[Congressional Record Volume 159, Number 86 (Monday, June 17, 2013)]
[House]
[Pages H3672-H3678]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
REGULATORY REFORM AND REGULATORY RELIEF
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of
January 3, 2013, the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Collins) is recognized
for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
General Leave
Mr. COLLINS of Georgia. I ask unanimous consent that all Members may
have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks
and include extraneous materials on the subject of my Special Order.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the
gentleman from Georgia?
There was no objection.
Mr. COLLINS of Georgia. Mr. Speaker, I rise in another of a series of
Republican freshman class Special Orders, this time to focus on our
Nation's need for regulatory reform and regulatory relief.
As an American and a parent, I value the role of responsible
regulations. Many regulations were designed with personal safety in
mind, and these regulations make our workforce stronger. All too often,
however, the Federal Government designs regulations that are often
unnecessary and achieve little or no benefit at a very high cost. These
regulations directly impact the hardworking men and women of northeast
Georgia and across the Nation. Over the next hour, my colleagues and I
will discuss the growing problem of regulation and why our Nation's
economy so desperately needs regulatory relief.
I am pleased to yield 5 minutes to the president of our freshman
class, my dear friend and a tireless worker on this issue as well, the
gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Messer).
Mr. MESSER. I want to thank my good friend from Georgia (Mr. Collins)
for recognizing me and for leading this Republican freshman class
Special Order on the need for regulatory reform.
I also want to commend him and the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Yoho)
for their initiative in creating the Freshman Regulatory Reform Working
Group, of which I am pleased to be a member.
A recent editorial written by George Washington University Professor
Jonathan Turley declared that:
Our carefully constructed system of checks and balances is
being negated by the rise of a fourth branch, an
administrative state of sprawling departments and agencies
that govern with increasing autonomy and decreasing
transparency.
The voice of the American people is marginalized when this so-called
fourth state of government, our Federal agencies, fail to follow the
wishes of their elected representatives or make policy in the absence
of direction by Congress. And the American people are paying the price
of this regulatory maze created by this unelected government.
For example, the Heritage Foundation has found that annual regulatory
costs increased by more than $23.5 billion during President Obama's
fourth year in office. The total cost of regulations during the
President's first term were nearly $70 billion, a level unmatched by
any previous administration.
It's time to unshackle America from the stranglehold these
regulations have on our economy.
I again want to thank Mr. Collins and Mr. Yoho for leading efforts
among the freshman Republicans to eliminate and streamline burdensome
Federal regulations. I look forward to working with them and all
Members of the House to help create jobs by allowing America's
businesses to grow and innovate by reining in the unelected bureaucracy
standing in their way.
Mr. COLLINS of Georgia. I thank the gentleman from Indiana.
I think you bring up a great point, and that's the issue of an
unelected bureaucracy that is forcing sometimes businesses who just
want to create, want to expand, and want to do those things. I
appreciate your interest in this, and we are going to continue this
fight because this matters to real people. This matters to Main Street.
And when we matter to Main Street, then people understand what we're
trying to do up here, and I think they then begin to have confidence
that Washington has their best interest at heart.
Mr. MESSER. I would just add, sometimes I think this comes from both
sides. In other words, there are times when laws passed by Congress are
intentionally vague so that the bureaucracy steps in and leaders are
able to say, Hey, blame it on those regulators.
I think we have a responsibility to make sure that we're making laws
specific enough and simple enough to be understood by the American
people.
Mr. COLLINS of Georgia. I agree with that, and I thank the gentleman
from Indiana. I appreciate his work on this.
It's now my pleasure to introduce someone who not only has come to
Congress fired up about the issues that are going on, but has become my
cochair on this regulatory working group and bringing forth, I believe,
a fresh perspective from Florida.
It is now my pleasure to yield to the gentleman from Florida (Mr.
Yoho).
Mr. YOHO. I thank my good friend from Georgia for yielding, and I
appreciate the comments.
I'd like to title this talk, ``Burdensome Regulations: The
Dysfunctional Government Tax.''
More than $14,000 every year, that's what the average American family
loses out on because of Federal regulations either in taxes or lower
wages because their employers are carrying that burden.
How do we even get all these regulations, more than 6,000 regulations
just this year? It happens when the executive branch goes around
Congress to create their own policies. Some people call this
``legislation through regulation.'' I call it the ``dysfunctional
government tax.'' It's the $40 a day every American has to pay because
the executive branch won't go through Congress. It won't work with
those of us who are here tonight because we were sent here by the
people.
In more places in my district, you could take your spouse out for a
nice dinner for $40. A person could fill up their gas tank and a
minivan for about $40, or you could take your children to a matinee
movie on the weekends for $40.
When I'm at home in my district, I hear from people who own their own
business and from people who just care about their work, about how
Federal regulations are making it harder to make ends meet. We're going
to talk about a few of these regulations tonight, but let me tell you
about a few stories from north central Florida.
