[Congressional Record Volume 158, Number 110 (Monday, July 23, 2012)]
[House]
[Pages H5122-H5129]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
GOP FRESHMEN HOUR
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of
January 5, 2011, the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Gardner) is
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
Mr. GARDNER. Thank you, Mr. Speaker, and thank you for the
opportunity to address the House tonight. I appreciate the time and
consideration that we will have, the opportunity to visit with the
American people about some of the biggest issues we are facing as a
Nation.
I thought I would start with highlighting an article that appeared
July 18 in Politico. The headline of this bill is: ``President Obama's
job's panel, missing in action.''
{time} 2000
The first paragraph of this Politico article says:
President Barack Obama's Jobs Council hasn't met publicly
for 6 months, even as the issue of job creation dominates the
2012 election.
So we know that the economy is suffering. We know that unemployment
continues to burden this country. But the fact is even the President
and his Jobs Council isn't taking the issue seriously enough to make
sure they're meeting regularly to talk about what's important for the
American people.
Tonight as we talk about those issues that are important to the
American people, I want to talk about the issue of regulations and how
the issue of regulations, whether it's a large business or small
business, are affecting the ability of businesses to hire around this
country to get people back to work because we are indeed becoming a
regulation nation.
The effort continues this week for House Republicans to ensure that
government doesn't stand in the way of America's job creators.
Washington doesn't need more regulations, we need smarter regulations.
Tomorrow, we will be considering H.R. 4078, the Red Tape Reduction
and Small Business Job Creation Act, which is a package of proposals
aimed at providing regulatory relief from the red tape that continues
to burden our small businesses. This package imposes a moratorium on
any new regulation until unemployment drops below 6 percent nationally.
It's been over 3 years since our unemployment has actually dropped
below 8 percent. This is the 41st month in a row where unemployment in
this country has been at or exceeded 8 percent. This bill aims to
curtail the practice of midnight regulations, regulations that are
promulgated from the day after the November election through January
20, the day of the presidential inauguration, and highlights the
increasing concern of ``sue and settle'' agreements.
As a Member of Congress, I try to vote the right way and push forward
the right Federal policies and practices so that businesses can operate
more effectively without the hand of government guiding it. I wanted to
break down some of the barriers throughout the night that are truly
affecting job creators and their ability to hire to make this country
work. I thought I would just talk a little about current events across
the Nation. Some of these are State regulations, and some of these are
local regulations. There is a Forbes article printed last year on
August 3, 2011, ``The Inexplicable War on Lemonade Stands'' about
regulations that required a child's lemonade stand to cost $400 in
permitting alone, bake sale busts across the country because
regulations don't allow for children to have bake sales, and Big Gulp
attacks in New York as the mayor attempts to regulate the size of pop
that people can buy.
Some of these are Federal regulations, and some of these are State
regulations. But the fact of the matter is this Nation faces a greater
and greater challenge in becoming a regulation nation that hurts job
creators and our ability to pull ourselves out of this economic slump.
Tonight I'll be joined by Members of Congress from across the United
States, from Indiana to Alabama to Arizona and beyond, to focus on
those issues that are important to our Nation's small businesses and
job creators.
With that, I would like to yield as much time as she may consume to
the gentlelady from Alabama who has been working tirelessly to make
sure that her constituents have the opportunity they need to get back
on their feet again when it comes to our economy.
Mrs. ROBY. I thank the gentleman from Colorado and the other Members
that are here tonight to talk about the Red Tape Reduction and Small
Business Job Creation Act that we will be voting on here in the House
this week.
Earlier this month, President Obama commented in a speech:
If you've got a business, you didn't build that. Somebody
else made that happen.
President Obama has even talked about how excessive regulation hurts
job creation saying that:
[[Page H5123]]
Sometimes rules have gotten out of balance placing
unreasonable burdens on business, burdens that have stifled
innovation, and it's had a chilling effect on the growth of
jobs.
This is straight from this President's and this administration's
mouth. Even as recently as February of 2012, The Economist put out
this, ``The Over-regulated America.'' This is not a secret that we are
talking about here tonight. This is something that is clearly well
established. And if any Member of Congress has taken, as I know many
have, the time to travel throughout their districts, as we all do, to
meet with business owners, small businesses, medium-sized businesses or
even large businesses, they will tell you that they are not creating
jobs because they are overregulated. And I have used example after
example on this very floor where I have met with the private sector,
with these businesses, and they've said we had to reinvest all of our
capital into just making sure that we are dotting the I and crossing
the T, when all of that capital could be reinvested in creating jobs.
So what we have on this floor this week is a series of bills. I know
Mr. Quayle from Arizona is here to talk about his incorporation in this
bill, but there are seven different ideas incorporated into this one
bill that is going to ease regulations in this country on businesses in
different ways. I think tonight, as the gentleman from Colorado has
already suggested, we can have a real frank discussion, because this is
about being honest with the American people.
I get asked the question, as I'm sure all of you do, what are you
doing? What is Congress doing? Well, this is what we're doing. And why
our friends in the Senate, for the life of me, I do not understand, nor
do the people I represent in southeast Alabama understand, why Mr. Reid
and those in the Senate will not take up these very bills that will
remove the heavy hand of government and unleash the private sector's
ability to create jobs in this country. I look forward to continuing
this conversation, and thanks for letting me be here.
