[Congressional Record Volume 157, Number 43 (Tuesday, March 29, 2011)]
[House]
[Pages H2024-H2029]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                          FEDERAL REGULATIONS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Fleischmann). Under the Speaker's 
announced policy of January 5, 2011, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. 
Carter) is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority 
leader.
  Mr. CARTER. Mr. Speaker, once again we are going to talk about the 
fact that the regulators are kind of like the fox watching the 
henhouse. They just overreach everywhere. And we just heard an example 
of that actually. Mr. Austin Scott was just up here talking about what 
is going on with this pesticide. We will talk a little bit about that 
today.
  I have been trying for the last 6 or 8, I guess, months now to talk 
about some of the regulations that are being imposed upon people. You 
see these regulations and you see how onerous they are on both large 
and small businesses, and then we sit around and wonder why we're 
teetering around 9 percent unemployment in this country. It's because 
not only do folks have to wonder about are we going to raise taxes. 
Folks have to wonder about are we going to spend ourselves into the 
poor house. Folks have to wonder about a $1.65 trillion deficit this 
year. They worry about all those things. They worry about how their 
children and grandchildren are going to pay off this massive 
accumulation of debt in this country that is coming down as a result of 
the policies of the last Congress, the Democrat-led Congress, and the 
Obama administration, and then you take that and you take on top of 
that the executive branch's regulations that they are putting on 
people, many of which are so onerous and make so little sense that, 
quite honestly, you wonder what's going on.
  We've got a lot of things that have been going on, and we've got some 
tools that we're using to get rid of those things. And a tool that I 
have been talking about is using the Congressional Review Act to 
challenge some of these things, and we will talk a little bit about 
that. But first let's just go back and talk a little bit about what 
others are doing right now.
  First off, tomorrow morning I am going to drop a bill, and this is 
kind of a nuclear weapon, if you will, of fighting regulations. Because 
of the continuous onslaught of regulations that seem to be designed to 
cause unemployment rather than to help with unemployment, I think it's 
time we just put a big old hold on the regulatory agencies and tell 
them that unless this is of major national importance, we don't think 
there ought to be any regulations for the balance of this Congress. So 
I am proposing a bill for the outright ban of all new Federal 
regulations through the remainder of the Obama administration until 
January 31, 2013.

                              {time}  2000

  This would remove, in this period of time when we're trying to bring 
our job

[[Page H2025]]

