Providing for Congressional Disapproval of A Rule Submitted By the Corps of Engineers and the Environmental Protection Agency

Floor Speech

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Mr. COLLINS of Georgia. I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of S.J. Res. 22, which vacates this overreaching and, frankly, unnecessary waters of the U.S. rule. It prevents the EPA and the Corps of Engineers from moving forward.

I think the problem that has made itself real prevalent--and the chairman just talked about this as well--is it is not what is on the top line. It is what is on the exemption line.

You can talk about whatever you want to talk about, but the problem I come to with this--because we have been dealing with this in my part of the world--and I appreciate the previous speaker from Louisiana talking about the watershed there--is that I am from northeast Georgia, where we are in the foothills of the mountains.

So, in the bottom, you have the creeks, the tributaries. We have Lake Lanier, the Chattahoochee River, Lake Hartwell. We have a lot of areas that fall here.

What is interesting to me--and what my friend from across the aisle basically said--and what is offensive to me is to come to a place and say that, just because we are going to work on a Clean Water Act, we are going to work on a reauthorization, we take it from Congress and say that people downtown in cubicles who do not know my district and who understand that they have an agenda to push will make rules and make regulations that affect the livelihood of people.

When you take it from Congress, where it should be, that is offensive. I agree with my friend. It should be here. But we have seen a pattern in the last 7 years that, if it is not moving fast enough in Congress, go around it. That is not possible. The Constitution is not something you can forget every once in a while.

Now, you can make arguments all day long. You can call it whatever you want to call it. I call it just plain dumb. Common sense, as my grandma told me one time, is not common. I see that in Washington all the time, especially in agencies.

We talk about why this is confusing. We had the EPA director sitting in committee last year asked these very questions about the rule. She answered them one way, and at the very same time, back in my district, the Ninth District of Georgia, they were being told a completely opposite answer.

Where she would say it is not affected, they would say: Oh, it is affected. They knew because they understood their district, and the Agency workers in the district understood what was going on.

So you can have this argument all you want. This needs to be vacated. As previously said, the courts have already made a statement on this. This is an overreach. This is a policy choice.

And I am sorry. The executive branch is to carry out the law, to work within the confines of the court ruling, not to determine that they have pins on their chests and that they are elected by the people that they represent. They are to follow the law.

If we need to continue on the Clean Water Act and to make arguments to say that, if you are against this, you want dirty water, you want bad pollution, you are against this, that is just a straw man that needs to be burned down and buried.

We are looking for commonsense regulation. We are looking for stuff that makes sense. I have a gentleman in my area whose land--100 acres-- is his main asset. When you take these rules and set them on top of it and he has 18 usable acres, from dry ditches and gullies, that is a problem.

Don't hand me this, that this is going to destroy the world. Don't hand me this from the red hills of north Georgia, where just years ago it was the farmers and those who knew that living off the land meant conservation, who turned those red clay hills into green, lush farms. Don't tell me that Washington needs to be the one to tell them how to do conservation and to know what to do with a dry ditch on their land. This is ridiculous.

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