There's a lumber company in my district that has to aim lower. By
that I mean versus aiming higher to expand their business. This is
because of the burden of the Affordable Care Act. It's too great to
bear. They would love nothing more than to hire more people, more
workers, or buy that extra piece of equipment, but there's no telling
what the compliance cost of the ACA will be.
Not only that, these poor folks are subject to the rules and perhaps
fines based on the discretion or interpretation of whatever inspector
happens upon them that day. There is no certainty. And I think that's
one of the biggest roles that we have to do is create certainty in the
environment of the workplace so that businesses can go forward and
expand their businesses. To create a stable economy, we need a stable
environment for businesses to work in. The overregulation we've seen in
recent years creates neither.
Yet another example comes from a watermelon grower in my district and
an interpretation of a rule from the Food Safety Modernization Act,
commonly called FSMA. This rule says that the use of water bottles
cannot be used by workers in the field when they are picking the
melons. I don't know if words can describe just how hot and humid it
gets in Florida during this time of year, but it gets pretty darn hot.
Not allowing water in the fields is tantamount to cruel and unusual
punishment.
Even more ridiculous are the posters that have to be placed on site
that talk about the risk of heat stroke. What you see here is a poster
that's put up
[[Page H3673]]
by one of the regulatory agencies warning people about heat stroke, but
yet they won't let you take water into the field to pick watermelons.
These are some of the regulations that don't make any sense, and it
causes confusion in the workplace.
{time} 1940
Another example that comes from Florida has to do with the poultry
recycling program. This act was amended in 1997 to include new
definitions; poultry products that have been below 26 degrees
Fahrenheit may not be labeled as ``fresh.'' Such labeled product is
considered ``misbranded.'' A company I know had a USDA inspection and
identified poultry labeled as ``fresh,'' and they said the product was
frozen below 26 degrees Fahrenheit. Due to the rule, the product was
detained. Keep in mind that, as a veterinarian, this poses no safety
risk to the average consumer, to any consumer. After 4 months of
engaging the agency with time and money spent on litigation, the USDA
changed the rule to allow poultry frozen below 26 Fahrenheit to be
labeled as fresh as long as they sold the product to end users like
hospitals and restaurants. Precisely. This is the business that this
company was selling their product to all along.
The bottom line is that it wound up costing them 4 months of lost
revenue, and the rule cost this business $681,000. And they had
absolutely no way to recoup their losses.
These things have to change because they wind up stifling the
entrepreneur. What we have is a regulatory agency that starts out to
make the public safer, whether on the job or on the highways or the
foods we eat. And it's a good thing. But what happens is they often
overstep their authority, and often it is the interpretation of that
rule by the inspector that gets the misinterpretation. And the end
result is the owner gets fined and sometimes has to shut down until the
situation gets resolved.
Yes, we want safer workplaces, safer highways, and cleaner air and
water; but we shouldn't impede the very people trying to create jobs.
Our government agencies should be a facilitator to our businesses, not
a debilitator to these businesses. After all, with the lack of the
extra regulations up to this point in our history, I think it has
worked pretty good, and we shouldn't overstep that boundary, and we
need to have commonsense regulations.
Mr. COLLINS of Georgia. I appreciate the gentleman from Florida's
comments. It is amazing some of the things we're hearing and the
examples, simply by putting it out there. I want to extend an
invitation to our freshman class and others who may want to join us in
this regulatory working group. Contact our offices; we would love to
hear your input as we go forward.
It is now my pleasure to welcome and I yield to the gentlewoman from
Missouri (Mrs. Wagner).
Mrs. WAGNER. I thank the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Collins) for
putting this Special Order together.
Mr. Speaker, in his time served in office thus far, President Obama
has said he's for the reduction of government red tape that places an
unnecessary burden on government people. Again and again, he has
extolled the virtues of transparency and bipartisanship in an effort to
put people back to work; but if we look at his track record, this has
simply turned out to be yet another string of broken promises and a
failure of leadership.
In his first term alone, President Obama has finalized 130 major
rules, a shocking 160 percent increase over the previous term under
President George W. Bush. This alarming growth in government is an
assault on our free enterprise system and on our individual liberties.
Either the President is not interested in keeping the America's
people's trust, or he simply does not have a handle on his own Federal
agencies. Given recent events, either of these could very well be true.
The truth, however, Mr. Speaker, is that cost from new regulatory
burdens on Americans increased by nearly $70 billion during President
Obama's first term in office, which is based on his own agency's
estimates. It is very possible that the real costs far exceed this
number. With major regulations in Dodd-Frank and ObamaCare still yet to
be implemented, these burdens on small businesses and the American
people will only skyrocket.
Dodd-Frank alone required government bureaucrats to write nearly 400
new rules, and yet 3 years later we have barely completed a third of
them. Most of the laws' provisions have little or no connection to the
financial crisis that prompted their creation in the first place. As a
member of the Financial Services Committee, I have witnessed firsthand
how arbitrary and irrelevant these rules can be, and how they cost the
American people jobs and their hard-earned savings.
We can and must do more to hold these agencies accountable and stop
this governance by fiat and the bypassing of Congress--we the people.
This is why we must have the REINS Act, which I am proud to cosponsor.
