significant burden for these commuter 
railroads. The American Public Transportation Associations estimates 
that installation of PTC on commuter railroads will cost more than $2 
billion--these agencies are already cutting service levels or raising 
fares because of the recession's impact on local government budgets.
  Additionally, most commuter railroads operate over freight rail-owned 
track. These agencies must ensure that the PTC technology they install 
on their commuter systems is interoperable with the systems that their 
host railroads put in place.
  Because of issues like interoperability, there is real doubt that PTC 
can be successfully implemented by December 31, 2015.
  There is also a severe shortage of available broadband spectrum for 
the wireless communications networks that are central to PTC 
implementation. The Federal Trade Commission has authority over 
allocating spectrum, and the FTC decision process is slow and 
cumbersome.
  Instead of penalizing the rail industry for its success, Washington 
should be promoting new investment and expansions in service to keep 
America's railroads in the driver's seat of the global economy. That's 
why I support tax credits for the expansion and rehabilitation of the 
nation's rail infrastructure.
  Tax credits are a proven and effective policy tool to encourage 
businesses to invest in worthwhile projects. Because the railroads 
still pay for their projects under tax credit plans, tax credits ensure 
that the railroads will only pursue projects that will grow their 
businesses, and ultimately expanding the economy. Direct grants, on the 
other hand, could be seen as ``free money'' that would not be subject 
to the same rigorous business decisions. There are two tax credit bills 
that I support, including a 25 percent tax credit for rail projects 
that expand the rail network and ease congestion, and a short line tax 
credit that expired at the end of last year.
  America's railroads are at a crossroad. The direction the 
Administration pushes the rail industry will have a lasting impact on 
American competitiveness and economic growth. Washington must resist 
the urge to over-regulate an industry that has proven it to be largely 
self-sufficient and capable to weather economic stress and improve upon 
its business model. We cannot go back to the days of stifling over 
regulation and I will do my part as a member of the Transportation and 
Infrastructure Committee to make sure it does not happen.


                           Lithium Batteries

  Finally, I want to touch on the transportation of lithium batteries.
  In January 2010, the Department of Transportation issues a Notice of 
Proposed Rulemaking to regulate the air transport of lithium batteries.
  The proposed rule:
  Regulates and treats as a hazardous material all lithium batteries 
and most devices shipped with or containing such batteries, such as 
laptop computers, cell phones, and medical devices.
  Applies to air shipments within the U.S. and to shipments carried on 
U.S. registered aircraft traveling anywhere in the world.
  Proposes to limit stowage of lithium batteries on cargo aircraft to 
crew-accessible positions or in yet-to-be-approved Federal Aviation 
Administration fireproof containers.
  Billions of lithium batteries have been safely transported as air 
cargo in the last twenty years. This is not one of NTSB's ``Most 
Wanted'' safety recommendations. In fact, there are no confirmed 
fatalities associated with the lithium batteries transportation that I 
am aware of.
  The proposed rule grossly underestimates the cost of the regulation 
to American businesses. The Department of Transportation analysis 
estimates approximately $9 million per year in cost to the U.S. 
economy. But actual costs to hundreds of businesses--battery 
manufacturers, consumer goods manufacturers, freight handlers, and air 
transportation companies--could easily top $1 billion a year.
  I believe the Department of Transportation analysis did not take into 
account:
  Additional annual payroll and internal handling costs,
  Administrative costs associated with negotiating and executing 
hazardous materials contracts for customers shipping these newly-
regulated goods,
  Adverse impacts on retail shipping outlets,
  Potential layoffs associated with the burdensome requirements, and
  Commercial consequences from potential lithium battery shipment 
consolidation.
  The United Parcel Service alone estimates this new regulation would 
cost the company $264 million in the first year, and more than $185 
million in each following year.
  This proposed rule threatens to stifle job creation and industrial 
advancement, and affects a wide segment of the economy, including U.S. 
manufacturing, transportation, and retail sectors. It will also give 
foreign cargo carriers a competitive advantage over U.S. companies.
  Transportation regulations for lithium batteries have been 
extensively considered by international bodies such as the United 
Nations, International Civil Aviation Organization and International 
Air Transport Association. In order to protect the competitiveness of 
the U.S. in the international marketplace, standards for the transport 
of lithium batteries should be fully harmonized with international 
rules and regulations. This is the only reasonable focus of any 
regulatory action on air transportation of lithium batteries. I 
strongly support efforts to make the transport of lithium batteries as 
safe as possible, but we must do so in a reasonable, responsible 
manner.
  I applaud our House leadership for bringing this important resolution 
to the floor and thank them for the opportunity to discuss these 
important issues.
  Mr. BACA. Mr. Speaker, I urge all my colleagues--Democrats and 
Republicans--to support small business and small business trucking.
  As we debate H. Res. 72, the most critical issue facing America is 
how to increase jobs so that families can rise up against economic 
hardships.
  Small businesses are essential to our nation's economy.
  They account for half of our gross domestic product, more than half 
our jobs, and three-fourths of new jobs created each year.
  We must support new and small businesses through open access to 
loans, credit and capital.
  We can reduce onerous paperwork, and give small companies the tools 
they need to

[[Page H673]]

take care of their employees and build their companies.
  By passing legislation focused on protecting the economic vitality of 
small businesses in the trucking industry and all other sectors, we 
will facilitate economic growth for all Americans.
  Mr. DAVIS of Kentucky. I yield back the balance of my time.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to clause 1(c) of rule XIX, further 
consideration of this resolution is postponed.

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