numbers up and bring our unemployment numbers down, this would give the 
country an opportunity to take, at least in one area, a deep breath and 
relax, that the regulators are not going to change the playing field on 
them halfway through a year or through a month.
  There are so many regulations that we've talked about in the past few 
months and for the balance of this year that are surprises to 
everybody, and they're throwing big, big monkey wrenches in the 
machinery that drives our economy.
  Now, if you read the newspapers or you hear people commenting on why 
aren't people creating jobs, why is capital investment on the 
sidelines, why are people holding on to their money instead of 
investing their money in their businesses or investing their money in 
some other people's businesses so we can grow this economy, they're 
sitting on the sideline and they're not participating.
  And you will hear both sides of the aisle in this House talk about 
the trillions of dollars that are being held back from investment. 
You'll hear arguments made by the other side, by the Democrats in this 
House, that it's the greed of the big corporations that's doing this.
  But then when you study the problem, it's not just the big giant 
corporations that are kind of sitting back and waiting. It's the small 
businessman. It's the guy that's got one shop, and he's thinking about 
adding on to that shop, and he may be thinking about adding one more 
machinist or one more salesman. But you know what? There are too many 
questions about what's over the horizon for them to take the chance of 
investing their money when they don't know what's going to happen. And 
as I explained as I started out, part of it is they wonder about the 
possibility of new taxes.
  Secondly, because there's been a lot of talk from this administration 
about taxes, they're backing off of it now, but many of the things they 
do seem to change depending on which way the wind's blowing, and so 
they're worried about the possibility of new taxes.
  They're worried about the fact that they can look at numbers, they 
read balance sheets, even the small businessmen can read balance sheets 
and profit and loss statements. And they look at this Federal 
Government and they say, my Lord. Just this year alone, based on 
President Obama's proposed budget for 2011, they're projecting about a 
$1.6 trillion deficit this year.
  And most businesspeople know what deficit means. And most of all of 
us do, but sometimes we think it's some big word coming out of 
Washington, not realizing what it really is. It means you're spending 
money you don't have. In fact, arguably, every time you buy something 
with your credit card, you're deficit spending. You don't have the cash 
in your pocket to buy the new television set so you put it on your 
credit card. You borrow the money. You spend money that you don't have.
  Now, if we were like the great State of Texas where we have a 
balanced budget requirement in the constitution in Texas, then the 
Texas legislature, they can't deficit spend. They can't spend money 
they don't have. They have a no-deficit spending provision in that 
constitution that says you get to spend what the projected revenues 
are, and that's it. And it's sometimes--and you ask the good members of 
our legislature, sometimes it's real tough to make things work. But you 
know what? They always somehow figure out a way to get it done. And 
this year is no exception.
  It's tough in Texas. And they're doing the things we're trying to do 
here in this House. They are reducing their spending, as are States 
across the country. All you have to do is turn on the television. You 
see the issues in Wisconsin and Michigan and other places, and 
Minnesota--well, not Minnesota, Indiana, all these people are 
addressing it, New York, Virginia, they're addressing the fact that 
they've just got to cut back on their spending.
  Well, we're addressing that fact too in this House right now. But the 
businessman looks at that and says, well, what's their track record? 
Well, our track record's not real good. In fact, our track record is 
such that they say odds are they're not going to do these cuts that are 
necessary to stop it.
  Here's something kind of interesting. Right now, in H.R. 1, the 
Republican majority has set forth a series of cuts that total up to 
about $63 billion. They've agreed now to about $10 billion. So let's 
call it $53 billion just kind of on the table out there waiting for 
some kind of action from the Senate. This is attached to a continuing 
resolution.
  Now, that business owner back home, he looks at that and he says, 
let's see, $63 billion--that's a tiny little bandaid on a gigantic rear 
end of an elephant, but that's the tax cuts that are being proposed, 
and they don't seem to be able to get those things. Not tax 
cuts. That's the spending cuts that are being proposed. They don't even 
seem to be able to do that. What in the world are they going to do 
about this $1.6 trillion?

  So he says, I don't think I want to play in that ballpark. That's too 
dangerous for me. I have a little savings in my back pocket to invest 
in my business. But now's not a good time. There's way too much debt 
floating around out there. There's way too much uncertainty about the 
economy floating around out there. I think I'll wait. So my plan to 
create one or two new jobs to grow my profits for my business is going 
to have to wait. Even though I may have the money to invest, it's going 
to wait because I don't feel the environment's good for it. It's 
another one of those unknowns that's keeping capital and keeping the 
growing of the labor force from happening.
  Finally, these regulations. When, as our friend from Georgia was just 
talking about--just take, for instance, the issue that has to do with 
this, these new regulations concerning pesticides that have come out. 
It came out and then it was--I think, some court has gotten involved in 
it.
  But what they've done, basically, is told the people who use 
pesticides, and I think everybody knows, pesticides are to kill bugs 
that eat crops. That's kind of the general use for pesticides. So that 
means that your farmers, your ranchers, and some of your business 
people are going to be affected by this. And they look at it and say, 
wow. I used to have to have a permit. I got one. Now all of a sudden 
I've got to have a new permit. It's going to cost me some more money. 
They changed the rules in the middle of the game, and now I'm sitting 
here wondering what in the world am I going to do if they change the 
rules again.
  So what am I going to do with my money? I'm going to keep it in my 
pocket. I'm not going to invest in my business. I'm not going to expand 
my farm. I'm not going to buy that new combine. I'm not going to trade 
for some more cattle. I'm basically going to sit where I am and hold 
pat. And I'm also not going to hire anybody to help me with those 
issues.
  These are things that are typical of what causes the people who 
invest in the real world of private business, who employ two-thirds or 
more of the American public, to sit on the sidelines. So big business 
or small, if you don't understand the playing field, and there are 
people out there that can change your life at a whim, you get concerned 
about it. We've seen so many examples of that.
  I'll just throw out the flex permitting Clean Air Act issues that are 
going on in Texas, which we've talked about before. After 15 years of 
using a flex permit in Texas, never a word said by the EPA, all of a 
sudden, out of the clear blue they decide, oh, you know what? I don't 
think we like that flex permit, so we're just going to do away with it, 
and we're going to change the rules.
  Without going into what a flex permit is, it's very simple. If flex 
permit worked for your business 1 day and the next day you had to have 
a completely different permit with a whole new set of rules and a whole 
new set of obligations, you would be very concerned about the 
environment within which your business is being operated. And, by the 
way you'd be really upset when you realized that your clean air issues 
in your State where you're using a flexible permit, the clean air 
reductions have met the demands of the EPA and, in fact, probably 
exceed many, many States who don't go to a flexible permitting system.