This legislation would rein in the Federal agencies and would require
Congress to approve every new major rule proposed by the executive
branch having an annual economic impact of $100 million or more. It
would allow Congress to regain our constitutional authority by limiting
the size and scope of the rulemaking powers of government bureaucrats
who were not elected.
Mr. Speaker, the American people are fed up with this Big Government
agenda. It's time to hold this administration accountable for the gross
overreach of their power, whether it's regulation from the EPA or
regulations implementing Dodd-Frank or ObamaCare. Enough is enough. The
American people are tired of this government overstepping their
constitutional authority.
Mr. COLLINS of Georgia. I appreciate the gentlewoman from Missouri.
She's right. That's the anger we feel and we hear from our constituents
when they just don't understand what's going on here, and we need to
continue that. I appreciate those words.
It's now my pleasure to yield to the gentleman from Kentucky to
provide an insight into what we're seeing right now of a regulatory
environment gone amuck in a lot of ways.
Mr. BARR. I appreciate the opportunity to participate in this Special
Order this evening. This is a very important topic, and I applaud Mr.
Collins and Mr. Yoho for forming the Freshman Working Group on
Regulatory Reform. Regulatory reform is desperately needed in this
country to get our economy back on track.
We have seen persistent high unemployment in our country for the last
5 years. We got another bad jobs report just last week: 7.6 percent is
the unemployment rate. But even more alarming than our persistent high
unemployment rate is the fact that we have underemployment in this
country. Only 58 percent of the American people who are eligible for
employment who are of working-age population are actually employed.
Only 58 percent.
Yes, we have a high unemployment rate. Yes, it has been persistently
over 7.5 percent for the last 5 years. But even more troubling is the
fact that only 58 percent of working-age people in this country are
employed. That is 5 percent below the average employment rate for
working-age people prior to the recession, and that number has been
static for the last 5 years. So the question we have to ask ourselves
is why is this happening; why are the American people not getting back
to work.
Well, one of the primary impediments to economic recovery, to job
growth, and job creation is the avalanche of new rules, regulations,
and red tape coming out of Washington, all of which impose huge costs
on businesses and create a destructive environment of uncertainty in
the private sector. And it affects virtually every sector of our
economy. It affects the health care sector with ObamaCare and the reams
of regulations coming out of HHS. It affects the financial services
industry with Dodd-Frank and all of the rulemakings. You know, Dodd-
Frank authorizes over 400 new rules and regulations. A little more than
half of those have been issued. According to certain estimates,
compliance with those regulations equals about 24 million hours
annually in man-hours to comply with the Dodd-Frank rules and
regulations. To put that in perspective, 20 million man-hours was what
was required to build the Panama Canal. This is literally an avalanche
of rules and regulations crushing our financial institutions and
impeding access to credit for entrepreneurs and small businesses. It's
affecting the energy sector
[[Page H3674]]
where environmental regulations are destroying jobs.
In my home State, the coal industry has been devastated by the EPA's
assault on the coal industry through over-regulation of the energy
sector. In most countries that conduct mining activities, about 2 years
is the average length of time for a regulator to review an application
for mining. In the United States today, it takes 7 years for EPA
regulators just to review and approve a surface mining permit.
{time} 1950
So this backlog and this overregulation of mining activities is
resulting in massive layoffs. Mining in central Appalachia is at its
lowest production level since 1965. We've lost 4,000 coal mining jobs
in just the last couple of years in eastern Kentucky as a result of the
EPA's overzealous overregulation of the coal industry.
Yes, it's driving utility rates higher. Yes, it is certainly bad in
terms of low-cost electricity for our manufacturers and small
businesses and our seniors on fixed income, but it's also costing jobs.
And it's having a negative impact on all of those people whose
paychecks take care of their families.
We talked about the impact on health care. I had an administrator of
a local small hospital in central Kentucky tell me that it used to be
that they took care of patients. Today they take care of paper.
A small banker, community banker in eastern Kentucky told me that it
used to be, in the community banking business, that they would provide
loans and make a business decision based on the creditworthiness of the
borrower, whether it was a farmer or a small business owner or an
entrepreneur. Today, this banker says that the government makes that
decision for them because of the avalanche of new rules and
regulations.
There's another important dimension to this in addition to impeding
economic recovery, and that's our Constitution. For the last 80 years,
the growth of the administrative state has been a huge detractor from
the original meaning of our Constitution. It has been offensive to the
separation of powers doctrine. And one need only look to article I,
section 1 of the U.S. Constitution, which simply reads:
All legislative powers herein granted shall be vested in a
Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a
Senate and House of Representatives.
Mr. Speaker, the word ``all'' should be recognized as granting the
Congress exclusive legislative power. And yet, for the last 80 years,
as the administrative state has grown in Washington, the Congress has
delegated its lawmaking powers to unaccountable, unelected bureaucrats
in the executive branch. And so what we need to do in Congress is we
need to rehabilitate what's known as the nondelegation doctrine, the
idea that Congress shouldn't delegate away its lawmaking powers to
another branch of the government.