Mr. GARDNER. I thank the gentlelady from Alabama, and The Economist
article, I've got a copy of it here as well, this is not exactly the
bastion of conservatism that Republicans hold up all the time to
highlight their beliefs. This is the Economist dated February 18, 2012,
headline as you stated, ``Over-regulated America.'' And just to share
one little factoid from this report that The Economist put out here, it
says a study from the Small Business Administration, a government body,
found that regulations in general add $10,585 in costs per employee per
year--$10,585 per year per employee is the cost of regulations. If
you're a business that's just getting started, or if you're struggling
to balance the books and make sure you are able to continue into next
year, here's the cost, $10,585 per employee.
Mrs. ROBY. Just to jump in real quick, have you heard from your
employers back in the district where you go and you do these site
visits and they immediately tell you not just how overregulated they
are but how excited the regulators are to come into their business and
write them up for things they have never done before? In the past,
these regulators have been ambitious to help job creators to correct
situations that may be unsafe or a dangerous situation for the
employees. But, now, instead of providing employers an opportunity,
there are fines after fines after fines that are just putting more of a
burden on these very people that want to take their capital and invest
in job creation. I hear it everywhere I go.
Mr. GARDNER. You're exactly right, the punitive approach to
regulation that's not actually trying to make a business improve, it's
not trying or concerned with safety, but it's more concerned with the
number of tickets or violations that they write, the number of fines
that they can collect.
I know the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Young) has a lot of insight on
this. You talk about a State that has seen some incredible challenges
over the years as it comes to the economy, but certainly rebounding now
under great leadership of Mr. Young himself as well as a great
Governor, Mitch Daniels. I certainly look forward to the comments you
have tonight.
Mr. YOUNG of Indiana. Thank you so much for your hard work on this
issue and your leadership on so many other efforts. I can certainly
identify with the comments that you've made and that the gentlelady, my
fellow colleague from Alabama, has made. We've seen an uptick certainly
in my district of these numbers of notices and penalties that the
aggregates businesses, for example, in my district receive, oftentimes
for petty little issues. And it seems that there has been an increase
in the enforcement from this administration on some things where
frankly you ought to have these agencies working with our businesses,
helping them come into compliance, consulting with them, doing even a
little cost-benefit analysis on the ground level. We've lost all sense
of perspective.
I have to say as someone who has just been here for a year and a
half, I've been a little surprised by a number of things, but perhaps
it was my own naivete that led me to expect most of my constituents'
concerns would be related to how we should vote on a given matter.
{time} 2010
Vote ``no'' on this resolution. Vote ``yes'' on that given bill. But
instead, so much of what I have heard over the last 1\1/2\ years has
been, as much as anything else: Stop this regulation from being
enforced. It's really killing our business. It's hurting job creation
right here in our part of the country. How can you rein in these
executive mandates? So I've tried to do my part, and others have here
as well.
I'll cite my colleague from Indiana, Congressman Todd Rokita, who has
worked very hard on a project the last year and a half that he calls
the Red Tape Rollback. I hold right here in my hand a report which
Congressman Rokita's office recently put out, the catalogs, these
regulatory concerns of businesses in my home State and the job-
destroying effects of overregulation. It turns out there's a reason why
so many businesses in the Hoosier State are suddenly feeling the
crushing effect of regulation, and it's because we've seen a sharp
increase in regulations under this administration.
Let me throw out some numbers here:
Since 2008, there have been over 34,000 regulators added to the
government's payroll;
Additional regulatory costs have increased by $46 billion per year
since the beginning of 2009;
The number of regulations with an economic impact of $100 million or
more--so-called ``major regulations''--has increased by 32 just last
year. By comparison, the last President only added 28 such regulations
in his first 3 years in office. All told, this President added 106
through the end of last year.
So the list goes on and on. I know my colleagues can add to this
list--parade of horribles--with respect to regulations. Something needs
to change up here. I'm glad we're here tonight to talk about a
particular bill that will change things for the better.
Mr. GARDNER. I want to just ask a quick question about something that
you said there. I believe you said, since 2008, 34,000 regulators have
been hired by the Federal Government?
Mr. YOUNG of Indiana. That's right. They've been added to the
government's payroll.
Mr. GARDNER. These are individuals whose sole job it is is to write
new regulations; 34,000 new people to write new regulations.
Mr. YOUNG of Indiana. To write new regulations, to go out there and
to pore through private sector books, to be boots on the ground to
enforce these existing regulations. So we've got 34,000 more
individuals who are interfering with private sector activity.
Now, I use the word ``interfering.'' I acknowledge there are cases
where we have to have regulations. I think everyone here would agree
with that sentiment. But things have gotten out of whack, and we're
really constraining job creation at a time when our constituents want
us to be creating more jobs.
Mrs. ROBY. I would love to add to the out-of-whack statement because
I have a few examples here.
I don't know if you have agriculture in your districts, but the
farmer that is having to deal with duplicative permitting processes or
concerns over the Federal Government making them regulate dust on their
farm. As one of our
[[Page H5124]]
colleagues said, last time she checked, if you drive a pickup truck
down a dirt road, it's going to generate dust. But we're regulating
that. That's what the Federal Government is regulating.
Not to mention ObamaCare or the pulp and paper industry--which we
have a lot of in my district--concerned about the Boiler MACT
regulations that are so costly, the gas station owners that are worried
about EPA requiring that their gasoline have certain percentages of
ethanol mixed into their fuel or they have to pay a penalty, or the
chicken hatchery farmer--now, this is a good one that happened last
week.