                              {time}  2010

  For some reason, your State who is doing good has to change permits 
to do

[[Page H2026]]

like some of the States that aren't doing as good as your State. And 
you have to say to yourself, What is the motive for all this? Well, 
would you put your money into a project when something like that could 
happen to you?
  We ask ourselves, Why have we been having unemployment in this 
country somewhere between 10 percent and 8.9 percent over the last 25 
months? Well, part of it is the people who create the jobs, the real 
jobs, the jobs that make our economy grow, are the business people of 
this country; and for 25 months they have not been hiring because we 
have created a world of mistrust in what might happen to you that you 
couldn't even imagine as a result of actions of this Federal 
Government.
  To me, the most important thing we have to do in this Congress right 
now is create jobs. It will change the very makeup of our Nation if we 
get our Nation back to work. And it is time for the government to get 
out of the way of small business, get out of the way of the 
entrepreneurs in this country, and give them the opportunity to create 
jobs. With all the playing defense that we are trying do here in the 
House with the Congressional Review Act and other proposals that are 
out there, it seems to me we ought to just say, at least for a 2-year 
period, just, Time out. Time out. No more regulations. Just stop right 
where you are.
  There are enough regulations in effect right now by the Federal 
regulatory agencies to fill this entire Chamber to the ceiling with 
books, so I don't think it would hurt us too much.
  If it turns out it is a national emergency and you have such an issue 
that it is just so overwhelmingly necessary to come up with a 
regulation, then maybe we will put it out and submit it to Congress and 
let Congress make a determination about whether or not it is of that 
dire importance. But right now, just quit messing with us. Just get out 
of the way and let us have a chance to go do what we do best.
  I forget who it was. I want to say it was Calvin Coolidge, but it was 
one of our past Presidents who said that the business of America is 
business. And it still is.
  Two or three Saturdays ago, I was at South by Southwest, which is a 
very exciting activity that takes place in Austin, Texas, that not only 
promotes the live music industry, which is huge in Austin--it is the 
live music capital of the world--but, in addition, it promotes 
entrepreneurship among people with new great ideas. And great people, I 
talked to them and they were so exciting, such great young people, many 
of them in the high-tech industry, but in all of the industries. And 
those young people sat there and told me that, The one thing you can do 
that would hurt us the most is tax stock options and put up regulations 
that would prevent me doing what I need to do in my project. So, if the 
government will stay out of my way and if you won't impose taxes on the 
very source of investment money that I am seeking as a new 
entrepreneur, if you don't do those two things and you stay out of the 
way, I have got an idea that can change this country. And many of them 
have just those ideas.
  Some of the things we have now like Facebook, those things like that 
they made a movie about and all that stuff, all that was the idea of a 
young entrepreneur, and he got somebody to invest in it and, boom, it 
swept the world. So that's why I have got a moratorium on regulations.
  But in addition, we have got a couple of folks that are taking off 
after regulations that are clearly hurting the opportunity to create 
jobs. The Regulatory Flexibility Act, RFA, is being proposed and 
requires Federal agencies to assess the economic impact of their 
regulations on small business. We have something like this now, but it 
is going to be expanded and made more clear. And, if the impact is 
significant, consider alternatives that are less burdensome. The 
agencies must balance the burdens imposed by the regulations against 
the benefits, and propose alternatives to the regulations which create 
economic disparities among different size entities.
  The Small Business Committee has held hearings on the RFA and they 
are holding some tomorrow, on Wednesday, to discuss this agency 
compliance with the act. Bad regs are killing good jobs, and that is 
what I have been talking about, and here is the Small Business 
Committee looking at small business with really a focus on small 
business.
  Now, why do you hear people talk about small business in Congress 
when you have got all these giant international corporations that our 
friends on the other side of the aisle love to talk about? Well, for 
one thing, seven out of 10 Americans get a job in small business. Small 
business creates seven out of 10 private sector jobs in the United 
States. Some of those private sector jobs are real well-paying jobs.

