[Congressional Record Volume 158, Number 30 (Monday, February 27, 2012)]
[House]
[Pages H956-H962]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                   HOUSE REPUBLICANS ON JOB CREATION

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 5, 2011, the gentleman from Arkansas (Mr. Griffin) is 
recognized for

[[Page H957]]

60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. GRIFFIN of Arkansas. Mr. Speaker, I came here to the floor 
tonight to talk with some of my colleagues and the American people 
about what I believe is the most pressing issue facing our country.
  A lot of us have been home working in our districts over the last 
week, seeing our constituents, speaking at local Rotary clubs, visiting 
with constituents in the office and around the district. It is clear to 
me that the top priority for the American people over the last year 
remains the same, and that is jobs. People back home are encouraged and 
are optimistic about the future, but they need some signs that jobs are 
increasing here in the United States. Jobs remain the number one issue.
  Since I got here a little over a year ago with some of my freshman 
colleagues, a lot of us have made jobs our sole focus. There are a lot 
of different things that we can do to encourage job creation. My focus 
has been on the private sector. Private sector job creation, in my 
view, is the way that we get our economy going again, not through 
government stimulus. We've tried that to the tune of about $1 
trillion--almost $1 trillion--and it has not done what the President 
promised.

                              {time}  1910

  It seems to me the best approach is to create an environment here in 
this country where the private sector can flourish, where people want 
to take risks, where they want to invest and compete with other 
countries. How do we do that? There are a variety of ways and that's 
why we're here tonight, to talk about some of these.
  I'm joined by some of my colleagues, and I think that they would 
agree that one of the ways that we can encourage the private sector to 
grow and create jobs is through fundamental tax reform. Another way is 
regulatory reform. Job creators around my district tell me what a lot 
of us know and that is that not regulation but overregulation, not 
regulation but excessive regulation, is a tax on businesses and it is a 
tax on job creators. So we need tax reform and we need regulatory 
reform.
  We need to further pursue our energy resources here in the United 
States. We need to construct, for example, the Keystone XL pipeline 
that the President first delayed and then denied. Thirdly, we need to 
further explore our energy resources. Fourthly, we need to live within 
our means as a government. That means dealing with our spending 
problem, our spending addiction, our debt, our trillion-plus-dollar 
deficit.
  If you were to ask me what is your plan, what would you do, what are 
you trying to do, what have you been fighting for over a year to try to 
encourage the private sector to grow jobs in this country with, I would 
say tax reform, regulatory reform, increased energy exploration and 
development here in the United States, and making the Federal 
Government live within our means. Those four things, if we can address 
them in bold ways, we can change the course of this country's fiscal 
situation and the economy and ultimately grow this economy and create 
jobs.
  I'm going to turn now and yield to the gentleman from Virginia if 
he'd like to comment on some of this.
  Mr. GRIFFITH of Virginia. Thank you, Congressman Griffin, I do. I 
agreed with what you had to say and wholeheartedly support your 
concepts and where we need to be moving this country.
  Let me say to each and every one of you that the American worker is 
second to none in this world. When you look at our workers, they are 
the most innovative workers in the world, and they are the hardest 
workers in the world. Statistics, different reports continue to show us 
this point.
  We will never compete with the Chinese and other countries on wages; 
nor do we want to. But our advantage, Congressman Griffin, is that we 
have the ability to use our energy resources in a way that we can 
create jobs, and we can fight for American jobs by having affordable 
energy. That's our trump card. For some reason, those in the 
administration want to tie our hands behind our backs and not allow our 
businesses to use our trump card to keep jobs in the United States and 
bring jobs back, and that is that we have great energy resources in 
this country.
  The President was recently in Florida, and he mockingly described the 
Republican plan on energy and getting gas prices down. He said step one 
is drill, step two is drill, step three is drill. The President is just 
wrong. We have a true all-of-the-above policy. I like to describe it 
this way: it is drill. That's step one. Step two, dig. Step three, 
discover. Step four, deregulate.
  Let me explain a little bit. Drill is easy. We have vast untapped 
resources in oil, and we have huge resources in natural gas. If we're 
allowed to drill for natural gas and for oil, we can turn around a lot 
of the things that are happening in this country.
  Let's talk about gas prices because that affects jobs. Listen, some 
of this has to do with looking at the world market. If we signaled 
immediately that we were ready to start using our resources, the prices 
would come down because those people who are speculating that oil is 
not going to be available in the future and the not-so-distant future, 
but also even 2 or 3 years from now, would realize that the giant in 
the world of energy was finally awaked from its slumber and ready to go 
on the march for jobs. So I think it is important that we look at 
drilling. I don't think we should be mocking it.
  Dig. Obviously we have a lot of coal resources in this country. My 
district has a lot of coal. It also has natural gas. We are number one 
in the world in coal resources. Everybody else in the world is using 
the coal. We are the ones who refuse to use it. As I said before, we 
have our hands tied behind our backs. Ladies and gentlemen, I've got to 
tell you something. We need to have reasonable regulations, but we've 
got to untie our hands and be ready to use our coal. The Chinese are 
now buying our coal to use our coal to make the products, the goods 
that we used to make in this country.
  Guess what, a lot of times folks say we don't want to use coal 
because it has pollution and it creates problems; but a NASA study has 
shown us that if we have the Chinese using our coal to make the 
products we used to make, they get the money for those products, their 
people have the jobs. And guess what happens to the pollutants in the 
air? It takes roughly 10 days to get from the middle of the Gobi Desert 
to the eastern shore of my beloved Virginia. Just 10 days. We know that 
a significant portion of the mercury in our air is coming from foreign 
sources. Not our plants, but foreign sources.
  Mr. GRIFFIN of Arkansas. I would like to comment on something the 
gentleman just said. I think it is a great point.
  A lot of times some of us think about this country and pollution 
here. I think what I hear you saying--it is a very good point--is that 
this is one world and we in this country through the processes and the 
regulatory structure that we have, we burn coal cleaner and we are a 
better steward of the Earth when it comes to using some of these 
traditional energy sources. What I hear you saying is--and I think it 
makes a lot of sense--if you believe that coal will not be used if we 
do not use it here, then that's not exactly accurate. Somebody is going 
to burn it. The question is: Do we do a better job with some of these 
traditional energy sources? Do we do a better job than other countries 
that will burn it if we don't? The Chinese can burn the same coal, yet 
regulate it in a way where they do a lot more damage to the 
environment.
  That brings me actually to the Keystone pipeline. The President first 
delayed it, then he denied it so that the extreme environmentalists 
would be happy with him. If you apply what you are talking about, it 
seems to me we would rather be refining the oil sands from Canada in 
this country instead of the alternative that Canada has talked about, 
which is shipping it to China for refining. Why? Because we refine 
cleaner, we refine safer, and we do a better job.