We had a chicken hatchery farmer that called our office just last
week about a new regulation that will require keeping his eggs at a
certain temperature to go to processing to make dried eggs to avoid
salmonella. Well, here's the kicker. And this is just to demonstrate
the ridiculousness of the overregulation.
On the surface, this makes sense because we want to protect America's
health. But this same regulation, this very same regulation, is letting
the grade egg farmers that do have potential salmonella in their
facilities send their possible contaminated eggs to the same processing
plants. Processing eggs for dried eggs and other products kills the
salmonella that would potentially be in this product. The FDA is
allowing possible exposed eggs into the system.
So why should a hatchery farmer, who only sells to this type of
processing when they have extra eggs be forced to put it all in a sort
of refrigeration process that has nothing to do with the prevention
that the regulation says that it's trying to prevent? And the answer is
overregulation. This is just another example. I like eggs. I fixed some
scrambled eggs this morning for breakfast. This affects me. It affects
all of us in our lives, in our homes, in the grocery store.
When I buy milk for my kids, I see the costs increasing because of
these very regulations. Whether it's the EPA and the ethanol in the gas
or these actual very specific regulations that have to do specifically
with the product being sold, we all are affected by this. It's costing
jobs, and it's costing the American taxpayer to have to spend dollars
that are unnecessary.
Mr. GARDNER. I thank the gentlelady from Alabama for making the
point, especially on the issue of farm dust.
I can remember a committee hearing we had a month ago where the
assistant administrator of the EPA was asked directly whether or not
the EPA regulates farm dust, and she denied that the EPA is going to
regulate farm dust. But when she was asked whether or not the EPA
regulates dust from farms, the answer was yes. Now, only in Washington,
D.C., Mr. Speaker, can farm dust and dust from farms be two different
things.
But somebody who has also been standing the line to make sure that
they are fighting for America's job creators, somebody who's been doing
the hard work it takes to get this economy back on track, and somebody
who has experience himself as a job creator, running a small business,
putting people to work, is our colleague from Colorado, Scott Tipton,
who has worked tirelessly to make sure that this country's policies
reflect a nation of job creators instead of a nation of bureaucrats.
With that, I would like to thank the gentleman from Colorado (Mr.
Tipton) for joining us tonight.
Mr. TIPTON. My pleasure, and I thank the gentleman from Colorado for
yielding.
Mr. Speaker, we have a great challenge in this Nation: to be able to
get our people back to work.
Right now we are paying, as a country, $1.75 trillion per year in
regulatory costs. As was noted earlier, small businesses are incurring
better than $10,000 per employee. That is a burden that they cannot
sustain, hoping to be able to create jobs and to be able to get this
economy moving.
I'd like to be able to just give you a couple of real, personal
examples of regulations that are impacting real lives.
A gentleman in Pueblo, Colorado--they just had their new unemployment
figures come out: 11.1 percent, and those are just the official
numbers. The real numbers are even much higher. Jim Bartness, much to
his dismay, contributed to that, simply because he tried to play by the
rules that the government had issued.
A small construction company, Mr. Bartness had had a few good years.
In fact, under the President's proposals now, a couple of years ago he
would be deemed as wealthy. What did he do with his wealth as a small
business man, an LLC, a sole proprietorship? He reinvested those
dollars right back into his business--to be able to create jobs, to be
able to provide for his family. He paid down his line of credit to
zero, kept a little bit of cushion to be able to get them through the
tough times.
In construction, if you're familiar with that, you often bid jobs but
you don't get them. So he needed to re-up that line of credit to be
able to keep his business going, to keep his employees going. When he
went down to the local community bank, he was told they wanted to re-up
that line of credit, but regulatorily, they could not. He could not get
that line of credit. The one option he had was to shut down his
business, line up that equipment, and auction it off.
As I talked to Mr. Bartness, you could see tears welling in his eyes
as he related that story of calling in those 23 employees to tell them
it was going to be their last day. That was a regulatory killing--
literally--of a business.
I think we all do concur. We know there need to be some regulations.
You know, at the beginning of the 1900s in this country, when we first
started building cars, there were only two automobiles in New York
City. They ran into each other. A stoplight isn't a bad idea. But we
have seen such overreach out of government.
When we're talking about the agricultural community, as I traveled
through the San Luis Valley, where I was this last weekend, held a town
hall meeting and met with potato farmers, fully willing to take on the
issues that we deal with often in Colorado, dealing with water, they
didn't want to talk about water. They wanted to talk about the EPA. The
overreach of government in the regulatory process is literally killing
business.
We had a message that they wanted to be able to have delivered. They
heard the President's comments that they didn't build that business;
they owed it to government. They want the President to know that when
they open up that business early in the morning and put in those 12-,
14-hour days, sometimes 7 days a week, and they are the ones that lock
that door at night, it isn't Washington, D.C., but it is this
President's policies which are inhibiting job growth in America.
{time} 2020
We've got to be able to get America back to work, and the Red Tape
Reduction and Small Business Job Creation Act is something that will
help achieve that, and I'm proud to be able to stand with you and speak
to this this evening.
Mr. GARDNER. I thank the gentleman from Colorado.
And again, I will highlight some of the statistics that he pointed
out. And the gentleman from Colorado can correct me. You said $1.75
trillion cost of regulations. That's per year?
Mr. TIPTON. That's correct.
Mr. GARDNER. And that's just money that businesses are using to
comply with more and more regulations that are in place every year by
the Federal Government.