  In fact, some of the people that I was talking to at this little 
entrepreneur group that I was with, they said, Well, the first ten 
people we will employ, we expect their salary range to be somewhere 
between $100,000 and $150,000 a year. Now, that's darned good jobs. But 
they are looking to hire highly skilled technical people to advance a 
concept they have in the high-tech industry.
  What do we get from those concepts? Well, you have probably got a 
cell phone in your pocket. You may have the new Apple iPad sitting on 
your desk, or you may actually be communicating with a brand-new one 
which has a camera in it so you can talk to your spouse around the 
world or your friend around the world and both of you can see each 
other. These are all ideas that came from entrepreneurial thinking that 
began with one person with an idea.
  The one thing Americans still have to sell is ideas, and we are the 
only innovative idea creators on Earth. Everybody else is good at 
copying, but we are the guys with the original thoughts. We don't want 
to kill that. We don't want regulations to kill it. And we don't want 
bad regs to keep this unemployment number above 8 percent, almost 9 
percent.
  Another act is H.R. 872. This is a bill about Congress battling a bad 
ruling by the Federal courts. The bill eliminates a costly and 
duplicative permitting requirement for the application of pesticides. 
That is what our friend from Georgia was talking about just a few 
minutes ago, Mr. Scott. This will now require a different type of 
permitting system and it will, quite honestly, place the burden on 
farmers, ranchers, and anybody who uses pesticides, I assume 
exterminators and so forth, and will put a huge burden on them. And the 
only thing you can do is clearly put a halt to this EPA new regulatory 
activity. Even though the court recently said, Well, we won't require 
this until October, it doesn't matter whether it is required today or 
whether it is required in October; whenever it is required, it is still 
a burden. So my friends on the Ag Committee are very, very serious 
about challenging the creation of this new regulation.
  We have been using the Congressional Review Act, and we have got 
several things that we have dealt with on the Congressional Review Act. 
This is a law today. This law was created in the Clinton administration 
and has been used once, and that is the only time it has ever been 
used, which surprises me. But we are trying to use it on multiple bills 
that are out there that are creating a regulatory burden on individuals 
or industries of this country.

                              {time}  2020

  Last year, the Federal Government issued a total of 3,316 new rules 
and regulations, an average of 13 rules a day. Seventy-eight of those 
new rules last year were major rules. A major rule is a rule that may 
result in an annual effect on the economy of $100 million or more, a 
major increase in costs or prices for consumers or significant adverse 
effects on the economy.
  If it is a new rule, it is required under the Congressional Review 
Act that it be submitted to the committees of jurisdiction that cover 
that rule in the House and Senate and that they have the opportunity 
within 60 legislative days, that is days that the Congress is in 
session, not counting the days it is not in session. And if there is a 
vote, and let's say the House passes it and sends it to the Senate, 
then it only requires 30 Senators to cosponsor the bill to bring that 
vote to a full vote in the Senate.
  Then we will have the opportunity to send some bad regulations that 
passed both the House and the Senate to the President, and he told us 
less than a month ago that one of his goals this year was to get rid of 
these onerous

[[Page H2027]]