                              {time}  1920

  Those oil sands are going to be refined. The issue is not if we don't 
refine them, no one will. The fact is they will be refined. The issue 
is do we refine them or do the Chinese refine them? I think what you're 
saying, and I wholeheartedly agree, we do a better job here.
  Mr. GRIFFITH of Virginia. Absolutely. I would have to say we do a 
much better job here.

[[Page H958]]

  It's almost like I can remember when I was much younger, liberals 
always said to conservatives, Well, you all act like the United States 
is the only country in the world, and we have to look at the whole 
world. Now the liberals are looking at it and saying, Well, the United 
States is the only country in the world. We have to only look at the 
United States and we don't look at the big picture.
  I think, inadvertently, even with good intentions, there are, in 
fact, greater pollution risks by us not using our energy than there are 
with us using our energy with the reasonable regulations that have been 
in place for some time.
  That being said, let's take a look at how that impacts on jobs. Not 
only do we get the pollution, but we don't get the jobs. We don't get 
the money.
  You talked about living within our means and so forth. Let's take a 
look at my district.
  AEP, American Electric Power, is the biggest power provider in my 
district. There are others. They have estimated, with new regulations, 
energy costs are going to go up 10 to 15 percent as they spend an 
additional $6 billion to $8 billion. Ten to 15 percent on hardworking 
American families is tough, but when you look at the job component, 
when you look at that job component, that means it's going to cost more 
in my district to make potato chips. It's going to cost more in my 
district to work the family farm. It's going to cost more in my 
district to make furniture. It's going to cost more in my district to 
make paper products, whiteboard. I just touched on the surface.
  Every single retail establishment, every single business has to use 
electricity; but when you raise the cost of manufacturing goods or 
using electricity to manufacture goods by 10 to 15 percent over the 
course of the next few years, you're making us less competitive in the 
world, and we lose more jobs and we have more people who are unemployed 
and more people who aren't able to go out and buy products, which then 
means more people lose their jobs because they're not selling those 
Fords down at the Ford place. They're not selling washing machines and 
TVs and all of the products that are out there. We lose even more jobs 
because of the failure to recognize that the regulations are killing 
our jobs, and our jobs are going elsewhere.
  I have to say, getting back to what I call the four Ds--drill, dig, 
discover, and deregulate--I'm not saying we don't look at all of the 
above. The President was in Florida. He said we only wanted to drill, 
drill, drill, and he was talking about algae. I'm not one of those 
people who's going to criticize the President for looking at algae. I 
think algae actually has a positive future, but it's a positive future 
that is probably 15 to 50 years away. We need energy now. We need 
affordable energy now. We need jobs now.
  To be looking at something, I think it's absolutely right. That's the 
``discover'' part of those four Ds. We need to encourage discovery. But 
one of the ways to encourage discovery is to deregulate and let people 
make a product without having all kinds of regulations put on top of 
them.
  It's interesting how folks want to do all of these things, and then 
they come up with regulations and they find out that the new start-up 
companies oftentimes have difficulty creating the new alternative 
energies because they run into other regulations that prohibit them 
from going forward.
  So I think we need to make sure that we look at drill, dig, 
discovery, looking at those alternatives, finding more ways that we can 
be efficient and finding new alternative energies. Then let's not 
regulate our industries out of existence, which is where we're headed 
at this point. When you do that, we continue to lose jobs, we continue 
to have a flat economy.
  The unemployment situation has gotten better, but we're still in the 
neighborhood of 8 percent. I don't think that's anything to celebrate. 
I'm glad it's better, but I don't think it's something that you go out 
and go, woo hoo, we've solved our problems. I believe that we have not 
solved our problems at this point. We're working on it, and that's 
good.
  The economy in this country, because of our hardworking Americans, 
because they're innovative and because they work harder than anybody 
else, is not going to just roll over and die, but at the same time it 
could be doing so much better, and we need to maintain that we are the 
number one economic power in the world. The way to do that is to keep 
our jobs by keeping our energy and our energy sources and our energy 
costs at a reasonable level so that we can, in fact, compete with the 
low-wage countries of the world. We don't want the low wages, but to do 
so, to make sure that we can still compete, we have to keep our energy 
affordable.
  Mr. GRIFFIN of Arkansas. I want to comment a little bit on the all-
of-the-above strategy that you were talking about.
  I'm an advocate for an all-of-the-above strategy. We've heard the 
President mention that, but we here in the House have been advocating 
for that. I have since I got here. That includes alternate energy 
sources, renewable energy sources, biodiesel, wind, solar. I'm for 
those things. But I'm also for the traditional energy sources and, in 
addition, nuclear. We have a clean, safe nuclear energy plant, power 
plant in Arkansas that we count on to provide safe, affordable energy. 
We also have coal plants, other sorts of energy sources.
  In my district, we make the windmill blades that go on these massive 
windmills. We also have Welspun Tubular in my district, in the Second 
Congressional District of Arkansas, and they've recently been in the 
news because there has been a lot of uncertainty about their future as 
a result of the President killing the Keystone pipeline, or denying the 
permit. The happy news that I have to report is that Welspun is doing 
some diversifying. They did have to lay some people off after the 
Keystone pipeline was delayed, but they're doing some diversifying so 
they can make some other sorts of pipe, and they're actually going to 
expand. I believe we will ultimately win the battle on the Keystone 
pipeline; and once we get the Keystone pipeline in full swing, the 
construction in full swing, then that will further help Welspun.