In the last several years, we've seen a dramatic growth in the
regulatory burden on the private economy. The pages in the Code of
Federal Regulations hit an all-time high of 174,000 pages in 2012.
That's an increase of more than 21 percent during the last decade.
In 2012, the cost of Federal rules exceeded $1.8 trillion, roughly
equal to the gross domestic product of Canada, which is about $1.81
trillion, and India, $1.82 trillion.
The regulatory burden cost each U.S. household approximately $14,768,
meaning that red tape is now the second largest item in the typical
family budget after housing.
And in 2012, 4,062 Federal regulations were at various stages of
implementation. The government completed work on 1,172, an increase of
16 percent over the 1,010 that the Feds imposed in 2011, which was a 40
percent increase over the 722 in 2010.
And another measure of the regulatory burden, the pages in the
Federal Register. By that measure, the Obama administration did not
break the all-time record of 81,405 pages it set in 2010. But the
78,961 pages it churned out in 2012 mean that the President has posted
three of the four greatest paperwork years on record.
Mr. Speaker, this avalanche of red tape is strangling American
economic recovery. It is an offense to the Constitution of the United
States, and it lacks all common sense. For the sake of the U.S.
Constitution, for the sake of economic recovery, for the sake of common
sense, and for the sake of the American people who are suffering in one
of the worst economic downturns since the Great Depression, we need to
rein in burdensome regulations.
Mr. COLLINS of Georgia. I appreciate the gentleman from Kentucky. He
brings a good point. I think it would behoove all of us--we hear often
on this floor we need to talk about jobs, we need to talk about job
creation; and what we're finding right here is the very thing that is
coming out of this bureaucracy, and this red tape is job-killing. And I
think this is something we could find common ground on. I think it's a
little bit of an agenda issue here, though.
When you come to Congress, you look for those who've stood the fight
before you, and I am pleased tonight to yield some time to the
gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Young), sponsor of the REINS Act, who has
fought this fight before we got here. And I am pleased to welcome him
as an honorary freshman tonight, as part of the sophomore class,
because you've led the way, and I appreciate that, and I am happy to
yield time to you tonight.
Mr. YOUNG of Indiana. I thank so much the gentleman from Georgia for
his hard work on this issue, working with our colleague, Mr. Yoho of
Florida, and organizing this freshman initiative designed to tackle
overly burdensome regulations, ensure that we produce smart regulations
here at the Federal level and alleviate some of the pain during this
very down economy that so many Americans are facing.
You know, when you talk about regulations, this is not some arcane
issue. These are the rules we live by, just like the legislation that
emerges out of this body. It impacts our jobs, our economic growth, the
level of personal income that Americans enjoy. It impacts the number of
long-term unemployed we have in this country, and right now we're at a
historic low. It impacts these things and so many others.
People have too many hassles, too many burdens, too many anxieties,
and regulations are a big part of the reason why. There are direct
costs of regulations that come out of the alphabet soup agencies that
populate Washington, D.C.
There are compliance costs that our small businesses, in particular,
must contend with. There's a great deal of uncertainty associated with
the regulations being developed in the buildings around Washington,
D.C.; and regulations lead to an increase in the costs of our goods and
services produced, thus making us less competitive economically vis-a-
vis our international competitors. Regulations reduce, oftentimes, the
productivity of our workers, which drives down their wages, which hurts
our competitiveness once again.
So what's the solution to this?
Well, we here in Congress, especially folks on this side of the
aisle--although, I have to say, this doesn't have to be a partisan
issue, and, historically, it has not always been. I think that's a good
thing. But we on this side of the aisle have been trying to alleviate
the pain that many businesses and Americans feel by the costliest
regulations coming out of Washington, D.C. I think that is proper, and
I think we should continue to do so.
But I also believe it's time for us to consider a comprehensive
approach to improving the entire regulatory process, and so that's why
I have introduced, in this 113th Congress, the REINS Act.
Now, what the REINS Act does is it establishes a $100 million
threshold. This is the threshold established historically by our Office
of Management and Budget for a so-called major regulation. And every
major regulation, after it goes through the public hearing process,
under the REINS Act, it has to go before Congress for an up-or-down
vote before it can become the law of the land.
This would improve immeasurably the quality of regulations that come
out of Washington, D.C. It would slow down the regulatory process, to
be sure. But let's remember, our Founding Fathers devised a system
where they wanted people in Washington to deliberate before we acted.
This would lead to more deliberation, wiser judgment.
[[Page H3675]]
This would also allow the American people, the citizens of this great
country, to weigh in on given regulations, ones they feel passionately
about.
And, most importantly, the REINS Act would hold Members of Congress
accountable for the regulations that come out of Washington.
You know, of course it would allow us to tame some of the executive
agencies that have gone rogue from time to time, that pass unwise
regulations. But I think, more importantly, it would allow those who
elect us to bodies like this to hold us accountable for the things that
cause pain to them, those imperial regulations that are promulgated
from a distant Capitol, which our Founding Fathers were so upset about
when this Nation was founded.