regulations that are costing us jobs in America. And I think that if 
both this House and the Senate, the Senate across the way, if both 
those entities feel it is a bad rule, I think the President will look 
at it, and I am very hopeful that he will dispose of that rule. When I 
say this, we are not talking just about the EPA. There are a lot of 
rules out there, but EPA just seems to have more than their share right 
now.
  I talked about the Flexible Permitting Act. We have filed a CRA 
challenge, a Congressional Review Act challenge, to the flexible 
permitting program. Chairman Upton of the Energy and Commerce Committee 
has been or is holding hearings on the Clean Air Act and on this issue. 
That will be one issue that we are going to be working on trying to get 
done.
  The FCC has a regulation for net neutrality. This rule grants the 
Federal Government new power to regulate the Internet, restricting 
access and stalling innovation. One of the things that those young 
people that I met with the other night, it was about 100 of them now, 
it is not a small group, they all said, most of them, that the Internet 
was a tool they were using to come up with good ideas or to promote 
their good ideas or to use the Internet for their good ideas; and they 
were very much opposed, as am I, to any regulation of the Internet.
  The freedom of the Internet is a freedom of expression, a freedom of 
expression which creates a freedom of ideas, and the exchange of ideas 
creates innovation, which is the fuel to drive our economy. So Mr. Greg 
Walden is addressing this issue under the CRA of net neutrality.
  HHS has a rule on medical loss ratio. This regulation will require 
all health care plans to pay a minimum of 80 percent of premiums toward 
health services, eliminating coverage for 47 percent of Americans in 
small group and individual health plans. This is an area which we have 
filed, my office and John Carter have filed this. However, I am going 
to have a lot of assistance from the medical professionals in this 
House in going forward on this medical loss ratio. It is a serious 
regulation which will seriously harm the advancement of health care in 
America.
  Then we have a NESHAP rule for portland cement manufacturing 
industries. This has to do with cement kilns that make portland cement. 
``Portland'' is not named after a town. It is a process whereby you 
make the cement that binds concrete to create concrete for this 
country. There are 18 cement kilns that are likely to close as a result 
of this. This kills good-paying jobs. The average paying job in one of 
these kilns starts at around $60,000 to $70,000 a year and goes up. 
These are good jobs.
  Now, where are these jobs going to go? You have to have cement. A 
great number of the kilns that make portland cement have moved offshore 
already, and they are over in China and they are over in India and 
places like that where they have no regulation on particulates that go 
into the air. Meanwhile, we have actually reduced a lot of the things 
that go into the air under the present regulations. But these new 
regulations will move those American jobs out of the country to another 
country; and rather than help the air, because the same air is in India 
and China as is over here, it is all part of this great big place we 
call the world, we will still be polluting the air, but 10 times worse 
than we do under our current regulations in the United States, and we 
lose the jobs.
  So we are going to seek a vote on portland cement manufacturing 
regulations. And the argument that this increases mercury pollution is 
absolutely false because we have evidence to show that mercury 
pollution, if it is in the United States, it is coming from offshore.
  So all these things are things that are proposed right now. We have 
got charts over here to look at each one of them.
  Here is the regulatory moratorium, an outright ban on Federal 
regulations. It removes the top obstacle to economic recovery. Business 
won't hire with ObamaCare and EPA regs hanging over their head.
  The Regulatory Flexibility Act. The shaded areas indicate U.S. 
recessions. The 09 research--that is a word I can't read--organization. 
Look at this. This is what is happening from regulations. It is going 
up on the unemployment scale.
  The RFA requires the Federal agencies to assess the economic impact 
on small businesses--we talked about that--to come up with 
alternatives, because unemployment rates are around or above 9 percent 
for the last 22 months, and it is time that we make these regulations 
be assessed, and seven out of 10 new jobs are created by these small 
businesses.
  When you hear us talk about the Pesticide Act, very clearly there are 
the folks that are dealing with it right there, the farmers of America. 
It is duplicative. That means they already have a permit that allows 
them to put out these pesticides, and because of this ruling they are 
having to get another permit at another cost and meet other guidelines 
for these pesticides.
  The Sixth Circuit we think with this Cotton Council versus the EPA 
made a bad ruling, and these higher costs to producers and consumers 
and the government are all built into this one bad regulation. This act 
that we talked about, 872, is to block this bad ruling. This is the 
kind of fight we have to have to prevent the regulators from getting so 
involved that they actually shut down our businesses.
  Now, no one here, including me, I am certainly not, and I don't think 
anybody in this House, is proposing that we are going to do things that 
are harmful. It is not like they weren't already regulating that 
pesticide. They just came up with a new permit, new money to spend, new 
hoops to jump through in order to apply pesticides.
  Here is what I have been talking about, the Congressional Review Act. 
It allows Congress to review every new Federal regulation issued by the 
government agencies and by passage of a joint resolution overrule that 
regulation. On these things I have been talking about, the House and 
the Senate both can go forward under this act, and we can put the 
brakes on some bad regulations.
  Here are the ones I mentioned. The Texas flexible permitting program, 
the net neutrality rule, the medical loss ratio and the portland 
cement: those all can be addressed by this act, and many more.

