Consideration of Certain Resolutions Reported By the Committee on Rules

Floor Speech

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Mr. HILL. Madam Speaker, I rise to oppose the previous question so that we can immediately consider H.R. 8589 to prohibit the Securities and Exchange Commission from finalizing, implementing, or enforcing its proposed climate rule.

Now, Madam Speaker, it is the Securities and Exchange Commission. It is not the securities and environment commission.

Last night, we had the pleasure of playing baseball. I am glad to see my colleagues up early this morning to be on the House floor. It was a great game. I was proud to see the right team won, but we are once again back on the floor talking between Republicans and Democrats, Republicans being the party for growth, opportunity, and liberty, and the House majority, the Democrats, doubling down, Madam Speaker, on dumb in the midst of inflation, runaway spending, failed energy policy, and open borders.

Today, as the winds of recession and stagflation blow, House Democrats are here to talk about higher taxes and higher crippling regulations on job creators. There is no evidence that there is any lack of knowledge in public companies that they have an obligation under the existing securities laws to disclose material impact from anything to do with climate change, and there is zero evidence that they are unaware of climate change and are not talking about it on a regular basis with their shareholders, their boards, and their employees.

Now, the Securities and Exchange Commission has three mandates: investor protection, maintaining orderly markets, and capital formation. But rather than focus on those three missions, Gary Gensler, the chairman of the SEC, is typical of this administration: a Big Government, nanny state supervisor who is going beyond his statutory authority and delving in and trying to become, as I argue, a climate czar.

His proposal has been met with significant substantive rejection. Ninety-one advocacy groups just last week, including the Farm Bureau, community bankers in every State of the country, and the Job Creators Network wrote the Small Business Committee chairman and ranking member their opposition to this proposal, and that it should be withdrawn.

Alfredo Ortiz, the president of Job Creators Network, said:

The SEC's proposed rule would be an unnecessary and costly burden on America's small businesses, at a time when we are dealing with ``Bideninflation'', higher interest rates, and a supply chain crisis.

Now, Madam Speaker, Gary Gensler, the chairman, argues that this proposal is the right thing to do. We argue it is not, that it shouldn't be implemented, and we shouldn't spend any money there to do it.

Let me tell you what Nasdaq, the National Association of Securities Dealers--the market system for the growth of our country--wrote Gary Gensler. Now, these people are not anti-climate. They are not climate deniers. They run the Nasdaq marketplace.

They wrote:

The proposal creates additional disclosure obligations outside of existing frameworks. The proposed timeline for reporting is unreasonable. Prescriptive disclosures are too costly.

The Commission itself says this will triple the cost to be a public company.

Huh? Triple the cost to be a public company?

We don't have enough public companies as there are.

The materiality standards deviate from the law. The prescriptive disclosures do not facilitate meaningful comparisons. The prescriptive disclosures create disincentives for companies. And they say that scope 3 greenhouse gas emissions disclosure requirements could harm small private suppliers. Finally, they say that the proposal's timing and scope could harm the initial public offering market.

This is an economy that has half the public companies we had in 1980, and this administration and their SEC want to make that even worse and more costly.

Let me remind you, the Commission itself tripled the cost to be a public company.

Madam Speaker, we have people who are private companies now because they cannot afford to be public. And if we don't have public companies, then we don't have investments in labor union pension plans, we don't have opportunities for investment in our 401(k) plans, we hurt this economy, and we hurt job creators if this proposal is implemented.

So it is very easy for me to stand here and argue against it.

Finally, I would say that this is part of a longstanding practice of this administration to use every tool they have in the regulatory space to do something that is the prerogative, as my good friend from Pennsylvania said, of Congress.

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Mr. HILL. Madam Speaker, I want to reiterate this point. This is the responsibility of Congress if we are going to set environment and energy regulatory policy. It is not the purpose of our independent regulatory commissions.

Aren't we clear now that the Supreme Court agrees with that position?

Just in the last few days they ruled in a case called West Virginia v. EPA which basically says: hey, independent regulatory agencies, stay in your lane. Stay in your lane. Listen to what Congress has written in the statute. And Congress has not written this in a statute, which is why the SEC is way out of line with this proposal, while the Nasdaq market system rejects it, while small businesses reject it, while public company CEOs reject it, and why the Farm Bureau rejects it.

As I say, this administration came to power with an idea that this was their number one issue, and you can tell it because the people who worked on the task force to propose this rule are the Chief of Staff at the Treasury Department, the head of the National Economic Council, and the White House staff. All came to Congress with an idea to propose this rule.

So I urge my colleagues to support Republicans' efforts to not see this rule implemented and to not fund it. I thank my friend from Pennsylvania for yielding to me.

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Mr. HILL. Madam Speaker, listening to the other side, and listening to my friend from Pennsylvania, I hear a lot about uncertainty; that we are not sure what we are here for; we are not sure what we are going to bring up on the House floor.

Well, I will tell you what: We are certain that inflation is hurting American families. We are certain that people don't know how to fill up their car; what that is going to cost; what they are going to sacrifice; moving from beef to chicken; working on prescriptions this week, maybe gas next week. So we are certain the American people have inflation, top concern.

This bill proposed today will help attack inflation by reducing the costs that will be imposed by the Securities and Exchange Commission in this act.

And I will read, Madam Speaker, from the Task Force on Climate- Related Financial Disclosures, the Bloomberg Commission, and it says: All these efforts must be cost-effective, reliable. They must be comparable across countries, across industries, within industries. And the proposal of SEC does not do that.

So I hope that we will be successful in H.R. 8589, which will save the government money. And if we are looking for bills to bring up, I say to my friend from Pennsylvania, I recommend H.R. 7209, which is the Price Stability Act, which will focus the Federal Reserve solely on fighting inflation; not fighting climate change; not fighting socioeconomic disparities, focused on inflation because inflation is a thief. That is what we should be on this floor debating.

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Mr. HILL. Madam Speaker, I really don't understand this debate, talking about the PACT Act, my friend from Massachusetts. That has passed the House. Let the Senate do its work.

We supported it here. Let's be serious here. I voted for the bill. The Senate is working out some concern they had. They changed the bill. They made the bill that is controversial over there. Let them figure it out.

In the Senate, they don't even know that revenue bills originate in the House. It was blue-slipped. They don't really know what they are doing over in the upper Chamber.

We know we have the advantage over them on that, but what we are talking about today are bills being considered today. The Speaker is leaving on some foreign trip tonight, so we are rushing around. We don't know why we are here today, and the people deserve to know in advance what we are voting on so we can prepare our arguments.

So, it is not about some bill over in the Senate. It is about what bills will be on the floor of the House today.

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