[Congressional Record Volume 162, Number 17 (Thursday, January 28, 2016)]
[Senate]
[Pages S329-S331]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                 OVERREGULATION OF THE AMERICAN ECONOMY

  Mr. SULLIVAN. Mr. President, I rise in support of an amendment that I 
am hoping will be part of the Energy bill currently being debated on 
the floor and being shepherded through the Senate by my colleague from 
the great State of Alaska, Senator Murkowski.
  I commend Senator Murkowski, the chair of the Energy and Natural 
Resources Committee, for the bill she has worked on for months--
incredible hard work. It is great to have her as the chair of the 
committee, certainly for Alaska but for the entire country. States such 
as the Presiding Officer's recognize how important American energy is 
for all our citizens.
  One of the many positive aspects of the bill we have been debating is 
that it is focused on cleaning up old regulations, cleaning up outdated 
programs, getting rid of some of the things we don't need.
  The amendment that this Senator would like to offer as part of the 
Energy bill is based on a bill I recently introduced called the RED 
Tape Act of 2015. The R-E-D in RED Tape Act stands for Regulations 
Endanger Democracy Act, and this Senator believes that is the case. The 
onslaught of regulations are not only threatening our economy but are 
actually threatening our form of government. That is why I am proposing 
a simple one-in, one-out bill that will cap Federal regulations--a 
simple commonsense approach to

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Federal regulations that will begin to address what I think the vast 
majority of Americans recognize as a monumental problem. What is that 
problem?
  Economists around the country and many Members of this body believe 
that the overregulation of the American economy is why we can't grow 
this economy. This Senator thinks it is often looked at as a partisan 
issue. It is not a partisan issue. To the contrary, it is a consensus 
issue about the impact of regulations on the American economy.
  To give a couple of examples, here is how The Economist put it in a 
2012 cover story titled ``Over-Regulated America.'' The redtape is 
right here. This lead article in The Economist said a couple of years 
ago that ``America needs a smarter approach to regulations'' that will 
``mitigate a real danger: that regulations may crush the life out of 
America's economy.''
  There is a real danger that regulations will crush the life out of 
the American economy. I think that is already happening. Again, this is 
not a partisan issue. Many Democrats in this body have called for a 
smarter approach to Federal regulations.
  Governors, particularly Democratic Governors across the country, have 
also decried the overregulation of our economy. For example, the two-
term Massachusetts Governor, Deval Patrick, made regulatory reform a 
hallmark of his administration's approach to growing their economy, and 
it is not just Democratic Governors. It is actually Democratic 
Presidents. In 2011, Newsweek featured a cover story with President 
Clinton's face on the cover that highlighted his 14 ideas to grow the 
economy and create jobs. In the article, President Clinton lamented the 
long wait time for permanent approvals for infrastructure projects 
throughout the country due to overregulation.
  One of President Clinton's top recommendations to put hardworking 
Americans back to work was to speed up the regulatory approval process 
and grant States waivers on burdensome Federal environmental rules to 
hasten the time that construction projects can begin and real 
hardworking Americans can work.
  Even President Obama in his recent State of the Union Address focused 
on regulations. The President of the United States said:

       I think there are outdated regulations that need to be 
     changed. There is red tape that needs to be cut.