                              {time}  2030

  But maybe we could save ourselves a whole lot of time and effort by 
just passing the newest proposal that I have put forward, and that is a 
law that says, time-out until 2013 on any regulations from the 
government, and let's just hold off and let's give this economy a 
chance to grow. And when it grows, we will prosper, we will get out of 
this mess we're in, and we will get back to being the America we all 
treasure and love.
  It's not hard to imagine that if there's something really bad, of 
course, this House will protect it. But many of these things are people 
in closed rooms, some of which don't even understand the industry 
they're regulating, coming up with rules because they have a concept of 
government that is all government--all roads lead to Rome--all 
government leads to Washington, and that all government decisions and 
all life decisions should be made here, in Washington. There are people 
in this city, literally tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands 
of people in this city, that believe that all life issues should be 
resolved by the Federal Government.
  The perfect example that just really upsets me is the fact that, kind 
of randomly, when the opposite party, the Democrats, took over in the 
House, they decided to get rid of all the light bulbs in all the office 
buildings, and they put in these curly Q light bulbs all over 
everywhere. These lights, you turn some of them on, it takes you a good 
20 count before the light even has enough light to see. That's very 
uncomfortable, especially in the bathroom. But we've got them. And if 
you take yours out and put the old incandescent light bulb in there, 
the next day you'll come back and the maintenance man will have taken 
it out and put one of those curly Q light bulbs back in there, because 
the government knows better what light bulbs you ought to have than you 
do. In fact, they passed a law that says you're not going to be able to 
have anything but those light bulbs.
  They fail to realize that if you accidentally drop one of those light 
bulbs

[[Page H2028]]

onto the floor and it bursts, it's got mercury vapor in it--and some 
other nasty stuff I don't even know what it is--and all of a sudden 
you've got to call the hazardous material team to come in in hoods and 
suits and do a hazmat removal of that broken light bulb.
  Now I'm sorry. I like to say that one of the things that we have a 
real shortage of in America, especially the America that's inside the 
Beltway in Washington, D.C., is common sense. But to put a hazardous 
material light bulb in to correct something that you have against a 
normal light bulb because you think it burns too much power is really 
not very cost efficient.
  I am very pleased to see my friend, Mr. Steve King from Iowa, drift 
in here. If the gentleman has anything he wants to talk about here 
tonight, I would be glad to yield him some time.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the gentleman from Texas, the good judge, 
who has taught me a few things about all of this. One of those things 
is sitting on the Judiciary Committee with the gentleman from Texas is, 
and I haven't learned it very well, but at least I saw the 
demonstration on how to listen. One of the common denominators of the 
judges from Texas that we have serving in this Congress is they are all 
good listeners. They also have heard a lot of stories, some the truth 
and some not, and they sort that out pretty well.
  When I hear Judge Carter come to the floor to tell us how it is, I'm 
pretty confident that he has listened really carefully and drawn a 
judgment as to what's the truth and what isn't and boiled it down to 
the essential facts of Constitution and law and common sense and 
rendered a verdict. So as I hear this verdict emerging here from the 
presentation this evening, it calls me to the floor to say thank you to 
the gentleman from Texas for bringing this up, for all the times that 
you've come to the floor and sometimes fought a lonely battle that 
turned out to stand on a good cause.
  That's the way good things get started. It's usually one person 
starting this out and then truth seems to attract more people to a 
truthful and good and a just cause. I am interested in the gentleman's 
presentation here and not particularly informed but I came to listen. I 
would be happy to continue my listening.
  Mr. CARTER. I will reclaim my time. I am just about through. I just 
wanted to point out, I don't have anything against fluorescent light 
bulbs. I've got a few fluorescent light bulbs in my workshop out in the 
garage, mainly because they just gave me more light for less money, not 
because of the electricity. But I made that choice. I think that's 
fine. If people want to choose to have all fluorescent light bulbs in 
their house, I think that's great. That's the America we love. But I 
don't think Nancy Pelosi or anybody else in this House of 
Representatives ought to be telling us what kind of light bulbs we have 
to have. It doesn't make sense. It's not fair to you. You are a person 
of independent will. You are granted liberty and freedom by your 
Constitution, the Constitution of the United States, and those are just 
recording God-given rights and privileges. I don't see why we think we 
are the center of the universe for knowledge in this House to come up 
and tell you what kind of light bulbs you can have. Or what kind of 
energy that you can consume. Unless it comes out to be against the 
national interest. And I would argue right now with all the alternative 
energy, we haven't got anything to replace what we're using right now 
yet. But keep working on it and then we'll let us make the choice, let 
the American citizens make the choice as to what they want to do. I 
think that's good freedom. That's good liberty. That's what we are all 
about in this country, and that's why we prosper, because we give the 
individual the right to make his own choices. If he chooses to do 
something that harms others, we can put a stop to that. That's why we 
have laws. But if he doesn't, if he just wants to live his life the way 
he wants to live it, we don't have any business telling the individual 
how to live his life. And I would argue this stupid light bulb rule is 
one of those things. I will argue that until it is imposed completely 
as a mandate sometime next fall, I think. And then I guess the light 
bulb police will be coming after me.