{time} 2000
To the issue of congressional accountability, too many vague laws are
made in this body--Dodd-Frank, the Affordable Care Act. I could go on
and on. We pass and we kick the can down the road, as is often heard,
on sticky issues, politically sensitive issues that politicians don't
want to deal with because we know ultimately there will be regulators
to fill in the gaps of our vague laws.
Well, the REINS Act would prevent that. It would incentivize Members
of Congress to take on the hard issues in the beginning because they'd
know that in the end those issues are going to come back and have to be
resolved in this body.
When I go home and meet with small business people and individual
constituents and they speak to me about specific regulations that are
causing them pain, oftentimes, the best I can do and my colleagues can
do is say, Listen, we'll try and repeal that particular regulation by
preventing it from being implemented at the agency and by impacting the
funding of that agency. These are very difficult things to do, and it's
so incredibly difficult to identify all the bad regulations that are
out there. But under the REINS Act, that would no longer be an
acceptable excuse to my constituents. Unelected bureaucrats, in the
end, would not be accountable; Members of Congress would. And that is
the intent, in the end, of the REINS Act.
Now, I believe in regulations, smart regulations, and this bill is
about improving the regulatory process so that here in the United
States of America this remains a vibrant place to live with a growing
economy. Our rules must be balanced against economic concerns. The
American people must have a voice about what those rules will be, and
Congress cannot skirt responsibility to legislate.
Again, I'd like to close here by thanking those who led this effort--
Mr. Collins, in particular, for leading the floor conversation this
evening. He's shown some great leadership as a freshman. He's working
very hard. I know he came here, as did other Members, the freshman
class of the 113th Congress, to make a difference. By supporting the
REINS Act, I think you will help advance that cause in a very big way.
Mr. COLLINS of Georgia. Well, I appreciate it.
It's always easy to follow in the footsteps of those who fought the
fight before us, and I appreciate what you've done and what others have
done. We're going to continue that fight, because this matters to
Americans, and that's what we've got to continue on. So I thank you for
being here tonight.
It is now with great pleasure, another freshman who has come from
just north of me in North Carolina, who has passionately fought for his
constituents but also sees this from a different perspective, at this
time, I want to yield to the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr.
Holding).
Mr. HOLDING. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Georgia for the
opportunity to discuss this administration's excessive regulation.
We know the harmful effect that overregulation has had on the
economy. And since taking office, President Obama and his
administration have continuously burdened the American people with an
exceptional number of regulations, harming businesses and the economy.
Mr. Speaker, small businesses in this country are essential to our
economic stability. Small businesses encourage innovation and hard
work. It's the American Dream to have a unique idea and build something
from scratch--and that, Mr. Speaker, is exactly what small businesses
do.
Mr. Speaker, small businesses have created 64 percent of net new jobs
over the past 15 years and employed just over half of all private
sector employees. In this stalled economy, small businesses are already
struggling to be successful, and we need to take some of the current
regulatory weight off their shoulders.
Recently, back home, I spent the week going around to different
chambers of commerce in my district. I went to Wake Forest. I went to
Fuquay-Varina. I went to Apex. I went to Nashville and Rocky Mount and
met with several hundred small business owners and folks who work in
small businesses. Of course, I have the constant complaint of
overregulation. I started asking the question. I said, Has the
government done anything that you know of in the last 5 years which
would make your life as a small business person better? I got no
positive responses, Mr. Speaker. That's stunning.
New regulations are complicated, and compliance is time consuming and
expensive; and sometimes, job creators aren't informed of new
regulations in a timely manner, giving them little time to prepare to
comply with them. Business owners and their employees are now facing a
time of uncertainty due to regulations. They're not confident in
government policy coming out of Washington, and they have no trust in
the ability of Washington to do things that are in their better
interest.
This sense of uncertainty, Mr. Speaker, may prevent an employer from
hiring more people or force them to let go of current employees. As Mr.
Yoho said earlier in his comments, he has small businesses in his
district that are having to shoot lower rather than shoot higher. Small
businesses may have to reevaluate how and when they do business, and
that is unfortunate. Small businesses have no confidence in their
government to give them pro-growth policy.
Excessive regulation harms not only individual small businesses but
our country's growth as a whole. The Small Business Office of Advocacy
has reported that Federal rulemaking has imposed a cumulative burden of
$1.75 trillion on our economy. Earlier this year in the Judiciary
Committee, on which I serve, we heard testimony that, in the past 4
years alone, the cumulative cost burden has increased by $520 billion.
Mr. Speaker, I'm not only concerned about the negative effect of
regulations on our overall economy, but also the administration's abuse
of power. President Obama has been encouraged by regulatory advocates
to circumvent regular order and impose his climate change agenda
through regulations, and he made it clear in his State of the Union
speech earlier this year his intent to do so.
I'm also concerned with the fact that the administration has
repeatedly missed its required deadline for releasing a Unified Agenda
of Federal Regulatory and Deregulatory Actions twice a year. This
agenda lays out each governmental agency's proposed regulation and
annual regulatory plan, and businesses need to know this information so
they can anticipate how forthcoming regulations will affect them. And
this administration needs to have more accountability and more
transparency about the harmful effects of these abundant--may I say,
excessive--regulations.