  So I'm for all-of-the-above, but I know that in my lifetime we are 
still going to be using a lot of these traditional energy sources. It's 
not an either/or. We can continue to pursue wind and continue to pursue 
solar and continue to pursue biodiesel and alternate energies, 
renewable energy sources, but at the same time pursue the traditional 
sources, particularly, natural gas.
  Natural gas is abundant and, best of all, it's American--and, in my 
case, it's Arkansan. We've got a lot of natural gas in my district and 
other districts in Arkansas. It is abundant and it is cheap. Where 
ethanol can increase the wear on a traditional car engine, natural gas 
can extend the life of that engine.
  I want to turn the conversation over to my friend from the Third 
District of Arkansas, Congressman Steve Womack. He's got a lot of 
natural gas in his district as well.
  Before I do, I just want to recap.
  We have jobs as our main goal. And there are pillars under that goal 
of jobs, and those pillars are: tax reform, regulatory reform, further 
energy exploration, and getting our spending under control so that we 
deal with our debt and we live within our means. Those are four 
pillars. They're not separate from job creation. They are a critical 
part of encouraging private sector job creation and giving certainty to 
job creators.
  Now I'd like to yield to my friend from Arkansas.
  Mr. WOMACK. I thank the gentleman, and I do appreciate his leadership 
in this discussion about job creation in America.
  I've said many, many times that if there is an elixer out there to 
fix the problems, the challenges facing our country today, it's job 
creation.
  What the gentleman from Arkansas has been articulating in the last 
several minutes has been a very good discussion about the four things, 
and I couldn't agree more, the four things that are part and parcel to 
our country creating jobs and putting itself on a different fiscal 
path.
  He's talked about overregulation. I'll come back to that in a moment. 
He's talked about the threat of higher taxes and the need for 
comprehensive tax reform in our Nation; he's talked about

[[Page H959]]

the need for a solid energy policy that allows our country to access 
its own resources, American energy resources to solve America's energy 
challenges; and, of course, he's talked about the deficits and the 
debt.