  But, seriously, this is the kind of things that we do by regulation, 
or impose our will on others, and in many instances it is done by 
bureaucrats who sit in Washington, D.C., and they probably have never 
even seen that plow that we just saw in that farm, except maybe they've 
seen it on television. But they've certainly not seen anybody out there 
sweating on an Iowa farm or a Texas farm operating what looks like is a 
disc harrow that's turning the soil there. And yet they're writing 
regulations to regulate this man's life. Maybe they're the right thing 
to do, but you wonder when they have one and they come up with another 
one that you have to still meet the first one, stack the second one on 
top of it, and it clearly serves no purpose.
  These are all the kind of arguments that frustrate you. They're the 
kind of things that make the average businessman, the average farmer, 
rancher, decide to hold off on investing in America because he wants to 
know what America he's investing in, he or she is investing in. That is 
the real issue that is driving the fact that we are still sitting here 
right around 9 percent unemployment after all these months, over 25 
months, we're sitting here with the same 8.9, which is as close to 9 as 
I want to get percent unemployment because the Americans that create 
the jobs are concerned about what's next.
  I yield to the gentleman from Iowa.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the gentleman from Texas.
  As I listen to this presentation, a number of things occur to me 
about what happens when you have the Federal agencies and the Federal 
agencies are passing rules and regulations that even though there is a 
broad authority that's granted to those agencies by this Congress, some 
of the things that they do are beyond the imagination of the people 
that debated or voted for the bill in the first place.
  I look at the Clean Water Act and the Endangered Species Act, which 
are more than 30 years old by now. They've turned into something way 
beyond the imagination of the people that passed them. The 
environmentalists that supported them then seemed to be on the edge of 
what would be considered mainstream. Looking back on that, they would 
be considered mainstream now. But the problem that we have, and 
particularly with EPA, would be that the mothers and fathers of the EPA 
employees that first implemented the rules and regulations of the Clean 
Water Act and the Endangered Species Act, now their children have 
picked this up and others from outside, a second generation of people.

                              {time}  2040

  They have come into these professions now with--like many young 
people do--and it's a very good thing to be idealistic and have a sense 
of a cause--but if you look at a law that was written in 1978, and you 
apply it with a vision of having a cause that you want to be championed 
for in 2011, quite often the second generation environmentalist is 
something entirely different than the first generation 
environmentalist. And they will interpret the law and write rules 
beyond the scope of the imagination of those who drafted it and 
ratified it and the President that signed it.
  And so I deal with things back in an environmental perspective, 
having spent my life's work in the soil conservation business. We have 
gone out and done some drainage work. Mostly, it's been surface work, 
permanent practices--terraces, dams, and waterways--and I've envisioned 
that we would want to send all the raindrops down through the soil 
profile to purify that water in nature's intended way and keep the soil 
from washing down stream and ending up in the Gulf of Mexico.
  And yet the regulations that come from some of the EPA initiatives 
are things such as--I can think of protected streams, an issue that 
came to many States, but it came to Iowa. It was one of the things that 
drew me into political life. They wrote a rule that said that these 
waters for these streams, these 115 streams that were designed to be 
protected for their natural riparian beauty, to quote the rule, some of 
them were drainage ditches that I had floated and walked those streams 
all through western Iowa. And some of those streams were just drainage 
ditches. There was no natural riparian left-over beauty because they