Mr. TIPTON. It is. And I think it's incredibly important to note,
they're continuing to grow. The moving bar that our businesses face in
terms of regulatory compliance is costing American jobs
Mr. GARDNER. And I would point out, too, as the gentleman has
mentioned, the cost of regulations and the time that regulations take,
this is a--again, going back to that same economist article talking
about the issue of overregulated in America. And it talks about how
every hour spent, every hour spent by a doctor in this country today,
under the President's health care bill, when a doctor meets with a
patient for an hour, that doctor, that health care clinic, that
hospital, is going to spend at least 30 minutes filling out paperwork
and forms. So the doctor meets for an hour with the patient; they're
going to be spending at least 30 minutes of paperwork, and often a
whole hour.
[[Page H5125]]
You talk about regulations. That's what the President's health care
has brought us.
And I know the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Quayle) has been a
champion for job creators in his State. The next speaker tonight is Ben
Quayle from Arizona, who's going to talk, amongst other things, about a
bill that he has introduced, H.R. 3862, to get to the very heart of
some of the challenges that we face when it comes to protecting
America's job creators and making sure that we're not strangling our
job creators through regulations. I look forward to his comments
tonight.
Mr. QUAYLE. I thank the gentleman for yielding.
Our friend Mr. Tipton from Colorado was talking about some of the
President's comments about business owners and people who created
businesses, when he said that, you know, if you have a business, you
didn't build that.
Well, Mr. Speaker, I have news for the President. They did build
that. They built it on the sweat of their own brow, their hard work,
their determination. Sometimes they failed, but most of the time they
succeeded. And they didn't succeed because of government; they
succeeded in spite of government because of all of the regulatory
burdens they put in front of small businesses to grow, all of these
things that they have to comply with, and the rules change on a daily
basis.
I was reading an article--actually, an interview--with former
Secretary of State George Shultz the other day in The Wall Street
Journal, and he had a very appropriate analogy when he said that, if
you take a sports game, whether it's football or baseball or what have
you, and you're asking a team--here, it's going to be businesses--to
get involved, get on the playing field, which is exactly what people
are saying right now when people are holding back their cash if they've
been lucky enough to have that success.
But the problem is you don't ever want to go onto a football field if
you don't know what the rules of the game are, if the rules are going
to change, or if you have a referee, like this administration, who is
not going to faithfully execute the laws based on what is written
rather than what they believe should have been written.
And so that is a huge difference, and it's a huge problem that's
facing our job creators right now. They don't know what the rules are.
They're constantly changing, and they don't have a referee that's going
to call balls and strikes just as balls and strikes and not just make
things up as they go along.
Our friend from Colorado (Mr. Tipton) mentioned that $1.75 trillion
of annualized costs are dedicated to regulations. If you break that
down, that's about $10,585 per employee for the average small business.
I don't know about you, but that is a huge cost that is an annual cost
that they pay every single year, and it's choking the ability for small
businesses to take that money, take that capital, invest it, grow it,
hire new people. Instead, they're using that for compliance costs.
Instead, they're using that to push paper.
Those are the things that we're trying to get rid of. Those are the
things we're trying to streamline so that we don't have the red tape
that's going to continue to stifle economic growth in this country.
And if you look at what's coming down the road, my goodness. You have
Taxmageddon that's coming up on January 1, where we have the Democrats
in the Senate say that they're willing to go over the fiscal cliff in
order to get after some of the best job creators and tax them,
basically to Armageddon.
And then you have the regulatory environment that continues to stifle
economic growth. And if you look at what the Obama administration has
been able to do, just in 2011, they added $231.4 billion in new
regulatory burdens. They added 82,000 pages to the Federal Register.
That is an insane amount.
But this week we're going to be fighting back. That's why the Red
Tape Reduction and Small Business Job Creation Act is so vitally
important for the economic future of our country.
Now, I have a bill that's entitled Sunshine for Regulatory Decrees
and Settlement Act of 2012, and that's a piece of this bill. And what
it does, it kinds of goes into an area that's not really talked about
that much, but this is basically regulation via litigation, and it's
extraordinarily damaging.
What happens is, if you have an interest group, they lobby Congress
for a rule, for a statute, and having one of the agencies write a rule
by a certain specific date. Now, the date is artificially short so they
can't actually comply and go through the normal rulemaking process. So
then that date lapses, and then that special interest goes and sues
that agency. The DOJ comes in and tries to defend it, and sometimes--
and most of the time--we get a more stringent regulatory burden that is
placed on our businesses, and they don't even have a chance to respond.
A lot of times they file the complaint the same day as the settlement
agreement, and it is virtually impossible for a subsequent
administration to actually change that because they have to go through
the whole judicial process rather than going through the normal agency
process.
So this starts to bring some transparency to that, brings the
stakeholders to the table so they can have a say in what's going to
happen in the regulation that's going to directly affect their
business.
Now, some of the most onerous regulations that have been passed
recently have been passed via this regulation via litigation, whether
it's the Boiler MACT, the Cement MACT, the Utility MACT that's coming
down. Some of the ones that affect Arizona especially, we're having one
that came out that's going to affect the Navajo Generating Station that
could cost hundreds of jobs, drive up Arizona energy prices by 20 to 30
percent, our water costs by 20 or 30 percent, and the compliance cost
for the Navajo generating station is $1.1 billion.
{time} 2030
This came through regulation by litigation. These are the types of
things that this bill, which we're going to be debating in the next
couple of days, is going to stop. It's going to put an end to it so our
small businesses can grow again, so we can get our economy moving
again, and so we can get people back to work.