                              {time}  1930

  Now, if you look at the plight that we're in today insofar as job 
creation--one greater than 8 percent unemployment, sustained 
unemployment of over 8 percent--and when you look at the fact that 
people are out here scrambling to find work--meaningful jobs as they 
want to be productive and want to contribute to American 
exceptionalism--then the way you do that is not by taking a welfare 
check; it's by having a paycheck. If you're looking at this plight 
today like you would an impending storm, it's a dark, dark cloud of 
uncertainty that hangs over the job creators.
  I submit to you that the reason so many people are sitting on 
trillions of dollars of cash, those who would like to get into the game 
and create jobs and expand the American economy, is that they have a 
difficult time computing their input costs. They don't know how energy 
is going to affect their ability to create jobs. They don't know how 
the next regulation, the next rule that is going to come down from 
Washington, is going to impact their ability to earn a profit. As 
evidenced by the downgrade that we had last year by the S&P, they're 
not confident that Congress, these people who gather in this Chamber 
every day, is capable of making the decisions, of having the courage to 
make the decisions to put America on a different fiscal path. It's a 
dark, dark cloud of uncertainty. I don't blame them for sitting on the 
sidelines right now, but there is a lot of cash ready to get in the 
game if we'll just do some of the right things.
  The gentlemen who have spoken tonight talked about regulation, but 
that's not why I came to the floor tonight, and that's not what I 
wanted to talk about primarily. I came from a meeting right before 
votes today that talked about an issue totally unrelated to my district 
and unrelated to most of America. It's out in California.
  Later this week, we're going to vote on H.R. 1837, the San Joaquin 
Valley Water Reliability Act. I heard my colleague from California 
talking passionately about this issue, as he has done a number of times 
from the well of this House, in that, back in 2009, Federal regulations 
to protect a 3-inch fish, the delta smelt, led to the deliberate 
diversion of over 300 billion gallons of water away from the San 
Joaquin Valley and its farmers. It cost thousands of farm workers their 
jobs; it inflicted up to 40 percent unemployment in certain 
communities; and it fallowed hundreds of thousands of acres of fertile 
farmland.
  Those were real people.
  Those were real jobs.
  Because of Federal regulations and this desire on the part of this 
Congress--of this Federal Government, I should say--to protect a 3-inch 
fish, we turned our backs on American workers. In so doing, we affected 
millions of people nationwide because, when you affect the fertile 
farmlands of California the way we have by diverting this water, you 
have, indeed, taken a step toward increasing the price of food.
  The bill that we will consider later this week is a comprehensive 
solution that would restore water deliveries that have been cut off 
through the Federal regulations and environmental lawsuits and through 
a plethora of things facing the California farmers.
  Mr. GRIFFIN of Arkansas. I hear what the gentleman is saying. I agree 
wholeheartedly. Correct me if I'm wrong, but what you're saying is that 
the issue is not regulation. The issue is excessive regulation. The 
issue is overregulation.
  I've got a 2-year-old and a 4-year-old. I love them dearly and hate 
to get on that plane when I have to come up here from Arkansas and have 
to leave them back at the house. I want them to have clean air and 
clean water, and I don't know anyone--the folks here tonight included--
who are against all regulation. Regulation when used properly protects 
us, the kids, et cetera.
  This is not about whether to regulate or not. This is about excessive 
regulation, overregulation, the regulatory process that does not 
consider cost-benefit, that does not consider the impact on jobs, that 
does not employ common sense, Washington regulators who don't speak 
with folks impacted on the ground, well-intentioned though they may be, 
who don't look at the impact and at the potential impact of their 
overregulation. That's what I hear from my colleagues.
  I agree wholeheartedly, and I think that is a critical distinction to 
point out because we always hear folks saying, You just want no 
regulation.
  That's a false choice. That's a straw man. That's not anyone's 
argument that I've heard. The issue is one of overregulation, of 
excessive regulation.
  Mr. WOMACK. Let me take it a step further because I can relate to 
what the gentleman is talking about and can relate it back to my home 
district.
  I think the gentleman would agree that, over the last several years 
in Arkansas, there has been a phenomenal rate of growth in the 
northwest part of our State, the area that I happen to represent, which 
is the great Third District of Arkansas. It's known for its incredible 
growth over the last several years. Now, it is home to some pretty 
well-known companies, companies like Wal-Mart and J.B. Hunt trucking 
and Tyson Foods.

  If you look at northwest Arkansas, there is really no compelling 
reason why prior to the establishment of those major companies that 
northwest Arkansas would be an area where you would have this 
unprecedented growth. But for the entrepreneurial spirit and drive of 
guys like Sam Walton and Don Tyson and J.B. Hunt--and I could go down 
another list of people who have provided jobs and who have created and 
expanded businesses and who have made a meaningful impact on the 
greater mid-South and the entire Nation--northwest Arkansas would be 
kind of an average area with no great infrastructure, until recently 
there, and with no real compelling reason why it would be anything 
special.
  Yet we're fighting an issue in the greater northwest Arkansas area 
that could, indeed, impact our ability to continue to grow. I'm talking 
about EPA's desire, insatiable appetite, to put a total maximum daily 
load, a TMDL, if you would, on phosphorus loading in the Illinois River 
watershed, which flows into Oklahoma, because of a loading standard 
imposed on northwest Arkansas by our neighboring State, a standard that 
many say is not even achievable.
  So all of the great development and job creation and the elevated 
quality of life is in jeopardy. The future is in jeopardy as a result 
of a Federal agency imposing on the region a standard that may or may 
not even be able to be achieved.
  I bring that up for this reason: back when I was a mayor of a city in 
northwest Arkansas, I challenged EPA to give us the science, to show us 
exactly how they can calculate that this standard has been impacted by 
the farmers and ranchers of northwest Arkansas and those who manage the 
point sources of pollution, the municipalities. I happened to be the 
mayor who presided over one of those. As I understand it, the science 
was a collection of data from about 20 streams somewhere in America, 
streams not known to us. They took, I think, the 75th percentile of the 
average phosphorus loading into those streams. I doubt seriously that 
they used streams and rivers that were similar to what we were dealing 
with in northwest Arkansas.
  I bring up this subject only because we're talking about job creation 
tonight, and our ability to continue to expand the economy in northwest 
Arkansas is dependent on our ability to have a good, clean water supply 
and to be able to treat our wastewater and to be able to discharge it 
properly and sufficiently in order to be able to create growth.
  Yet I'm afraid, one day, we're going to look up, and because of these 
standards imposed on us by the Federal bureaucracy, this overregulation 
that we've talked about, that we're not going to have an opportunity to 
grow because we're going to be into moratoria on growth and development 
in our area as a result of these unfair standards. But that's a whole 
other story.
  I really came tonight to talk with my colleague about tax reform 
because, as we've indicated, the threat of higher taxes, or the tax 
structure as we now know it, is, in my strongest opinion, one of the 
great barriers to job creation.

