[Congressional Record Volume 157, Number 33 (Monday, March 7, 2011)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1313-S1315]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
ENERGY REGULATIONS
Mr. ROBERTS. Mr. President, I rise to speak out against what I
consider to be a regulatory assault on our Nation's energy sector. That
is pretty strong language, but I intend it to be.
I listed a number of these proposed regulations in a letter I sent
earlier today to President Obama. I ask unanimous consent to have this
letter printed in the Record.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:
U.S. Senate,
Washington, DC, March 7, 2011.
President Barack Obama,
The White House,
Washington, DC.
Dear President Obama: I write you today to express my
sincere appreciation for your recently implemented Executive
Order mandating that all federal agencies review and revoke
any rules or regulations that place unreasonable burdens on
our nation's business community. In light of our current
economic crisis, establishing a regulatory environment that
promotes growth and job creation should be the number one
priority for this Congress and Administration.
Many people today believe no agency over the past few years
has had more of a negative impact on business growth and
regulatory certainty than the Environmental Protection Agency
(EPA). Since fiscal year 2010, ten new regulations
promulgated by the EPA have accounted for over 23 billion
dollars in new costs to the American taxpayer. As your
Administration reviews both proposed and promulgated
regulations, please consider the following five regulations
and the negative economic impact their full implementation
will have on our nation:
EPA's proposal to amend the current primary 8 hour ozone
standard to a range of 60 to 70 parts per billion. The EPA
itself has estimated that this new regulation would cost
between 19 and 90 billion dollars to fully implement, while
providing no rationale as to what new scientific data
justifies updating a standard set as recently as 2008.
The EPA and National Highway Traffic Safety
Administration's decision to mandate greater fuel economy and
emissions standards for all passenger vehicles and light-duty
trucks. Recent analysis has estimated this new regulation
will cost the already struggling automobile industry upwards
of 10.8 billion dollars to comply, and consumers up to 985
dollars per vehicle in higher purchase prices.
The EPA's regulation restricting green house gas emissions
from stationary sources. While this regulation currently only
affects those stationary sources emitting 75,000 or more tons
of carbon per year, future implementations of this rule could
negatively impact millions of small businesses and community
organizations with costs of over 75 billion dollars a year.
The EPA's recently promulgated Reciprocating Internal
Combustion Engines (RICE) regulation that requires operators
of current diesel or dual fuel engines (those operating on a
mix of diesel fuel and natural gas) to install new oxidation
catalysts on existing engines. This regulation has already
had a profound impact on municipal electric utilities, rural
electric cooperatives and agricultural irrigators in Kansas.
Costing an estimated $60,000 to $100,000 per engine, this
regulation is particularly difficult for small rural Kansas
communities that may only operate these engines a few hours
every year for emergency situations or extreme weather
conditions.
As EPA officials prepare to release a final ruling on
regulation of coal combustion byproducts (CCB), I highly
recommend avoiding any classification of this product as a
hazardous waste. Classification of this byproduct as a
hazardous waste will restrict further beneficial reuse of
CCBs and without any corresponding benefit to the
environment.
Again, thank you for the opportunity to share my
recommendations on what rules and regulations pose serious
negative consequences to the growth of our nation. As the
112th Congress gets under way, I will continue to identify to
your administration regulations that handicap American
businesses and halt American job creation. It is my hope that
we can create a regulatory environment that provides American
businesses with the necessary tools to hire and thrive in
this global market.
Sincerely,
Pat Roberts,
U.S. Senator.
Mr. ROBERTS. We--myself, staff, others, a lot of people I have met
with in Kansas, regardless what economic sector we are talking about,
whether it is energy, which I wish to talk about today, whether it is
agriculture, which we talked about last week, health care is coming,
and then we are going to talk about the financial sector--we have
talked about the President's initiative, his Executive order in which
the President said rightly--and I applauded that statement that we have
so many regulations pouring out of Washington and so many regulations
on the books, we do not have a cost-benefit yardstick--that is my
favorite term for it--to say: Does the cost exceed the benefit? Does it
make sense?