  President Obama stated this just a few weeks ago. As a matter of 
fact, it was the biggest applause line of the entire evening. Democrats 
and Republicans roared at this. The President recognized what redtape 
is doing to this great economy.
  So I took the liberty to write the President after his State of the 
Union Address, commending him for his focus on regulations, and asked 
him to get his administration to back my RED Tape Act and to follow 
through on his promise to reach across the aisle for good ideas to grow 
the economy. This is one that would strengthen our economy, create jobs 
for hard-working middle-class Americans, union workers, and pave the 
path for what we haven't seen in over a decade, a private sector that 
is thriving. That is the heart of the American dream.
  Before I get into details, let me spend a few minutes on the economy 
and why I believe we must pass this amendment. Our debt is approaching 
$20 trillion. The national debt of the United States has increased more 
under President Obama's two terms than it has under all previous 
administrations in U.S. history. Of course, one of the reasons is we 
are spending too much, but this Senator believes the biggest reason is 
that we cannot grow this economy.
  The U.S. average economic growth rate for almost our entire history 
as a country, from 1790 to 2014, has averaged about 3.7 percent GDP 
growth. That is real American growth. For over 200 years there has been 
ups and downs, but the average has been about 4 percent GDP growth. 
This is what has made us great as a nation. The Obama administration's 
average GDP growth is about 1.5 percent--dramatically less than the 
traditional levels of American growth that we need. As a matter of 
fact, officially this recovery has been the weakest in over 70 years.
  While the American people might not have all these specific numbers 
at hand, they know something is wrong. They know they are not finding 
the good jobs, that they are not getting the raises in the jobs they 
have. They know their family's budget isn't stretching as far as it 
used to stretch. This should not be the case.
  We live in the greatest Nation in the world. We have so many 
advantages over other countries. Our high-tech sector is still the most 
innovative in the world, an efficient agriculture sector feeds the 
world, and our universities are the best universities in the world by 
far. We are in a renaissance in energy production with renewables, oil, 
and gas that have once again made us a superpower in the world, one of 
the best managed, highly productive fisheries in the world from my 
State in Alaska, and we certainly have the most professional, lethal 
military in the world. We have so many advantages over every other 
country in the world. So why aren't we growing our economy? Why can't 
our economy expand at traditional levels of American growth?
  Look at this chart behind me. This clearly to me and to many others 
is one of the reasons: new regulation on top of old regulation on top 
of old regulation--a steady increase year after year, starting here in 
1976 with no end in sight, an explosion that is going to keep going 
until we do something about it. Through these regulations the Federal 
Government is looking to regulate every aspect of the American economy, 
and that is one of the main reasons why we can't grow.
  When it was first published in 1936, the Federal Register, which 
contained a daily digest of proposed regulations from agencies and 
final rules and notices, was about 2,500 pages. By the end of 2014, the 
Federal Register had ballooned to close to 78,000 pages. What we are 
seeing is an explosion of regulations.
  This chart relates directly to why I believe we can't grow our 
economy. Remember regulations are taxes. They cost American families, 
American consumers, and American small businesses. There are huge costs 
to this explosion, particularly when they accumulate like this.
  President Obama's Small Business Administration puts the number of 
the annual cost of regulation that impacts the U.S. economy at about 
$1.8 trillion per year. That is a number that would make it one of the 
largest economies in the world. That is about $15,000 per American 
household, about 29 percent of the average American family budget. That 
is what we are doing to our families and our economy.
  I believe a huge part of the problem of what is keeping our economy 
back and the opportunities for middle-class families is right here in 
this town. The Federal Government, with agencies and the alphabet soup 
of agencies--the IRS, the BLM, the EPA--are constantly promulgating new 
regulations. What they don't do is they never remove old regulations. 
From across the country, whether it is Alaska or Maine, our businesses, 
our citizens, and particularly the most vulnerable, our families, are 
being impacted by the explosion of regulations from the Federal 
Government right here in Washington, DC.
  Let me give you a few examples. On the North Slope of Alaska they 
can't get small portable incinerators that comply with the upcoming EPA 
regulations, so the trash in these amazing communities in my State 
piles up until it is actually taken out by airplane. This is polar bear 
country. This is dangerous--trash everywhere. It is certainly harmful 
to the environment because regulations don't allow incinerators.