[[Page H960]]

                              {time}  1940

  You know, just the other day, in this very Chamber, the President of 
the United States stood on the dais and he talked to this Congress 
about the need for comprehensive tax reform. In his proposal to reform 
the corporate tax code, I was pleased to see the President showing some 
leadership in that regard, and I look forward to working with the 
administration and my colleagues in the House and Senate to do 
something that in my strong opinion is long overdue.
  I, along with many of my colleagues, agree on the need for corporate 
tax reform. The U.S. has one of the highest corporate tax structures in 
the world, second only to Japan. This discourages job growth and job 
creation in the United States.
  It's time to broaden the base, time to get the government out of the 
business of picking winners and losers, time to eliminate special 
interest loopholes, and it's time to lower the corporate tax rate once 
and for all. But corporate tax reform is not the only piece of the 
puzzle. There are many other pieces. If we are going to grow the 
economy and give our job creators the certainty they need to invest, we 
also should look at the individual rates--not just the corporate rates, 
but the individual structure as well.
  There's an opportunity to simplify the individual tax code. In 
December of 2010, according to the Compendium of Tax Expenditures 
prepared by the Congressional Research Service that we all use, there 
were more than 300 tax expenditures in the form of special exclusions, 
exemptions, deductions, credits, rates, and deferrals. We need to 
reevaluate every single one of these expenditures.
  There are many other benefits of comprehensive tax reform. For 
example more than 90 percent of the Treasury's budget goes to the IRS. 
If we simplify the Tax Code and make it easier to follow and enforce, 
the IRS doesn't need the resources it currently needs.
  What's more, IRS reported, and I think these numbers were back in 
2006, hundreds of billions--I think some were just short of $400 
billion--of what we call a tax gap. Again, simplification of the Tax 
Code makes it easier to follow and enforce, and we can significantly 
narrow that gap.
  I thank my colleagues from both sides of the aisle who are looking 
forward to working on comprehensive tax reform. I believe in my heart 
that it is, as my colleague from Arkansas has indicated, one of four 
things, four basic things, four basic issues facing America today that 
can help put our job creators back into the business of doing what they 
do best. And that is having ideas, incubating those ideas, making those 
ideas come to reality, taking the necessary risks, having access to the 
capital to help support those businesses, to expand those businesses by 
hiring people, by growing things, by making things.
  And as my friend from Virginia said a moment ago, we have proven that 
the American worker is the most productive worker in the world. And 
that's what we need to do: Corporate tax reform; ending this excessive 
over-regulatory environment that we're in; to access American energy 
solutions to solve America's energy challenges; and once and for all 
doing something about the extraordinary deficits--four straight 
trillion-plus-dollar deficits--facing America, and nearly trillion-
dollar deficits as far as the eye can see, based on the current glide 
path; to do those things necessary to get our deficit under control, to 
begin to whittle down that debt and save future generations of the 
burdens that we have in an almost immoral way put on their shoulders.
  With that, I thank you for the opportunity to speak tonight.
  Mr. GRIFFIN of Arkansas. I thank my friend from the Third District of 
Arkansas and appreciate his comments here tonight.
  I'd like to continue a little bit tonight talking about tax reform 
since Representative Womack was talking about some aspects of the 
President's proposal. I think most of us around here are certainly 
excited that the President has even started discussing fundamental tax 
reform. Unfortunately, I think that the President's proposal has a lot 
of aspects that would be burdensome to the businesses and the job 
creators that he purports to be trying to help, and so I don't think 
that it has much chance in the House or the Senate, and I think he knew 
that when he proposed it. But at least he is having that conversation. 
That's a start, that's a start.
  As we talked about, whether you are talking about tax reform, energy 
exploration, regulatory reform, our commonsense budgeting, making the 
Federal Government live within its means, all of those relate to jobs. 
They all are directly related to encouraging private sector job 
creation.
  We've been working on a highway bill recently. Infrastructure is a 
critical part of this equation. That's part of the spending our money 
wisely under the budgeting side of things because we need a strong 
infrastructure so that we can compete with other countries, continue to 
have economic development in this country. So that's a critical part of 
it.
  But with regard to the President's tax plan, it raises taxes at least 
a dollar for every dollar in tax cuts that he provides to simplify the 
corporate tax code. It creates a whole new category of taxes for our 
companies that do business overseas.
  And most glaringly, it doesn't do anything to address individual tax 
rates, the tax rates that you pay at home, I pay. And why is that 
important for job creation? Well, for a number of reasons. First of 
all, the code we have now is complex. It doesn't always reward hard 
work. In fact, sometimes it punishes it.
  But one of the real specific reasons why we must deal with the 
individual tax rates to grow jobs is because many businesses pay their 
taxes, particularly LLCs, sole proprietorships, partnerships, mom and 
pop businesses all around the country in Arkansas and in my district, 
they pay their taxes using the individual income tax brackets. So you 
can't just address corporate tax code, although the President's 
corporate tax ``reform'' has got a lot of tax hikes in it that will 
make our businesses, our job creators in this country, less 
competitive.
  But you can't just reform the Tax Code by dealing with corporate tax 
reform. You've got to look at individual tax reform, corporate tax 
reform across the board. You have to make it simpler, fairer, and 
flatter. Some of the terms that we've talked about, we've certainly 
advocated for that in our budget last year, and we are going to do it 
again this year.
  It's critical, not only for job creation by larger businesses but by 
small business, mom and pop businesses. So tax reform is a critical 
part of what we need to do to get jobs going.
  As I've talked about earlier, some of my colleagues talked about, 
there are a number of reforms that we have been pursuing for over a 
year now that relate directly to private sector job creation.