The President himself said there are many that are duplicative and
very costly and basically are stupid. That is exactly what the
President said. I said ``egregious.'' That is the Senate word. The
President said ``stupid.'' I think everybody understands that. He
issued an Executive order, and he said to all the Federal agencies:
Please, take a look at the regulations that are on the books and all
the regulations that are coming out of your agency and see if you can
make sense out of it and try to separate out the ones that are
duplicative, costly, and, yes, stupid and the ones that are not and we
can make some progress. I applauded the President's effort.
The problem is, it is an Executive order that has no teeth. There are
three exemptions--and I will get into that in my prepared remarks, but
basically the independent agencies are excluded. There are a bunch of
them. There is language in the bill that says, if you are doing it for
the public good, the Secretary can say: Oh, well, that does not apply
to us. How many Secretaries around here--for that matter czars. I guess
they are in the room. I don't know what they do. If there is a czar
sitting there talking to schedule C appointees and says: Do you think
our regulations serve the public good, of course, they think that. They
would not have promulgated them or issued them or thought them up to
begin with if they did not think it was for the public good. So they
are exempt.
Then, we have a wonderful paragraph that I defy anybody to
understand. They can also use that in regard to dodging around the
President's Executive order. The President issued an Executive order,
said some very good things to the American public, but it does not have
any teeth.
I have a bill. We have 30 cosponsors. The bill says: Mr. President,
you are right with your Executive order. We codify his order, but we
take out the exemptions. What a day that would produce--or a year, for
that matter--for all Federal agencies, if they truly had to adhere to
the President's Executive order. I hope we get more cosponsors and we
could actually consider it and actually pass it on the floor of the
Senate.
We have several areas of our economy that are affected in a most
egregious way by all these regulations. I talked about agriculture last
week. We are talking about energy today. Health care is coming, and the
financial institutions will be coming after that.
[[Page S1314]]
Even as the price of crude continues to climb above $100 this
administration continues to promote domestic energy policies that are
making it more expensive for Americans to put gas in their cars, heat
their homes, power their businesses. Just yesterday in a townhall
meeting in Johnson County in Kansas, I heard complaints about the
rising gas prices and our dependence on foreign oil and the need to
develop our own domestic resources--all those resources. But this vital
goal is now extremely difficult on the administration's own policies,
again affecting not only energy but agriculture and our financial
institutions and health care. I call them the four horsemen of
regulatory strangulation. That may be a little harsh, but I don't think
it is.
As I said, last week, I came to the floor and highlighted a multitude
of new overly burdensome and, in many situations, absurd EPA
regulations that will have a significant negative effect on the ability
of our farmers and our ranchers to produce the food and the crops
necessary to compete in a global market and to feed a troubled and
hungry world. Take a look at the coverage in regard to Libya and the
news blip we saw on television where somebody was shouting and
protesting and one of our newspeople stuck a microphone in front of his
face and said: Are you trying to promote democracy? He said: No, I just
want a loaf of bread. I will say to you that a hungry nation is a
nation that does not have any possibility of economic opportunity.
Well, unfortunately, as we all know, the EPA's reach goes well beyond
the agricultural industry. Its regulations are moving to make the
energy we rely on every day more expensive to produce, and many times
without providing any appreciable benefits to the environment. Nobody
wants to do anything that would endanger the public health. But I think
we can take a good look at some of these regulations in regards to any
appreciable benefits to the environment and find they are few and far
between.
Since fiscal year 2010, 10 new regulations promulgated by the EPA
have accounted for over $23 billion in new costs to the American
taxpayer, costs which are even more painful for Americans as our Nation
continues to struggle with an almost 9-percent unemployment rate.
Unfortunately, with the number of proposed regulations currently before
our domestic energy producers, if we do not take action--we meaning the
Congress--2011 and beyond will be even costlier.
For example, EPA has proposed to amend the current national ambient
quality standards for ozone to a range of 60 to 70 parts per billion.
This is a range so stringent that recent analysis estimates hundreds of
thousands of jobs would be at risk because of the inability of cities
and counties to meet these attainment levels.