I thank the gentleman for highlighting this issue and for leading on
this issue.
Mr. GARDNER. I thank the gentleman from Arizona.
You mentioned at the beginning of your comments tonight the
President's statement that, if you have a business, you can thank
government for that.
Have you ever had a small business owner or somebody who opened a
business call you and thank the government for building his business? I
don't know. I certainly have never had that.
Mr. QUAYLE. No. I think Ronald Reagan said the scariest words you can
hear are: ``I'm from the government. I'm here to help.'' I think that
that is basically what our small businesses are saying right now, that
if you have the government knocking on your door, it's not a good
thing.
Mr. GARDNER. And $1.75 trillion is the yearly cost of regulations. If
you were to hire 35 million people at $50,000 a year, that would equal
$1.75 trillion. $1.75 trillion could hire 35 million people at $50,000
a year.
Mrs. ROBY. I would even add to that and say that I've had business
owners in my district who have lodged complaints about what we talked
about before, this punitive regulation, but they don't want you to go
to bat for them because they're afraid it's only going to end up
costing them more and that then their businesses will become targets of
this Federal Government.
Now, what kind of United States of America is that when we have
businesses that are afraid to complain to their Representatives in
Congress about exactly what you're talking about? ``Hi, I'm here. I'm
from the government and I'm here to help.'' Then you complain about it,
and you get targeted as a business.
Mr. QUAYLE. You're exactly right. Because of all the different
agencies that there are to respond to, they're worried that, if they
actually challenge the ruling or challenge the regulation that is being
put upon them, then they will actually have further burdens placed upon
them, further ramifications placed on them so that you have a constant
living in fear because they're going to still have to report to that
agency. Then, if they actually try to combat what just happened,
they're going to have the full force of this
[[Page H5126]]
agency going down their throats. That is a huge issue.
Mrs. ROBY. If you talk to the Greatest Generation, you know that is
not what this country was built on.
Mr. YOUNG of Indiana. In everything you've described--from the sports
analogy, where people are afraid to go onto the field because they
don't know the game, to the direct impact it has on all sorts of
businesses--that also applies to our Nation's financial institutions.
It's through our banks and credit unions that so many of our small
businesses get off the ground, and that's how, oftentimes, they're able
to sustain themselves during dips in the economy. Unfortunately, there
is great uncertainty in the financial sector as well. We can cite a
number of different things, but I put Dodd-Frank high on the list. I
certainly hear that in my district. Let me relate to you a little story
about the impact of regulations as they affect banks and how they, in
turn, affect businesses in my district and around the country.
I visited, not long ago, a business that manufactures food products,
things like these little miniature pizzas that are frozen--you buy them
at the grocery store--and little hot dogs with dough encrusted around
them. It's actually an incredibly productive manufacturer of these
things, and it has developed a lot of expertise. This company was on
the verge of a major expansion. It would have created hundreds of jobs
in my district and led to additional jobs because of the supply
industry that would have supported this company.
But Federal regulations got in the way.
The company needed a $3 million bridge loan to get everything online
and begin production. They were a dream sort of business. To give you a
sense of what they had lined up, they had a world-renowned
entrepreneur, and they had a billionaire investor. The person who had
conceived of this business put up $1 million of his own money--his life
savings. They had several high-profile, nationally known businesses
lining up with purchase orders. They'd already secured a new facility
and invested significantly in new capital equipment.
So everything is online, but the new banking regulations prohibited
them from getting the money they needed to take it to the next level.
Things are finally moving forward for this business. I'm happy to say
that, despite these headwinds, the founder of this business was able to
secure alternative financing from private sources and others.
Ultimately, it was regulations that almost killed these hundreds of
jobs in my district.
This is the sort of human impact that so many Americans and
communities are facing right now. This is what we're trying to get our
hands on with this legislation that we're passing.
Mrs. ROBY. To quickly add to that, in the Dodd-Frank Act, there are
36 rules implemented, and it will grow to the 400 required under that
act. That goes to your point exactly.
Mr. YOUNG of Indiana. Absolutely.
So we've seen this in the ag sector, where traditionally between
crops being planted and harvested, it's not uncommon to get bank loans
to keep the operation afloat, especially with smaller farms. We see it
in all types of businesses. It's time that we take care of these
financial regulations and other types of regulations, and I'm glad we
are acting here on the Republican side in the House of Representatives.
Mr. GARDNER. Again, thank you for sharing that story with us about a
manufacturer of a restaurant--a food business, I guess, operator--that
is ready to create jobs if it could just get government out of the way
and let it do what it does best, which is run its own business.
I am pleased tonight that we are joined by the gentlelady from North
Carolina, Virginia Foxx, who is a champion on the House floor in making
sure we are doing just that--getting government out of the way and
letting America work.
Ms. FOXX. I want to thank members of the freshman class--I think
people don't realize we call ourselves ``freshmen'' our first year
here--for doing such a wonderful job of humanizing this bill.
This is not the most exciting legislation that has ever passed the
House of Representatives, and I have to say my piece of this
legislation is probably one of the least exciting pieces of it. It's
H.R. 373. It's called the Unfunded Mandates Information and
Transparency Act. It's pretty dull. I'll tell you, when you read it, if
you need something to put you to sleep, it's a great thing to put you
to sleep, but it is very important legislation. All seven pieces of the
legislation that you all are talking about tonight have real impact on
the public.