                              {time}  1950

  As I indicated earlier, it's tax reform. It's regulatory reform. It's 
more energy development. It's living within our means. Individually, 
these issues may not have jobs in the title, but they are the columns, 
the supports, that hold up the private sector job building, if you 
will.
  I want to say a couple of things about the regulatory issue because 
I've just introduced a bill, H.R. 4078, Regulatory Freeze for Jobs Act. 
Again, as a lot of us said, I'm not antiregulation. I don't know anyone 
that's against regulations across the board. What I'm against is the 
Federal Government failing to apply common sense when regulating. What 
I'm against are excessive regulations, overly burdensome regulations.
  I'll give you an example. I had a jobs conference down in my district 
in Little Rock at the Clinton Presidential Library. We had a jobs 
conference. We invited a number of job creators. It seems to me if you 
want to know what to do to create private sector jobs or encourage 
private sector job creation, you'd ask someone who had actually created 
them, folks from the private sector, experts on this issue. We invited 
them in and said, Hey, what's the biggest obstacle to job creation? We 
had Democrats and Republicans both. And we asked them just point blank, 
and the number one answer was regulatory uncertainty.
  What does that mean? Well, it means that folks have money that they 
might want to invest, but they hold on tight

[[Page H961]]

to that money because they're not quite sure what's going to happen. 
They're not sure whether we're going to get our debt under control or 
not. They're not sure how much ObamaCare, the President's health care 
law, is going to cost them. They're not sure whether the regulations 
that they've heard proposed by the EPA as potentially being proposed, 
they're not sure whether those are going to be implemented or not. It's 
just uncertainty everywhere. And I had someone say to me the other 
night, Well, there's always uncertainty.
  Yes, there is always uncertainty. If you're a farmer, there's 
uncertainty whether there will be enough rain for the crops that year. 
There will always be some uncertainty in life because we don't have 
crystal balls. I get that. But what we don't want is a Federal 
Government that needlessly creates additional uncertainty.
  You know, sometimes we say, I had enough problems before this came 
along. Well, that's what we're talking about. You have enough to deal 
with naturally. You have enough uncertainty as it is. You don't need 
the Federal Government creating more uncertainty.
  If you talk to community banks who have been impacted by the 
President's Dodd-Frank law, they've got a lot of uncertainty. They're 
having to hire new folks to comply with the law. What are the new 
regulations going to be? We don't know yet, just know they're coming. 
Don't know what they're going to be yet, just know they're coming and 
they're going to be burdensome. The same with the health care law.
  Here's a quote from, actually, a well-known Democrat businessman, 
commissioner on the Arkansas Highway Commission appointed by our 
Democrat Governor in Arkansas, former chairman of the Arkansas Economic 
Development Commission, John Burkhalter. He said at my jobs conference:

       Every project I look at now, I've got to wonder if I'm 
     going to get to build it because, are the regulations going 
     to stop me? I've got to admit that I pass on over 50 percent 
     of the projects that I would like to do because of the 
     burden, the hurdle of the regulations.

