Providing for Consideration of H.R. 1633, Farm Dust Regulation Prevention Act of 2011
Floor Speech
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. WEBSTER. Madam Speaker, I rise today in support of the rule and the underlying bill. House Resolution 487 provides for a structured rule for consideration of House Resolution 1633, the Farm Dust Regulation Prevention Act.
The rule makes 8 of the 11 amendments submitted to the Rules Committee in order, a majority of which are Democrat amendments, in order to have robust debate here on the floor of the House of Representatives.
H.R. 1633 passed out of the Energy and Commerce Committee with bipartisan support after proceeding through the committee process under regular order. A subcommittee hearing was followed by a subcommittee markup, and then a markup was held by the full committee, which passed the bill with bipartisan support.
The Farm Dust Regulation Prevention Act is quite simple. It seeks regulatory certainty in the short term and a regulatory, commonsense approach in the long term. Specifically, this legislation does two things. First, in the short term, the Farm Dust Regulation Prevention Act would temporarily prohibit the EPA from issuing a new coarse particulate matter standard for 1 year.
H.R. 1633 does not prohibit EPA from issuing a revised standard for coarse particulate matter after this 1-year timeout. Coarse particulate matter, or PM10, is also known by a much more common name: dust.
Second, in the longer term, this legislation would limit future EPA regulation of nuisance dust to areas where it is not already regulated by State or local government, where it causes substantial adverse effects, and where the benefits of the EPA stepping in would outweigh the costs.
Nuisance dust is particulate matter that is generated primarily from natural sources, dirt roads, earth moving, or other common farm activities. Nuisance dust is pieces of plants plowed up during tilling, soil disturbed by the movement of livestock or bits of rock kicked up by a truck driving down a dirt road. The definition specifically precludes combustion emissions, coal combustion residues and radioactive particulate matter from mining operations.
H.R. 1633 does not eliminate EPA's authority to step in if local or State regulatory efforts fall short of what is needed to adequately protect the public. The bill would allow EPA to step in and regulate ``nuisance dust'' in areas where States and localities do not do so, if it substantially hurts the public health, and if benefits of applying these standards outweigh the cost.
So in summary, if it isn't regulated, it would harm public health, and the benefit of regulation would outweigh the cost of regulation. The EPA could, and presumably would, fill that void.
While EPA Administrator Jackson has announced that she does not plan on changing the standard, EPA has been actively considering a revised, more costly and stringent standard as part of the review process. The same review process increased the stringency of that standard in 1996 and most recently in 2006. Prior to the administrator's announcement, EPA's staff had recommended further changes to the standard.
Despite Administrator Jackson's statement, there is nothing currently on the books preventing the EPA from adopting a stricter regulation. Further, as we all know, the environmental lobby could force a more stringent standard regardless of what the EPA announces, finalizes, or proposes through legal action.
This legislation provides ironclad certainty to farmers, ranchers, small business owners that farm dust would stay off the EPA's to-do list for at least another year. For that very reason, farming, agricultural and rural small business organizations of all shapes and sizes have put their steadfast support behind this legislation. To them, certainty means the ability to grow their business by creating jobs in their communities, feeding every American, and providing for their families through the sale of the fruits of their labors.
The agricultural community and, more largely, rural America is critical to economic growth and job creation. The agricultural sector alone supports 1.8 million American jobs and represents 5 percent of our Nation's total exports. The Obama administration has acknowledged the importance of economic health for rural America. In fact, the President's White House Rural Council has claimed that rural America is ``central to the economic health and prosperity of our Nation.''
Unfortunately, it is often rural communities, particularly those in the western United States, that suffer from the highest rates of unemployment and are least equipped to bear the burden of additional costs stemming from Washington.
So once again, Madam Speaker, I rise in support of this rule and the underlying legislation. The relevant committee of jurisdiction has worked to provide us with a bipartisan bill which, at its core, quite simply offers regulatory certainty in the short term and commonsense regularity relief in the long.
This bill is not a cure-all, but is a step in the right direction. While a small step, it is a commonsense approach to fixing what's wrong in Washington, D.C. It's a step that many in Congress on both sides of the aisle seem ready and willing to take.
