Directing Committees to Review Regulations from Federal Agencies

Floor Speech

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Mr. GARAMENDI. As I listen to this debate this evening, Mr. Speaker, I find myself wanting to focus on jobs, but what I just heard makes my blood boil.

I was the Deputy Secretary at the Department of the Interior while the rapers and pillagers of the public land wanted all regulations to disappear. They wanted to have open hunting for minerals, for oil, for gas and coal on all public lands.

And you talked a moment ago about the pulling of that permit for that coal mine. They would, in that permit, level the hills of Appalachia, flatten them, ruin the streams, destroy, destroy, destroy.

The regulations are there for a reason. They are there to protect the precious environment of America. And if it is your intent to do away with those regulations, then know this: You will have a fight on your hands.

You will have a fight on your hands when you try to do away with the regulations that protect the men and women on those drilling rigs from the extraordinary accidents that happen in deepwater drilling.

But, my purpose here tonight is different. My purpose here tonight is to ask why it is that the Republican majority has spent 5 weeks, 5 weeks leading this Congress, and not created one bill that creates one job, not one. Five weeks, zero jobs. You ran on jobs. Where are your job bills?

Your regulations are hiding--this whole debate is hiding something, because, as we speak, here you are in the process of figuring out how to cut $100 billion out of the Federal budget for the next 7 months.

What does that mean? It means that national parks will close. It means that the clean water people that came to my office today will have no money, no money to build the sanitation systems and provide clean water for their citizens in the rural communities that you were just talking about.

What is this about? This is about hiding the ball. This is about wasting our time. When we ought to be talking about jobs, instead, you are hiding a $100 billion cut that will displace hundreds of thousands of workers in the next 7 months. That's what this is about.

We're talking about hiding the ball when it comes to the men and women that maintain those very places you talk about out there in the great western lands.

You're hiding the bill about the cuts you are going to make to education, for the teachers that will lose their jobs, for the janitors, for the bus drivers, for those people that are now employed that will lose their jobs as you attempt to put those cuts in place.

This is about jobs. The Democrats are talking about jobs. We're talking about making it in America. We're talking about those solar projects. Yes, we're talking about who's going to win the next energy, the next energy systems for this world. It's not coal. It's not oil. It's the green renewable energy and nuclear. That's what we're talking about on our side. We're talking about how we can do that.

And you're talking about wasting 9 hours of precious time on this floor doing what you've already done. You've already issued the edicts of what you are going to do in this committee. I received it 2 weeks ago. You're going to explore this; you're going to review that. Two weeks ago you told me, a new member of this committee, what you intend to do, and now you're wasting our time on this floor when we ought to be talking about jobs.

We ought to be talking about China getting ahead of us on tomorrow's energy, wind, solar, solar thermal, all of those things. But no, no, we're going to talk about what you've already done. You did it 2 weeks ago.

Why are you wasting our time when Americans want jobs, when Americans want solid legislation like Make It In America, using our tax money to buy solar and wind equipment that is manufactured in America? Why don't we talk about that?

Why don't we talk about using our money, our tax money that we pay every day at the gasoline pump, about American-made buses and trains?

But no, we're going to talk about regulations. You already have told us what you're going to do.

Let's talk about creating jobs. That's what we ought to be doing here. We ought not be wasting our time doing what you've already done. You've told us what you're going to do.

And, by the way, if you think for a moment you can do away with those regulations that are protecting America's precious resources and lives, know this: You've got a fight. You've got a fight that you lost in the 1990s. You lost it in the 2000-2008 period, and you will lose that fight because we are about creating good, healthy jobs in America that do not destroy the American environment.

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