The EPA itself has estimated this new regulation would cost between
$19 billion and $90 billion to fully implement. I am talking about the
60 to 70 parts per billion standard. It provides no rationale as to
what new scientific data justifies updating a standard set as recently
as 2008.
This proposed regulation is in addition to the recently enacted
greenhouse gas regulations requiring application of the best available
control technology. Who decides that? That is the Kansas Department of
Health and Environment with the EPA looking over their shoulder, and it
is the application of best available control technology for stationary
sources of greenhouse gas emissions.
This regulation currently only affects those stationary sources of
energy emitting 75,000 or more tons of carbon per year and which are
already subject to the prevention of significant deterioration--they
call that PSD--permitting requirements for nongreenhouse gases--or
GHGS.
Future implementation of this rule could negatively impact millions
of small businesses, farms, hospitals, and community organizations with
costs of over $75 billion a year. So we are talking billions and
billions and billions in regards to these regulations.
According to the Affordable Power Alliance, a civil rights
organization, by the year 2030, greenhouse gas regulations--trying to
control them--specifically targeting our domestic energy producers will
result in the loss of 2.5 million jobs--2.5 million jobs--and a
reduction of household income of $1,200 a year.
Keep in mind, these are impacts that will have the greatest negative
impact on poor households, low-income households, that spend a greater
percentage of their monthly income on utilities and groceries--
necessities made more expensive to produce and purchase with rising
energy prices.
In the area of energy recycling, EPA officials are preparing to
release a final ruling on regulation of coal combustion byproducts--the
acronym for which is CCBs--which I hope avoids any classification of
this product as a hazardous waste. CCBs are, of course, an unavoidable
residual of burning coal to create energy, which I wish to add is the
most cost-effective form of energy available still, and is responsible
for providing over 70 percent of the energy to my State's taxpayers--70
percent. Classification of this byproduct as a hazardous waste will
restrict further beneficial use of CCBs in a multitude of industries,
including agriculture, Portland cement, home construction, and without
providing definitive benefits to the environment.
In my home State of Kansas, representatives speaking on behalf of a
number of Kansas energy producers estimated costs to industry of over
$300 billion over the next 5 years to comply with a multitude of
proposed EPA regulations dealing with air, water, and CCB management.
Three hundred billion dollars. That is unreasonable, and is probably
the mildest thing I can say. These are real numbers that will
doubtlessly drive up the cost of energy Kansans rely on to heat their
homes and drive our Nation's agricultural industry.
Unfortunately, the negative impacts resulting from the multitude of
new, overly burdensome EPA regulations don't stop with agriculture and
energy. Beyond affecting the way people power their homes and
businesses, the administration has even moved to regulate what cars
Americans can drive. This was made evident by the EPA and the National
Highway Traffic Safety Administration's decision last year to begin
mandating greater fuel economy and emissions standards for all
passenger vehicles and light-duty trucks. Recent analysis has estimated
this new regulation will cost the already struggling automobile
industry upwards of $10.8 billion to comply, and consumers up to about
$1,000 per vehicle in higher purchasing prices. They just pass the
costs on. So if you want to buy a new pickup down the road, it will be
$1,000 more.
While EPA has garnered much of the attention in my State for its
efforts to make energy more expensive, from a national perspective, the
Department of the Interior shares similar responsibility for pursuing
policies that not only make energy more expensive but also make our
country more reliant on foreign, and oftentimes unfriendly, sources of
energy. For example, under the current administration, the Department
of the Interior has canceled 77 oil development leases in Utah that
were located within a larger formation covering three States that the
Bureau of Land Management has estimated contains around 800 billion
barrels of oil, more than three times the proven reserves in Saudi
Arabia.
Why? Why would we revoke these leases? That question has to be asked
and answered. We are speaking of 800 billion barrels of oil. No, they
can't go do that. This, of course, is in addition to the gulf of Mexico
deepwater drilling moratorium imposed last summer which has had a
lasting negative effect on the gulf coast economy.
The President said yes, you can go ahead and drill, but the safety
regulations are such that a lot of companies that were drilling have
left or are leaving. However, foreign competition is drilling in the
same place. That doesn't make sense.