I want to say, in 1995, when Republicans took over the majority for
the first time in 40 years, they passed a bill with bipartisan support
called the Unfunded Mandates bill. We all grew up hearing how the
Federal Government was putting unfunded mandates on State and local
governments. So they said, well, we're not going to do that anymore.
We're going to figure out how much this costs, and if it costs over
$100 million, we're not going to do it. Well, guess what? There were
loopholes in the legislation. We hear about loopholes all the time in
tax legislation, but you don't hear very many people talking about the
loopholes that are out there that govern the bureaucracy. Well, there
were lots of loopholes in the Unfunded Mandates bill, or UMRA.
What my bill does is close those loopholes to keep the bureaucrats
from getting around telling us how much these unfunded mandates are
going to cost. For the first time ever, it is going to apply to the
private sector so that we will really know--these rules and regulations
that the gentleman from Indiana was talking about--how much they're
going to cost that business that was almost put out of business. That's
what we need to be doing.
So the rules may go into effect, but this Congress is going to
understand and the world is going to understand how much it is costing
us, and that is very, very important.
I thank you for letting me share a couple of minutes of your time
tonight in order to bring some information forward about H.R. 373,
which is a bipartisanly supported bill, as I think most of these bills
are. So, while they are not exciting, they do good work.
Mr. GARDNER. I thank the gentlelady.
In going back to some of the comments that have been made tonight,
the gentleman from Indiana talked about the 34,000 new rule makers--the
people who have been hired to do nothing but write rules. I live in a
town of about 3,000 people, so 34,000 people is a heck of a lot more
than I have in my hometown, and they were all hired to write
regulations. The gentleman from Arizona talked about 82,000 pages.
To the gentleman, I think that was 82,000 pages of regulations in
2012 alone?
Mr. QUAYLE. 2011.
Mr. GARDNER. 2011. So that's 82,000 pages of regulations written in
2011.
During the first 3 years in office, the Obama administration
unleashed 106 new major regulations that increased the regulatory
burdens in this country by more than $46 billion annually. I want to
share with you a statement that the President, himself, made. This is a
statement that he made recently, saying:
The rules have gotten out of balance, placing unreasonable burdens on
business, burdens that have stifled innovation and have had a chilling
effect on growth and jobs.
Yet here we are increasing regulations by this President, by this
administration.
Mr. YOUNG of Indiana. We've just lost all sense of perspective. We
ought to be measuring the cost of any given regulation--of any proposed
regulation--of the benefits, and then comparing the two. I think any
fair-minded person would take into account both of them and, in the
end, decide whether or not a given regulation makes sense.
I was doing a little research earlier in preparation of my coming
down to the floor. I just wanted to see what some of the cost-benefit
analyses have been for recent regulations.
{time} 2040
I came across a report by the National Bureau of Economic Research.
It was from a decade ago. They took a look at some of the regulations
that have been proposed over the years. One of them was child-safe
lighters. The Consumer Product Safety Commission determined that a life
would be saved for a cost of only $100,000 by implementing these
regulatory standards for
[[Page H5127]]
child-safe lighters. That strikes me as pretty reasonable. That's
absolutely worth it. There was another regulation proposed, and
conceivably for a cost of $100 trillion that we might save a life some
day by the solid waste construction regulatory standards that our
Federal Government has proposed. There has got to be a sense of balance
here, or we're going to crush our economy.
Mr. GARDNER. We continue to hear testimony before our committees that
talk about how for every $1 million you spend on regulations, it
creates 1.5 jobs, as if regulations and adding burdens to business is
actually job creation in and of itself.
Mrs. ROBY. Didn't you have the opportunity to question a witness on
your committee and ask very specifically as it relates to energy? If I
watched the hearing correctly, you were unable to ever get really until
the final admittance that, in fact, they do not take economic impact
into consideration when instituting these regulations.
Mr. GARDNER. It's one of the greatest frustrations I have. You're
talking about major regulations and their impact on job creation and
impact on jobs, and yet this bureaucrat admitted that they don't take
into account in the economic analysis they carried out, they don't take
into account the impact on jobs.
Mrs. ROBY. What do they take into account?
Mr. GARDNER. Somehow they have cost and benefits, yet they consider
their economic analysis complete, even though it doesn't take into
account jobs.
Mrs. ROBY. Without the input of the private sector that is actually
impacted by the very regulations.
Mr. TIPTON. I would like to be able to comment really in regards to
Congresswoman Foxx, that this is an exciting piece of legislation.
The fact is that if you sit down and you talk to small businesses,
they're excited about this legislation because they're the ones that
are literally feeling this impact. We passed the REINS Act to be able
to pull back those massive regulations which were impacting jobs in
this country. We are standing up for the small businesses that create 7
out of 10 jobs in this country to be able to get our people back to
work.
Just recently when we were talking about committee hearings, we just
had a hearing in a Small Business Subcommittee that I chair over at
Energy, Ag, and Trade, and we saw that the Department of Labor was
going to start regulating children working on the family farm. You
couldn't work on a haystack higher than 6 feet; you couldn't take your
animal down to the county fair to be able to show. In farming and
ranching, you learn by doing. They pulled that rule now for the balance
of the year. What's frightening to the farm and ranch community is the
words ``for the balance of the year.'' They will be back. The
regulators will be back.
This is a commonsense piece of legislation that's speaking to the
heart of the people that drive this country, the small businessmen and
-women who are willing to wake up those mornings and put in that hard
labor just for the hope of being able to live the American Dream. This
is the right thing to do at the right time for American business, to be
able to stimulate jobs and get this economy moving.
