[Congressional Record Volume 157, Number 172 (Thursday, November 10, 2011)]
[Senate]
[Page S7336]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                             OVERREGULATION

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oklahoma.
  Mr. INHOFE. It is my understanding that I have as much as 5 minutes.
  Mr. President, I appreciate very much what has been described. 
Perhaps people can look at this in terms of the overregulation we are 
doing in this country, the fact that there is a direct relationship 
between the amount of revenue that comes into the government and the 
amount of regulations.
  I have always used this--in fact, it is still permissible to use it. 
According to OMB, for each 1 percent addition to the GDP, it creates an 
additional $50 billion of revenue. There are other ways of doing it 
other than tax increases.
  To turn it around, look at what this administration has done. They 
have regulations such as the greenhouse gas regulation, which would be 
between a $300 billion and $400 bill loss each year. The ozone--which 
they postponed, but nevertheless they proposed it--would be $676 
billion in lost GDP. You can do your math on that. For each 1 percent--
and 1 percent is $140 billion--for each 1 percent, it would be about a 
$50 billion loss in revenue. Boiler MACT is a $1 billion loss in GDP. 
Utility MACT, which is what they have been talking about, across State 
lines, is $140 billion in compliance costs. Cement MACT--all of these 
are huge losers in terms of revenue that can be generated.
  So I would only like to say--and I wish I had time to get into more 
detail on this--that shortly we will be voting on McCain amendment No. 
928. It has a lot of great features in it, but one that has been almost 
overlooked is the feature that would take away the jurisdiction of the 
Environmental Protection Agency to regulate greenhouse gases. This was 
the Upton-Inhofe bill. My bill, actually, was tested here, and we had a 
majority of people who were in support of it. It passed overwhelmingly 
in the House of Representatives.
  So part of this amendment addresses what would have been done by the 
Waxman-Markey bill, which would cost us, not just once but every year, 
between $300 billion and $400 billion. The big question was, since the 
President could not get this body to pass a bill on cap and trade, he 
decided he would do it through regulation. But doing it through 
regulation would still cost between $300 billion and $400 billion a 
year. So what they had to do was to come up with an endangerment 
finding.
  That endangerment finding was based on flawed science. In fact, we 
have a recent response to a request by the IG of the EPA who said, in 
fact, that was true--that the science on which this was based was 
faulty science. So after we realized that--and everyone else realized 
it--we went back to these people who were on record opposing the 
legislation regulating greenhouse gases and tried to get a bill passed 
that would take away the jurisdiction of the Environmental Protection 
Agency to regulate greenhouse gases. So that is what this was all 
about.
  We were not able to get that, but that provision is in amendment No. 
928 by Senator McCain and others. I hope people will realize, in 
addition to those things being talked about, and the new jobs that 
would come with the passage of that amendment, there is also this 
provision which would be a huge boost to our economy and would 
eliminate an unnecessary tax increase of between $300 billion and $400 
billion a year.
  With that, I yield the floor.

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