Mr. Speaker, in my district in North Carolina, many of the towns rely
on small businesses. That's all that's there is small businesses. And
whether it's a local restaurant owned by the same family for
generations or an accounting firm or a clothing store or the town
doctor, regulations are a major concern for them. We should be doing
what we can do to encourage small businesses, not to deter them with
strenuous and excessive regulations.
Mr. COLLINS of Georgia. I thank the gentleman from North Carolina.
What we're dealing with here is dealing with jobs. And I think what
you shared in your time back in the district is small businesses, as
we've seen, small business persons comprise 44 percent of the total
U.S. private payroll and create more than half of the nonfarm jobs in
the gross domestic product here.
[[Page H3676]]
We've got to look at this. This is something that I think we can all
come together, as the gentleman from Indiana stated just a few moments
ago, this could be a bipartisan issue as we look to jobs and things we
can bring to the floor. I know in talking to you and your passion about
this, we came up here to try and help. We came up here to bring the
voices of those who could not be up here on a given day to help them in
their businesses and work hard.
I appreciate you so much for sharing your experiences in North
Carolina. Really, what we're doing is fighting hard against these
regulations so that we can see more jobs created.
Mr. HOLDING. As my friend from Georgia knows, numbers don't lie; and
when we're spending $1.75 trillion a year complying with regulations,
that's a lot of money.
Mr. COLLINS of Georgia. It is that.
I appreciate the gentleman for being here tonight. I think this is
something that we all see. In fact, in the 2011 speech, President
Barack Obama stated that ``rules have gotten out of balance,'' and the
result is ``a chilling effect on growth and jobs.'' I believe the
President is correct about that. The rules have become so skewed that
our Nation's regulatory system is at war with America's businesses.
In fact, he went ahead and even, in an executive order, stated that:
The last barriers we're trying to remove are outdated and
unnecessary regulations. I've ordered a government-wide
review, and if there are rules on the books that are
needlessly stifling job creation and economic growth, we will
fix them.
I'll tell you what. I will agree with the President on this. And I
want to say this is something we can move forward with, and it's
something that has an effect, because right now these burdens are
killing American industry and American jobs.
When businesses are more concerned--right now, 40 percent is what
I've seen in the latest survey from Morgan Stanley, said 40 percent of
companies say policy uncertainty in Washington is preventing them from
putting investments and job creation to work. This is something we've
got to be a part of fixing because it matters, and it matters for jobs.
Industries such as manufacturing and technology are fighting to
compete in a global market, but they first must survive the regulatory
beast that is strangling innovation and growth.
{time} 2010
Congress should be encouraging innovation to make it easier for
businesses to bring new products or processes to the market. Outdated
regulations should be cleared off the books--especially those created
by unelected bureaucrats.
Let's go back to the basics of regulatory overhaul and restore a
commonsense approach to regulations that encourage innovation and allow
job creators to thrive.
I wrote to all the businesses in northeast Georgia and asked them to
tell me how regulations are impacting their ability to grow and create
jobs. Here are some of the responses that we received back:
Due to the new regulations that require businesses to issue
1099s to virtually everyone that we write a check to, we have
to be more selective when we consider a new hire. I no longer
have the opportunity to give unemployed folks a shot at a job
to see how they are going to do. We have to make them full
regular employees right out of the chute so we just don't
look at hiring as many people, we look at other employees to
work more hours.
Another of my constituents said that ``the biggest issue we face from
the Federal Government is the EPA's lack of approval of products in a
timely manner, and their removal of excellent, safe products from the
market altogether.''
Unfortunately, regulatory burdens created by the EPA are an all too
common story. A business owner in northeast Georgia wrote to me:
Currently the EPA is requiring off-road diesel engines to
meet new tiers, or levels, of exhaust emission standards.
These new standards are changing every 1 to 2 years. The
final (we hope) regulations will be in place in 2015.
The result of the dramatic and frequent changes in
regulations is the complete redesign of our products, which
would allow us to retool and move manufacturing to the U.S.,
cannot happen cost effectively until 2015. At that time, we
hope to move manufacturing of our products to Georgia.
I say hope to, because the rapid rise in regulations under
the current administration may cause us to not move
production at all.
We are all for protecting the environment and being good
corporate citizens. However, the new regulations are
burdensome, costly and add no value to the productivity of
the product or the marketplace.
I couldn't have said that better myself. Regulations should be
expedient and unambiguous, minimizing the uncertainty facing industries
and businesses. This is how the government can facilitate, and no
longer debilitate, economic growth.
I appreciate the comments from my colleagues tonight. It is clear
that the need for regulatory relief is greater now than ever. As we've
heard tonight, for the first time in history, the estimated cost of
regulations is more than half the Federal budget itself. Let me just
stop right there. For the first time in history, the estimated cost of
regulations is more than half the Federal budget itself.
