Providing for Consideration of H.R. Midnight Rules Relief Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. BIGGS of Arizona. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding to me.

Mr. Speaker, I do find it really interesting that, if Members follow the logic of those who oppose this bill, what Democrats are suggesting is that, for the 1,406 rules that the Biden administration passed since August, my colleagues on the other side of the aisle want us to do one bill for every one of them.

Let's do one bill for every one of them. We could. We could do that. I am happy to work. If that is what Democrats want to do, let's do it. We can come back next week. I am happy to work every Saturday and Sunday. That is our job.

The minority doesn't really mean it. Mr. Speaker, Democrats don't really mean it because the reality is that, if my colleagues on the other side of the aisle meant it, then my Democratic colleagues wouldn't stack 50 bills into one at a time when the minority does their omnibus spending packages the way House Democrats always do.

That is really interesting. The value to our economy and the budget of the rules that were implemented by the Biden administration, those 1,400, this isn't Andy Biggs talking. This isn't some outside group. Democrats claim it is Project 2025. This isn't those guys.

It is not any of those folks that said that the cost to the economy and the budget is $1.34 trillion. No. That was the Biden administration's own admission. That is what the imposition of their rules would cost, and we would love to get at that.

Democrats want us to do 1,400 separate bills. That way, none of their suspension bills where they are naming the post offices after their friends are going to get named. That is just what will happen. There won't be enough time.

Mr. Speaker, the bottom line is this: Democrats don't want us to consider the rules of the outgoing administration because we are going to see some absurdities when we do.

How about the heat rule? How about the heat rule? Up in the New England States, they might get 10 days a year where the high temperature is over 86 degrees.

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Mr. BIGGS of Arizona. Mr. Speaker, let's consider Arizona, where I am from. Do Members know how many days are above 86 degrees when people are working outside? It is about 300 days a year.

Democrats want the rule, set up by some person in a little cubicle-- if they even came into work, they might be working from home--to put a nationwide rule in place so that Phoenix, Arizona, basically is knocked out of being able to actually work and make it meaningful because we have 300 days a year above 86 degrees.

That is their heat standard. That is the rule.

Mr. Speaker, if my colleagues look into some of their antipollution stuff, guess what? Guess what the number one particulate is for just under 6 million people in Phoenix, Arizona, which is in Maricopa County. It is desert dust.

The EPA says to us: Hey, what you need to do is use water. You need to water that stuff down.

Guess what? The EPA also says that Maricopa County has a water problem.

Those are the kind of rules that my Democratic colleagues don't want talked about because what the minority wants to do is, if that rule is in place and you throw in the the 86-degree heat rule, Maricopa County, a big red county that my colleagues on the other side of the aisle don't like, effectively would be shut down economically from economic growth and expansion and population-wise. That is why the rules need to be reviewed.

Democrats say: Let's review them one at a time. My Democratic colleagues don't want to review them one at a time because this bill does not prevent reviewing them one at a time. It doesn't prevent that.

It can still be done, but it makes it more efficient because guess what? We have about 1,400 rules, and maybe 6 of them were worth a tinker's damn, and it means the rest of them have to be reviewed. The only way they can be reviewed and debated is to aggregate them into different subsets.

That is what this rule allows. That is why it is important, and it is important for the American people to understand that that administration imposed about $1.35 trillion worth of rules on them in the last year alone.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding to me.

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