Beyond the regulatory burdens, it is also essential we focus on
removing redundant programs within the various Federal agencies. Listen
up. Every upset taxpayer should know this and, more importantly, demand
action from this Congress. Last month, the administration's own
Government Accountability Office--the famous or infamous GAO--released
a report highlighting hundreds of duplicative programs currently on the
books that cost American taxpayers billions of dollars every year.
[[Page S1315]]
You get into double digits when you are counting the number of
programs all of us want to depend on and all of us think are important,
but they are duplicative. They are doing the same thing. As I say, it
is costing American taxpayers billions of dollars every year.
While separate from regulatory oversight, this study further
amplifies the importance that we take a serious look at our Federal
agencies and put in place appropriate oversight, review, and revocation
where needed.
It is for these reasons that I believe Congress must move forward
with solutions that remove overly burdensome regulations and create an
environment that doesn't hinder energy production and use of those
resources that make the most economic sense while still protecting,
yes, our clean water, clean air, and do what we can in regards to
CO2 emissions.
Understanding this, last month, I, along with 30 other Senators,
introduced the bill I was talking about--the Regulatory Responsibility
for our Economy Act. The bill moves to codify and strengthen the
President's January 18 Executive order that directs agencies within the
administration to review, modify, streamline, expand or repeal those
significant regulatory actions that are duplicative, unnecessarily
overly burdensome, or would have significant economic impacts on
Americans.
Those are the President's words right there. I agree with them. I
applaud the President for saying that. While I agree in principle with
President Obama that we need to take a serious look at both current and
proposed Federal regulations, I don't believe his Executive order
actually does what it purports to do. There are too many loopholes and
no teeth.
Specifically, my bill moves to hold accountable independent agencies
which are exempt under his Executive order, such as the FDIC, the SEC,
and the EPA that are not covered under President Obama's Executive
order. The EPA came up and said: We are doing the public good. Then
they followed that crazy paragraph I will read in a minute and said: We
are okay. We are not issuing any regulations that hurt anybody.
I just attended the Commodity Classic, made up of all farm
organizations, all commodity groups out in Great Bend, KS, and the No.
1 issue: regulations. Why on Earth are you putting out all these
regulations that are about to put us out of business? You go right down
the line and any group, any association, any business all throughout
America are saying: Pat, what are you doing strangling us with all
these regulations? What are you guys doing? My response is: I am not a
``you guys,'' I am an ``us guy,'' and I am trying to do something about
it.
Specifically, my bill moves to hold accountable these independent
agencies. It also removes from the Executive order highly subjective
language that directs each agency to use the best available techniques
to quantify anticipated present and future benefits and costs as
accurately as possible, and--here comes the paragraph I defy you, Mr.
President, and I defy any of our highly skilled and educated people on
the dais, I defy this nice young lady taking down my words the best she
can, or anybody listening to this to understand--each agency may
consider and discuss qualitatively--this is the way they look at a
regulation to determine whether they are going to issue that regulation
or not--values that are difficult or impossible to quantify, including
equity, human dignity, fairness, and distributive impacts.
That statement is amorphous. It is synonymous with amorphous. I defy
anybody to try to determine what that means, except what you want it to
mean. So that statement now wins the gobbledygook award of the month. I
think I am going to come down here every month and award a gobbledygook
statement in the regulatory field that is about to drown us all as the
gobbledygook statement of the month--and that sure hits it. It doesn't
take a legislative scholar to understand that this language creates a
loophole large enough to drive a grain truck through and renders the
order meaningless. That is why passage of my regulation is so
critically important.
I invite my friends on both sides of the aisle to please sign on as a
cosponsor of my legislation, realizing the immense opportunities it
creates for meaningful review and possible revocation of regulations
counter to our Nation's growth, along with the GAO report outlining
specific duplication of Federal programs, a report that defies
PowerPoints or charts--couldn't do it; a maze of too many programs
trying to do the same thing. If we don't do this, we are going to cost
the business community of America and all Americans billions of dollars
and get nothing in return in regard to environmental benefits.
I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will call the roll.
The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Coons). Without objection, it is so
ordered.
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