And we wonder why we're struggling with jobs right now. We wonder why
our businesses are struggling with what they're going to do and how
they're going to manage. I'm a firm believer, and it's been spoken of
here tonight, there's many times we come to this House floor and we
talk about things in ambiguous terms. We talk about the big picture. We
talk about the process. People hear those conversations, they hear
these words, but they're not really sure how it affects them. I'm a
firm believer, both from a Democrat perspective, a Republican
perspective, how we can best lead is by understanding and giving people
information on why this matters to them.
I'm just going to spend a few minutes here tonight talking about
that. It is troubling in a time where families are struggling to make
ends meet, American families are paying almost $15,000 per year in
hidden regulatory taxes. They are paying $14,678 in hidden regulatory
taxes. You want to know how that affects you. That's going on and you
want to know how we're causing people to spend and we're also at the
same time saying we want to create new jobs, we want to create new
opportunities.
Well, here's what happens. Instead of paying a hidden regulatory tax,
American families could, one, buy a new car. A 2013 Ford Fiesta,
$13,200; a 2013 Chevrolet Sonic, $14,185. We hear it all the time how
manufacturing creates jobs on all levels, starting from the
manufacturing, from the parts and the dealers and the auto parts that
come into this, how they all work together.
Well, instead of paying these regulatory costs, why don't we get them
to buy a new car? I mean, I think that's what the American people would
like. I think that's what our auto dealers would like. That's what the
others in the chain of automotive supply would like. But, instead,
they're trapped and they're bound.
Another constituent writes:
Most of the rules and regulations that are preventing our
business from growing are a result of ObamaCare. Many of the
provisions in this legislation are counterproductive to the
growth of a medical practice.
I want to go back to what it means to the person sitting around the
table tonight who may have just somehow turned over here and said, what
are they talking about in our nation's Capitol? What we're talking
about is your pocketbook. What we're talking about is regulations that
can help you spend money the way you want to, spend money for your
family's future, spend money that revives our economy and strengthens
us as a nation.
This is what we're talking about. You can send their child to
college. One year of tuition and fees at the University of Georgia is
$10,262. One year of tuition and fees at the University of Florida is
$6,150. Instead, they're trapped paying almost $15,000 in hidden
regulatory tax that comes through every year.
We all know the need for some rules for everyone to abide by. Make
the regulations where they're simple to understand and inexpensive to
comply with.
One of the problems I also see in Washington sometimes is we come to
the floor and we talk about problems, but we never provide an answer.
We never provide an answer on what can actually be done. As my
colleagues and I have demonstrated, we are committed to providing
regulatory relief to businesses and families.
There are several key pieces of legislation that are first and
important
[[Page H3677]]
steps in alleviating the regulatory burden. The first bill I introduced
in Congress was H.R. 1493, the Sunshine for Regulatory Decrees and
Settlements Act of 2013. This legislation ensures the EPA cannot
continue to enter into closed-door agreements with environmental groups
without transparency and public participation. It does not affect the
ability to bring suits. It just makes them clearer. Many of the costly
rules and regulations that have impacted businesses and industries
across the Nation have resulted from these backroom consent decrees.
It's time we bring transparency and public participation back into the
rulemaking process.
What else can we do? H.R. 367: require congressional approval for all
major rules. We end the sue and settle EPA settlements--that's the one
I just mentioned, H.R. 1493. We can require Federal agencies to choose
the lowest-cost rulemaking alternative, H.R. 2122.
There are things that we can do. I believe the American public is
looking to this place. They're looking to their Capitol for real
solutions. They're looking to their Capitol for hope. They're looking
for relief.
Every day, men and women get up and they wake their children up as I
did this morning and they go to work and they go to make a better life.
Many of those are small business owners wanting to add jobs, wanting to
add to their businesses, but these regulations are killing that
possibility right now. I believe when you look at what we've talked
about here and my colleagues have talked about here on the floor, and I
appreciate all of them being here, we bring to light what is really
happening, and that is that regulations are not adding anything except
government jobs. It's time we get back out and add jobs on Main Street,
and when we add jobs on Main Street, everybody is impacted.
I want to thank my colleagues for joining me tonight and highlighting
why American families and businesses so desperately need regulatory
relief. Our freshmen are going to continue to do this, highlighting the
real work that we believe matters to families and matters to Americans.
Because when we're up here, we're up here doing your work. The thing
that you sent us here to do was to work for you, and that's what we're
going to continue to do and the freshman class are going to continue to
do just that.
As we have mentioned tonight, not only are we talking about
overregulation, we're going to be talking about many things in the
weeks to come, and we're just letting the people know that we are here
because we believe we can make a difference along with both sides of
the aisle. Let's come together and see what we can do to make sure that
not only regulations but other things get done so this government helps
the businesses in our communities get back to work. That's what I want
to be about, and I'm glad that we were here tonight to do that.
Before I close out, I do see a friend on the floor, the gentleman
from Arizona (Mr. Franks). As we're through with our regulation part, I
noticed that you had asked for time and I'm going to at this time yield
to the gentleman from Arizona, my friend, Mr. Franks.