Mr. QUAYLE. I very much agree with that.
One thing that Mr. Gardner from Colorado was talking about in terms
of actually taking into account in the cost-benefit analysis is the
impact on jobs. I've talked to a number of businesses, and they say
that with all of the new regulation that has been coming out of this
administration, that they've actually had to replace somebody in a
productive part of their company, in R&D, research and development,
with somebody on the administrative side just to be able to comply with
the regulations.
If you look at that, it's a net zero for job creation or job loss.
The problem is that that person who is involved in R&D, they have the
ability to get new products on the market that are actually going to
expand their company. Somebody who's actually just pushing paper and
trying to comply with regulations is never going to put in some sort of
measure where they're actually going to be able to expand their
company. That's the big thing that we're talking about when you're
saying that for every regulation you have 1.5 jobs for whatever million
dollars. That's just hogwash. It's ridiculous that they're pointing to
that. I've heard other Members say that increased regulation increases
jobs. It does not. It increases paperwork. We don't want a bunch of
paper pushers. We want people who are going to provide products and
services that are going to be expanding the economic pie that we have
in the United States.
Mr. GARDNER. I often tell my constituents a story about my great-
granddad when he came to Colorado and opened up the farm equipment
dealership that still remains in our family today. I tell the story
about how they came to our hometown, a small town, and they built their
business. I talk about how my wife and I wonder if our children are
going to be able to have the same opportunities that he did to start a
business of their dreams. I don't think they ever imagined that the
government would be considering prohibiting a 16-year-old from working
on their uncle's farm. I don't think they ever imagined that the
government might try to require dairies to build berms around the cows
in case there was a milk spill. I don't think they ever would have
imagined a world where the government would introduce, as a result of
litigation, a proposal that could wipe out 25 percent of our
electricity generation just because they decided this regulation has to
go into effect because of a lawsuit that they agreed to settle, and the
cost that that will force upon America's job creators.
Again, we get back to this notion of the millions of people in this
country that are unemployed. We get back to the very simple fact that
one out of every two college graduates today is either unemployed or
underemployed. Our Nation has seen unemployment rates at or above 8
percent for 41 months in a row. All while the promise of the
President's stimulus bill said we're going to solve these problems,
unemployment is going to be drastically reduced, we're going to create
energy opportunities by giving millions and millions of dollars in loan
guarantees to companies that go bankrupt. Yet, we have job creators in
Indiana ready to hire, but they can't get the money that they need
because of regulations. We have a government that would rather give
loan guarantees to companies they know are going to fail than to actual
job creators that are already succeeding.
Mr. YOUNG of Indiana. If I can intervene here. You would think that
during a down economy, what some have called the worst economy since
the Great Depression, we would stop piling on. It's the first rule of
holes: you stop digging when you find yourself in one. But we continue
to dig even though we're in a hole. We pile on new significant
regulations on top of the existing significant regulations.
There's a portion of this legislation that was offered originally by
Congressman Griffin. His name is still on it: Regulatory Freeze for
Jobs Act. This places a moratorium on all significant regulations, all
of those with $100 million or more economic cost on our economy.
This is common sense among my constituents, probably among the vast
majority of the American people here, that you just stop piling on the
major regulations during a down economy. I'm certainly supportive of
this. I think we need to go further.
Mr. Tipton of Colorado mentioned the REINS Act. It would be my
preference that every time we have any proposed rule or regulation
imposing a $100 million cost or more on our economy, it comes back to
Congress for a hearing, for an up-or-down vote. We should allow our
constituents to weigh in on the manner, tell us how to improve the
regulation, tell us if they think it ought to be eliminated altogether,
or perhaps they like it. In the end, I think we need to own these
significant regulations.
You know what? If we pass that REINS Act, that will give all of us an
incentive not to punt on the hard issues, not to pass them onto the
EPAs and OSHAs and USDAs of the world. Ultimately, we would own it. We
would be accountable. I would invite that sort of scrutiny and
accountability.
[[Page H5128]]
Mrs. ROBY. Wouldn't that be a novel idea?
Just real quickly if I may. We've now stated on more than one
occasion some quotes from the President and this administration going
back to the fact that if you've got a business, you didn't build that.
Then, as the gentleman from Colorado just read again, the President
said that these rules have gotten out of balance. Mr. Griffin in his op
ed he wrote in support of his amendment. I'm just going to make sure we
give the gentleman from Arkansas some credit since he's not standing
here with us. He also points out at the end of this opinion piece that
the President admitted in his State of the Union address, ``There's no
question that some regulations are outdated, unnecessary, or too
costly.''
{time} 2050
And I just want to read that again. ``There's no question''--this is
the President, this President, President Obama--``There's no question
that some regulations are outdated, unnecessary, and too costly.'' Yet
every single time in my short tenure in this House of Representatives
that we have brought a bill to the floor to deregulate, to do away with
unnecessary regulations so that the private sector can grow, we are
blocked in the Senate, and the President is not there to support us.
Mr. YOUNG of Indiana. Just one addition to the gentlelady's comments.
The President also ordered a regulatory review of all regulations in
that very same speech. And he was going to root out, he said, existing
regulations that were constraining job creation. He reaffirmed his
commitment to repealing all these sorts of measures. You know, his
rhetoric is not matched by commitment, by action. So we're acting in
terms of this piece of legislation, and I am proud of that.