As I mentioned, the Farm Dust Regulation Prevention Act passed out of subcommittee and full committee with bipartisan support. The bill has over 100 bipartisan cosponsors. Companion legislation in the Senate also enjoys that same bipartisan support.
Let's ensure rural businesses and American farmers that at least for 1 more year they can cross dust off the list of the potential bureaucratic burdens passed down from Washington.
I encourage my colleagues to vote ``yes ``on the rule and ``yes'' on the underlying bill, and I reserve the balance of my time.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. WEBSTER. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
That's a good reason as to why we should pass this bill. The real cure for unemployment is employment. If we can remove the uncertainty from the marketplace for farmers and for those in other places in this country through limited regulation--good regulation but not by overburdening the businesses and the job creators of this country--then we will have the opportunity to solve that problem, to solve it by hiring people.
I am hoping that this bill will pass. In knowing that it probably will pass in the House, I hope the Senate takes it up and the President signs it, and I hope we end up with less regulation in an area where many, many jobs could be created and where certainty could be provided if we would only pass this bill.
I reserve the balance of my time.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. WEBSTER. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Yes, Yogi Berra, it ain't over till it's over. We've got time.
We have a plan. House Republicans have a plan. It's down here on this card. We have a plan, a jobs plan. Twenty-five of those issues have already passed this House and they went to the Senate. And where are they? I don't know. They're there. They're ready to be acted on.
Let me just give one. The union labor in this country rallied around that bill a couple of days ago and said we want to build the pipeline. It's tens of thousands of jobs. Many of the Democrats opposed that, and yes, it's thousands and thousands of jobs. Is it a job creator? Absolutely.
Do we have a plan? We have a plan, and that's just one of the 25 that's waiting in the Senate for action. We need to have action there. We have a plan. We have job plans, this is it, and we're ready to move this country forward, get our economy rolling again, creating jobs, and making this economy better for everyone in America.
I reserve the balance of my time.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. WEBSTER. Madam Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time.
This bill provides for ample open debate, allowing for the colleagues here on this floor and across the aisle, both on our side and theirs, to offer amendments to this bill.
The underlying bill isn't particularly controversial. As a matter of fact, it's rather simple. This bill has no effect on direct spending. It does not appropriate any money or have any new appropriation in it at all. This bill creates no new programs. It has nothing to do with CutGo or pay-as-you-go, either way. It doesn't do either.
In the end, I can't imagine 186 different groups being so stirred up in this country to write and to call and to ask for this legislation, groups like the National Corn Growers Association and the Sheep Growers Association and the Association of Cooperatives and the Farm Bureaus across this country and the American Soybean Association and many, many more getting stirred up about nothing?
No, that argument is heifer dust. It is. This argument is real, it's true, and it's right, and it's absolutely just like what's happening in EPA in many other areas.
The underlying bill, as I said, is quite simple. It provides much-needed certainty in the short term for agricultural, ranching, and rural businesses by hitting pause on the EPA's runaway regulatory machine for just one measure for just 1 year.
H.R. 1633 simply says that now is not the time to thrust yet another burdensome, costly and, in EPA's own judgment, unnecessary regulation on rural job creators. In the long term, it offers regulatory relief to rural America by acknowledging that States and local communities are better suited to manage dust in their own communities and thus grant them the flexibility to do so.
It's particularly offensive because it's like the old cookie-cutter approach that Washington uses, the same program that's good for Ocoee, Florida, is good for Butte, Montana, and inner-city New York, and it's wrong. We ought to get rid of the cookie-cutter approach and go back to local communities and State governments and let them solve their problems, as opposed to one-size-fits-all Federal Government.
Given the state of the economy, given the EPA administrator's own comments about the lack of need to further regulate farm dust, given the dearth of scientific evidence that says that this is a danger, there is some sort of danger from farm dust, this legislation represents a commonsense effort to create an environment for job creation that all Members should support. It gives farmers, ranchers, and other rural small business owners the certainty, at least when it comes to dust, that costly regulations would not shackle their ability to focus on growing their business, providing for their families, and creating much needed jobs in rural America.
I ask my colleagues to join me in voting in favor of the rule and passage of the underlying bill.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Source