  Because of the Federal roadless rule in Southeast Alaska, we can't 
even build new alternative energy plants for the citizens of my State 
who desperately need energy because we pay some of the highest costs of 
any State in the country with regard to energy. Nationally, bridges are 
crumbling, and we cannot get them built, in large part because of the 
overburdensome Federal regulations.
  On average, it takes over 5 years to permit a bridge in the United 
States--not to build a bridge, just to get the Federal Government's 
permission to build a bridge. Right now there are 61,000 bridges in our 
country in need of repair, but burdensome regulations delay commonsense 
repairs. These bridges are being crossed by our

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trucks, carrying the Nation's commerce, our children, schoolbuses, and 
parents trying to get home for dinner. Thousands of communities across 
the country are simply keeping their fingers crossed, hoping their 
current bridges last another year.
  Let me provide one more example in terms of what is happening with 
regard to the overregulation of our economy. This involves one of the 
most important sectors of the U.S. economy--small community banks. Over 
1,300 small community banks have disappeared since 2010, and only 2 new 
banks in the United States have been chartered in the last 5 years. If 
you ask any small community banker what is driving this, they will 
point to this chart. Regulations from Washington, DC, are driving our 
small community banks out of existence. Even during the Great 
Depression, we had on average 19 new banks a year. In the last 5 years, 
the United States has seen two new banks chartered in our country.
  So what do we do? Well, the good news is that many colleagues in the 
Senate on both sides of the aisle have offered suggestions and 
introduced bills to stop the redtape, to stop this trajectory of 
Federal regulations from strangling our economy and our future. But we 
need something that is simple, something that hard-working Americans 
understand, and something that is bold to take on this challenge. I 
believe the amendment I have offered to the Energy bill, the RED Tape 
Act, is both simple and bold enough to take on this challenge. It is 
only 5 pages long. Using a simple one-in, one-out method, it caps 
Federal regulations. New regulations that cause a financial or 
administrative burden on the economy, on hard-working American, on 
middle-class families, on union workers would need to be offset by 
repealing an existing regulation. Simple--you issue a new regulation, 
you repeal an old regulation. People understand that and it makes 
sense.
  This is not a radical idea. This is not some kind of poison pill that 
we want to attach to the Energy bill, because I think that is a good 
bill. It is an idea that is gaining consensus not only throughout the 
country but throughout the world. Other countries have actually taken 
up this idea to fix their regulatory problems as well. In Canada, they 
recently put an administrative fix to their regulations that was one-
in, one-out. In Great Britain they have done this to the point where it 
is viewed as so successful that they are not talking about one-in, one-
out anymore, they are talking about maybe one-in, two-out. So I think 
this is an idea that both parties of the Senate, Members from both 
sides of the aisle, can get behind.
  Even National Public Radio did a recent story about how well this 
one-in, one-out rule is working in Canada. It has freed up hundreds of 
thousands of hours of paperwork for small businesses in particular. 
Even the Canadian Socialists have backed this idea. I certainly hope 
Senator Sanders is listening, and I hope I can get him and other 
Members of this body to support this amendment.
  To be clear, I am certainly not against all regulations or permitting 
requirements. When I served as the commissioner of the Department of 
Natural Resources in Alaska, we worked with our bipartisan legislature 
to overhaul our permitting and regulatory system and to bring what we 
have seen on the Federal Government side--a huge backlog of permits--to 
get projects moving. We brought that backlog down by over 50 percent 
through regulatory and permitting reform, and we did so with the 
absolute understanding that protecting our environment and keeping our 
citizens safe was a fundamental precondition to any of our actions. But 
we can do both. We can bring down this huge burden and still make sure 
we have a clean environment and a strong, healthy economy.
  There are simply too many Federal regulations out there, and the 
American people know it. It is time this body stops increasing this 
number of regulations and puts a cap on it.
  Finally, if we do this, we will make sure that all of the comparative 
advantages we have in this country--so many that we have over so many 
other countries--will enable us to unleash the might of the U.S. 
economy, create better jobs, and create a brighter future for our 
children and their children.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. SASSE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Sullivan). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.

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