Mr. GARDNER. And I would like to ask the gentleman from Colorado
tonight--you know, the gentleman from Indiana mentioned the Regulatory
Freeze for Jobs Act. This is the idea that we put a freeze on
regulations when the economy's down, but it is specifically about the
REINS Act.
You know, the REINS Act that we talked about earlier this year was a
bill that we passed that said, if a rule or regulation has a certain
economic impact on our economy, then it has to come back to us to say
whether or not this is something that we need to pass on to America's
job creators.
When we served together in the State legislature, every year we
worked on the rule review bill. And the gentleman from Colorado will
recall that this was a bill that came up to us, and we got to look at
the regulations and give them a thumbs up or thumbs down on whether or
not we thought the executive agency had gone too far, whether we
thought they were doing the right thing.
And again, this is just one way for us to say, hey, let's do what's
right for America's job creators.
Mr. TIPTON. You know, in Colorado, we just call that common sense.
And I bet we do in every other State in the Union as well.
Here is what is fundamentally the problem: We will recall that
Minority Leader Pelosi, with the passage of the President's health care
mandate, said that once it is passed, we'll find out what's in it. It
is a little comical to be able to hear that. But the fact is, it was
actually true because they continued to fill in the blanks with
regulations. We continue to see that with Dodd-Frank. And the Congress
is not having the opportunity to truly be able to be engaged.
I know in each of our committees, we have challenged bureaucracies,
departments as they have come in to be able to bring those rules back
to the authoritative committees, to be able to bring them back to
Congress to actually be able to play a role because here is
fundamentally the problem: Once they go final with a rule, it takes
that proverbial act of Congress to be able to pull back that rule that
a Member of Congress, a Member of the Senate never asked for.
We have got to be able to have these opportunities, to reengage the
people who are actually elected to be able to represent the American
people rather than having nameless, faceless bureaucrats writing
regulations that are hurting American business, hurting our economic
prospects, and preventing us from being able to get this economy
moving.
Mr. QUAYLE. You know, it is kind of a shame that we actually have to
pass something like this. But so much power has been amassed in the
executive branch that we need pieces of legislation like the REINS Act,
like this bill.
But the thing is is that if the President would just pick up the
phone and call his agency heads and say, Cut it out; don't pass these
rules and regulations that are going to keep putting a damper on
economic growth. I mean, they believe that they have executive
discretion for just about anything. But my goodness, the one thing that
they should be using some sort of discretion for is not putting more
burdens on small businesses that are trying to grow.
So the President needs to just pick up the phone. That could lead to
the biggest economic growth that could happen in this country if he
picked up the phone and told every agency head, Hey, let's cut off all
these new regulations that you guys are trying implement.
Mr. GARDNER. And I think the gentleman from Arizona brings up a good
point because the President likes to blame Congress for not increasing
taxes or for spending enough money. But we know that this President is
in charge of his executive branch agencies, that he's the one who
appointed his cabinet, approved by the Senate. He could just pick up
the phone, as you said, call, and say, Let's make sure we're making it
easier for businesses, not more difficult. And again, it's an
incredible, incredible opportunity that the President has to stand up
and lead. But it goes back to that very issue: he's required to stand
up and lead.
Mr. YOUNG of Indiana. Does anyone know--I will pose this question to
my colleagues. Is the President's jobs council working on this issue?
Mr. GARDNER. The gentleman from Indiana brings up a great point. And
as I mentioned earlier tonight, there was an article in Politico that
was printed last week. The President's jobs council hasn't even met for
6 months. I don't know if they have given up or if he just is afraid
that they may not support his policies.
Mr. YOUNG of Indiana. I have heard that. It seems he has other
priorities. But we need to force the hand. We need to make the argument
here. This is what our constituents are asking us to do, every
conceivable thing we can think of to create an environment where jobs
can be created, where new businesses can be started, where
entrepreneurship is at a 15-year low, where existing businesses can
expand, where unemployment remains above 8 percent for how many months
now.
Mr. TIPTON. I applaud that comment.
Let's make American jobs the key priority. Putting Americans back to
work; that must be a priority. And we call on the President to join us
in this action. We are putting forward the idea. But we need some
partners that are willing to be able to work with us.
Mr. GARDNER. I want to thank my colleagues from Indiana, Alabama,
Colorado, Arizona, and North Carolina who stood on the House floor
tonight talking about what we could do to get this country moving
again, what we could do to unleash the innovators and the entrepreneurs
across this country.
We face a lot of challenges. We know that we face insurmountable debt
that we must address. We know this country faces spending challenges
each and every day. But we can't build a long, sustainable economy
unless we get America's job creators back on their feet.
The Small Business Administration recently released a study that
said, per employee, small businesses face regulatory costs 36 percent
higher than large businesses. It's now easier to start a business in
Slovenia, Estonia, and Hungary than in America.
The message that we join together tonight to send to our job creators
is that we stand with you. We stand with businesses across this country
who are struggling to hire that next person, to make sure that they
have the opportunities that the people who started their businesses
did, to make sure that the generations that follow have the same
opportunities as the generations before them.
So I want to thank my colleagues again for joining us tonight and to
[[Page H5129]]
make sure that the American people know that we, indeed, have a jobs
plan. And tomorrow, when we pick up, again, a debate to talk about
America's job creators, that we will talk about how we can get this
economy moving forward again. And we will be voting on H.R. 4078, the
Red Tape Reduction and Small Business Job Creation Act, that every vote
we take on it will be made with one purpose: to get this country moving
again and to get our economy back on track and to get America's job
creators hiring once again.
I yield back the balance of my time.
____________________