Mr. FRANKS of Arizona. Mr. Speaker, I just want to thank the
distinguished gentleman from Georgia for yielding this time. One of the
great hopes that I see that portends for a better future for America is
to see men like Doug Collins join this group and this Congress.
Mr. Speaker, it seems like we are never quite so eloquent as when we
are decrying the crimes of a past generation, while we oftentimes
remain as staggering blind as some of our most intellectually sightless
predecessors when it comes to facing and rejecting atrocities in our
own time. Whether it was slavery, or the many human genocides across
history, the patterns were the same.
{time} 2020
Mr. Speaker, innocent human beings, children of God all, were
systematically dehumanized and then subjected to the most horrifying
inhumanity. All the while, human society as a whole at first hardened
their hearts and turned away.
But, Mr. Speaker, truth and time travel on the same road; and though
it was often agonizingly slow, the truth of these tragic inhumanities
in our past began to dawn on the people of reason and goodwill. Their
hearts first, and then their minds, began to change.
Mr. Speaker, I have often asked myself, what was it--what was it that
changed their minds? What changed the minds of those who had previously
embraced an almost invincible ignorance to hide from themselves the
horror of what was happening to their innocent fellow human beings? I
so wish I knew that answer, Mr. Speaker.
Because you see, today, such a conundrum looms before humanity again,
the most glaring recent example of which are the gut-wrenching
revelations surrounding the trial and conviction in Philadelphia of Dr.
Kermit Gosnell. In the words of the grand jury report:
Gosnell had a simple solution for unwanted babies: he
killed them. He didn't call it that. He called it ``ensuring
fetal demise.'' The way he ensured fetal demise was by
sticking open scissors in the back of the baby's neck and
cutting the spinal cord. He called it ``snipping.'' Over the
years, there were hundreds of ``snippings.''
When authorities entered the clinic of Dr. Gosnell, they
found a torture chamber for little babies that I do not have
the words or the stomach to adequately describe. Suffice it
to say, Dr. Gosnell ran a systematic practice in his late-
term abortion clinic to cut the spines of those babies who
had survived his attempt to abort them.
Ashley Baldwin, one of Dr. Gosnell's employees, said she
saw babies breathing, and she described one as 2 feet long
that no longer had eyes or a mouth, but, in her words, was
making this ``screeching'' sound, and it ``sounded like a
little alien.''
For God's sake, Mr. Speaker, we are better than that. America is
better than that. And yet if Kermit Gosnell had killed these children
he now stands convicted of murdering before they had passed through the
birth canal only a few moments earlier, it would have all been
perfectly legal in many States, in this the land of the free and the
home of the brave.
Mr. Speaker, more than 325 late-term unborn babies were torturously
killed without anesthesia in America just yesterday. Many of them--so
many of them cried and screamed as they died. But because it was
amniotic fluid going over the vocal cords instead of air, we couldn't
hear them.
All of them had at least four things in common. First, they were just
little babies who had done nothing wrong to anyone on Earth. And each
one of them died a nameless, lonely, and agonizing death. And each one
of their mothers was callously abandoned to deal with the emotional
results that will inevitably follow. And all the gifts that these
children might have brought to humanity, Mr. Speaker, are lost forever.
So if there is one thing we must not miss about this unspeakably evil
episode, it is that Kermit Gosnell is not an anomaly; he is the face of
this murderous Fortune 500 enterprise of killing helpless unborn
children in the United States of America. With all of the distortions
and the bait-and-switch tactics opponents have hurdled at the Pain-
Capable Unborn Child Protection Act leading up to this historic floor
debate, the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act is very truly and
simply a deeply sincere effort to protect both mothers and their pain-
capable unborn babies entering their sixth month of gestation from
heartless monsters like Kermit Gosnell.
Given the cataclysmic implications, Mr. Speaker, for any society who
turns a blind eye to atrocities truly forced upon the most innocent and
helpless of its members, would it be too much to hope for that Members
of this body and Americans in general might research this issue and
learn the truth of it for themselves?
Because you see, Mr. Speaker, the real question in the debate before
us is not whether these unborn children entering their sixth month of
gestation are capable of feeling pain. The real question is: Are we?
If our society is to survive with our humanity intact, our human
compassion toward our fellow human beings must first survive. Fifty
million children--50 million dead children are enough. That is why it
is so important for people to see for themselves the humanity of these
little victims and the inhumanity of what is being done to them.
Now, maybe it won't change everyone's mind, but it has changed so
many minds; and most of these changed minds share a common thread. They
were confronted with the brutal reality
[[Page H3678]]
of abortion on demand, and something inside them could no longer deny
the truth, or they could no longer condone the murder of a defenseless
child.
What changed their minds? Perhaps I will really never understand what
sparked that change in their hearts, Mr. Speaker. But I am convinced of
one thing: that it is the same spark in the human soul that has turned
the tide of blood and tragedy and hatred and inhumanity throughout
human history. And whatever else it is, Mr. Speaker, it is mankind's
only hope.
Mr. COLLINS of Georgia. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my
time.
____________________