  Now, the President recently said in his State of the Union Address 
that he has approved fewer regulations in the first 3 years of his 
Presidency than his Republican predecessor did in his. Well, the 
President said that, sitting right here on the floor of the House 
during the State of the Union this year, so I think it deserves some 
attention.
  Well, is that true? If you just look at the numbers, it's true, if 
you just look at the number of regulations. But if you look at the 
number of what are called major regulations and the burden that it 
puts, the cost of the regulations, what this President has done far 
exceeds what we've seen before.
  The previous administration issued an average of 63 major regulations 
per year. This administration has issued an average of 88, an increase 
of 40 percent. Under President Bush, the Office of Information and 
Regulatory Affairs reviewed an average of 77 economically significant 
regulations biennially. These are the ones that really impact business. 
I'm not talking about a minor regulation here or there. We're talking 
about the ones that really impact job creators. Under President Bush, 
his Office of Regulatory Affairs reviewed about 77 every 2 years. Under 
this President, it's 125. Not quite doubled, but not far from it. If 
the administration maintains its current pace, it would add nearly $150 
billion annually in new regulatory costs over 8 years.
  I'm going to yield to my friend from Virginia, but before I do, I 
just want to mention that I have proposed the Regulatory Freeze for 
Jobs Act, H.R. 4078. What it would do, it would basically freeze the 
introduction and progression of major regulations, those having an 
impact of $100 billion or more. It would freeze those with exceptions 
for emergencies, health issues, what have you. There are exceptions in 
the bill. But it would freeze them until our unemployment rate gets 
down to 6 percent to show that we're getting our footing, because what 
the regulatory environment is doing to our job creators is stifling 
their ability to create jobs.
  I'm going to yield now to my colleague from Virginia.
  Mr. GRIFFITH of Virginia. I thank you so much.
  I stuck around just because I wanted to hear more about your 
Regulatory Freeze for Jobs Act. I think that is a great concept. I look 
forward to reading it. It is the way and the direction that we ought to 
be going, because I'm willing to bet that those regulations that have 
been approved are probably, if you looked at the inches of the 
regulations, it might only be one reg, but I would be willing to bet 
that this administration beats the Bush administration on inches of 
regulation by a mile.

  That being said, I have to also say that I go out and talk to not 
only the Rotary Clubs and other civic organizations, but I like talking 
to high school students, because what we do here in Washington will be 
a far greater impact on their lives than what we do on our own lives. 
It's our children.
  You indicated you have young children. I have an 11-year-old, a 6-
year-old, and a 4-year-old, and I'm concerned about them.
  But the high school students get it. When I start talking about the 
regulations and I talk about what would you do if you were a factory 
that was faced with having to pay big fines because you couldn't 
comply--couldn't comply, not didn't want to--couldn't physically and 
timewise comply with an EPA regulation, what happens to those jobs? You 
know what they say? I don't have to teach them this. They already know 
it. Those jobs go somewhere else, usually to China.
  Mr. GRIFFIN of Arkansas. Sure.
  Mr. GRIFFITH of Virginia. And they know, and we talk about the money 
issue. You talked about that, and you're absolutely right. They know 
that if we create a regulatory environment that's conducive to creation 
of jobs--not no regulations, but conducive to creating jobs--that we 
end up with more jobs. If you end up with more jobs, you have more 
taxpayers. If you have more taxpayers, you have more taxes. And guess 
what. Just like in our households, if you have more money coming in, 
it's a whole lot easier to pay your bills going out.
  And so when we talk about living within our means, we can live within 
our means at a higher level if we just have the ability for the 
American entrepreneurial spirit and the American entrepreneur to go out 
and take the normal risks that are associated with any business 
enterprise and create the jobs, the jobs that over the last centuries 
we, as Americans, have worked hard to create, and in a mere 200 years 
created the greatest economic system, the greatest economic country 
ever seen on this planet.
  I have to say, it comes back, and you talked about Dodd-Frank and 
banks, community banks in particular, and I come from a very rural 
district compared to a lot of the others, and the community banks are 
the heart and soul of those communities; and yet they are afraid to 
lend money to people they know are going to stay there and fight to 
keep those jobs and to fight for their communities, but they are 
hesitant to lend the money because they don't know what the regulatory 
scheme is going to be.

                              {time}  2000

  Not only do you have the entrepreneur who doesn't know, but the 
banker doesn't know, so he doesn't know if he can lend money even to 
that entrepreneur.
  Mr. GRIFFIN of Arkansas. I have heard story after story from small-
town bankers, community bankers, who say that not only are they 
deciding not to loan to folks based on character and based on 
relationship, but they're being told they can't. They're being told 
they can't. They are community banks, the sources of credit. The source 
of money for small-town America are being told who they can and cannot 
lend to. Their judgment is being taken away from them, and they're 
saying, Look, you don't have to decide. We're going to regulate that. 
We'll tell you who you can loan to and who you can't loan to, never 
mind the fact that you've known them for 20, 30, 40 years, generation 
after generation. We're going to control this from Washington.
  This President talks about his financial reform bill going after Wall 
Street. Actually, the folks on Wall Street backed it. What it ended up 
doing is hurting the folks that had nothing to do with the financial 
collapse in the first place. Small-town community