[[Page H2029]]

had all been changed. But they wanted to preserve them and protect them 
and call them endangered streams.
  And so I began going to the hearings for the rules. And in the rules 
they wrote that these streams, and according to the geographical 
boundaries that are defined here, and--``waters hydrologically 
connected to them'' shall be declared protected streams and shall be 
under the purview of the Department of Natural Resources, which 
regulates for the EPA. And I began to ask the question. And here's how 
language gets stretched. I asked the question, What does ``waters 
hydrologically connected to'' mean? And the regulators would stand 
before the public meeting and they would say, We don't know. You're 
here presenting a rule and you don't know what it means, ``waters 
hydrologically connected to them.'' No, we don't know. Then take it 
out. We can't. Why can't you? We can't. How do you know you can't if 
you don't know what it means? Well, we're here to defend this rule.
  So I followed that road show around the State, and they knew when I 
walked in actually the second meeting who I was and what I was there 
for. And I asked one question and I didn't get an answer. I just opened 
my mouth for the second question and they said, Only one question per 
person. And I said, I drove 2\1/2\ hours to get here. It's going to 
take me 2\1/2\ hours to get home. And I've got a lot more than one 
question. I'm going to stand here until I get them all answered.
  Anyway, it came to this. They had decided what amounted to every 
square foot of the State of Iowa under rules that were ``slipperly'' 
deceptive. And it was the language that said ``waters hydrologically 
connected to.'' I know that moist soil will have in it a water content 
of 25, 28, 30 percent and still be fairly stable. So that would 
regulate us all the way up to the kitchen sink. Two water molecules 
touching each other are hydrologically connected. And that's one of the 
things that environmental extremists sought to impose upon us in the 
State that gave them all kinds of latitude.
  And another one would be when they decided to declare wetlands by 
aerial photographs. And the aerial photographers would look down, take 
a shot, and if there were a certain amount of vegetation growing in the 
field, they declared it to be a wetland that otherwise would have been 
farmed.
  And so there could be somebody missed with the herbicide on top of 
the hill and the foxtail would grow. It would show up in an aerial 
photograph. The Corps of Engineers would declare that to be a wetland 
on the top of the hill where water drained completely away. This is how 
government regulation gets out of hand and starts to take over the 
property rights of the individuals who have a right to use that 
property in a responsible way as a means of an income to produce crops, 
even if it happens to be cotton, which we don't have much of in my 
district.
  So I just think here that this Congress should do this: we should 
bring every rule before this Congress for an affirmative vote before it 
can have the force and effect of law. We can do it en bloc. Bring them 
all in together. We need to give any Member an opportunity to divide a 
rule out and force a separate vote on it, and we need to give Members 
the opportunity to amend them.
  And the gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. Davis) has a bill that addresses 
this in this fashion. It's not as broad in scope as I would go, but it 
is a very, very good start on getting this Congress under control and 
the regulators under control and giving Congress the authority that's 
vested in us in the Constitution rather than subcontracting it off to 
the agencies and letting them run this government at will.

  So I appreciate the gentleman from Texas giving me an opportunity to 
vent myself on these frustrating issues. I appreciate your leadership.
  Mr. CARTER. Reclaiming my time, our friend from Kentucky has been 
down here with me talking just about that act. I don't know if you were 
in when we first started this. I have just proposed, because I see this 
tidal wave of regulation, this hurry up and regulate everything you can 
in a hurry going on by the administration, I will tomorrow morning file 
a bill to declare a moratorium on all regulations. And they would have 
to come to Congress showing good cause why it's in the national 
interest for the good of all mankind that there be an exception to that 
moratorium so that we would basically just call a king's X, time out, 
and let's wait for the end of this administration and we'll see what 
happens in the next one. And by that time we can settle down and create 
a few jobs in this country because they wouldn't have to, at least for 
the next 2 years, worry about regulations. So I'll get you a copy of 
that. It's real simple: no regulations for the next 2 years.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. If the gentleman would yield.
  Mr. CARTER. Yes, I will.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. If the title of that bill is the king's X bill, I'm 
going to be very interested in signing on.
  Mr. CARTER. I like king's X.
  I thank you, Steve King. You're a good friend for coming down here 
and joining me. I have gone over what I have to say here tonight. I 
just want to finish up by saying nobody is against doing the right 
thing. I'm against people who are creating regulations for the sake of 
regulations and damaging the people who are the job creators in this 
country. I'm for protecting the environment, but if you're belching out 
pollutants in China because you moved out of the United States because 
of onerous regulations and you weren't belching out those pollutants in 
America because we had a good Clean Air Act in place before you wrote 
the bad regulations, then you're not helping the environment at all by 
sending that to an unregulated place in China or India.
  So let's get real. Let's try to set up an environment in this Nation 
that creates jobs so Americans can go back to work. It's all about 
going back to work.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

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