[[Page H962]]

banks got the brunt of a lot of this because the big banks can afford 
the extra regulation and compliance. The small banks cannot. So, what 
the President's bill did is it ignored Fannie and it ignored Freddie--
the problems--and then it went after banks. It made Wall Street happy 
in many ways. Many of them got on board and endorsed it. And then who 
took the brunt of the burden, the regulatory burden? Small-town banks. 
Small-town banks.
  Mr. GRIFFITH of Virginia. You said that Wall Street backed it, but I 
can guarantee you, Main Street didn't back it. Main Street had problems 
with it. I feel personal about this because as a young lawyer right out 
of law school, I took some risks. I had to go to the bank. The bank 
that I had been dealing with wouldn't work with me on buying a 
building. But one of my community banks stepped up to the plate, and 
they said, do you know what? We know that as long as you're alive, 
you'll pay this loan. Even if business isn't good, we count on you 
because we have known you since you were a kid, and we know exactly 
that you're going to be there, and you're going to do things.
  Without that money, I daresay that I wouldn't have had a successful 
law practice for 28 years. A lot of times people don't think of lawyers 
as businessmen, but if you're a sole practitioner like I was for many, 
many years, you've got to make the payroll, you've got to pay your 
loans, and you've got to do the things that you have got to do. Well, 
guess what's happening? That loan wouldn't have been made to me today.
  Another young man in a situation like I was in who wanted to go out 
and practice on his own and make his way in his hometown wouldn't be 
allowed to do that under the current regulatory scheme--and that's that 
job plus the jobs of all the people who I had working for me in that 
office as I went forward with my practice. So you're absolutely right 
in what you say.
  Further, I have to get back to your Regulatory Freeze for Jobs Act. I 
have said for some time I wish I had introduced the bill. But I have 
said for some time that if we would put a freeze on new regulations and 
say to the American entrepreneur, the business people out there if you 
invest in the United States now, we will give you a window where you 
don't have to worry about any new regulations, we would turn this 
economy around like that, and we would see that unemployment rate not 
just drop by point one or point two, but we would see it drop down to 
your 6 percent that you've put in there, and I think we would even see 
it drop below that 6 percent if people knew that they could count on 
having, not no regulation, but reasonable regulations, and not have to 
worry about new regulations during this time of economic stress.
  Mr. GRIFFIN of Arkansas. I thank the gentleman from Virginia. I know 
we're running short on time, so I just want to say to the folks 
listening out there, wherever you may be, these are not new ideas. Some 
of the ideas you've heard tonight on tax reform, regulatory reform, 
energy exploration and making the Federal Government live within its 
means and investing in infrastructure, these are not ideas that just 
came up this week. You may ask yourself, why haven't we passed these a 
long time ago? Why haven't we worked on this before? Why are we just 
talking about it now? We have been for over a year. For over a year we 
have been working on these issues.
  Many of these ideas we've passed. Let's take tax reform. We talked 
about that in our budget over a year ago--it will be a year, I guess, 
in April. Regulatory reform, I can't count the number of bills--not 
including mine, I just introduced mine--but we have passed bill after 
bill after bill that deals with regulatory reform. What about energy 
exploration? I literally can't count the number of bills that 
we've passed that deal with energy exploration, particularly the 
Keystone pipeline, bill after bill after bill.

  If there's any softening in the President's position on the Keystone 
XL pipeline, you can bet it's because we have been relentless in this 
House--relentless in this House--pushing the President to allow for the 
construction of that pipeline. We've got a long way to go, but we'll 
keep pushing.
  On the issue of the budget and living within our means, we've been 
fighting this battle for over a year. So none of this is brand spanking 
new. A lot of these ideas we've been fighting for for over a year, and 
we'll continue to. But we've got to keep talking about them, keep 
talking about them.
  So what's happened after we passed them? Well, a significant number, 
about 30 or so, have passed this House, and they go right down to the 
other side of the building, and they sit in the Senate. Many of us grew 
up in the 1970s and saw the little cartoon, ``Schoolhouse Rock,'' the 
little bill sitting on the Capitol Hill steps out here somewhere. That 
little cartoon taught me the fundamentals of our democracy, how a bill 
becomes law. It passes this House, and then what happens? Well, it has 
to go down to the Senate.
  Unfortunately, they haven't passed a budget out of the Senate in over 
a thousand days. So you can bet they haven't passed our bills, either. 
So we've addressed a lot of this stuff. And we're going to keep talking 
about it and keep pushing and keep pushing. But a lot of it is sitting 
right down there in the Senate waiting for action, going nowhere. So if 
you're wondering what's happened to these ideas, that's where they are. 
And we are continuing to work on them here, continuing to pressure the 
Senate and the President to try to work with us to get this stuff done, 
because these pillars--tax reform, regulatory reform, energy 
exploration, getting the Federal Government to live within its means 
and having a commonsense budget, and as part of that, addressing our 
infrastructure issues, all those together, they all relate to jobs. So 
we'll keep fighting for jobs.
  I yield back the balance of my time.

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