Regulatory Accountability Act of 2011
Floor Speech
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Mr. NADLER. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 4 minutes.
My amendment would exempt rules proposed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission from the new impediments to the regulations in this bill.
Mr. Chairman, there they go again. The right-wing Republican House majority is practicing more voodoo economics. This time it's the belief that overregulation is the cause of our slow economic growth and high unemployment rate. There is no evidence to support this position--none. In actuality, according to the Economic Policy Institute, ``economy-wide studies do not find a significant decline in employment from regulatory policies.'' And some regulations actually create jobs due to regulatory compliance.
More broadly, findings from the Office of Management and Budget in both Republican and Democratic administrations show the benefits of regulations far outweigh their costs. Most recently, OMB found that the benefits from major rules issued between 2001 and 2010 yielded benefits ranging from $136 billion to $651 billion and imposed costs of between $44 billion and $62 billion.
Despite these facts, the right-wing Republican House leadership presses ahead with what it calls regulatory reform. Today's bill, H.R. 3010, in the name of so-called reform, adds over 60 new procedural and analytical hoops agencies and departments must jump through before a regulation can be issued. The result is to impede, obstruct, and delay the attempt of government to accomplish one of its most basics functions--protecting the health and welfare of our people.
Not surprisingly, groups who care about protecting public safety, health, and the environment, such as the Natural Resource Defense Council, Public Citizen, Defenders of Wildlife, and U.S. PIRG, oppose this bill. According to the Coalition for Sensible Safeguards, which represents a coalition of many such groups, this bill ``will grind to a halt the rulemaking process'' and ``is nothing less than an attempt to roll back critical public safeguards and promote industry interests ahead of protecting American citizens.''
Americans should rightfully be scared that this bill will put their health and safety at risk. One example that highlights this is the subject of this amendment--nuclear power. The risks and dangers of nuclear power were made all the more clear this year. In Japan, we all watched in horror when that country was devastated by a meltdown of the Fukushima nuclear power plant. We are now told that over 10 percent of the land of that country will be unusable for decades. Later, Virginia was struck by a relatively rare but strong earthquake felt up and down the eastern seaboard. It caused a nuclear power plant near the epicenter to have to go offline.
Because of the catastrophes that can result from disasters, be they natural or manmade, at nuclear power plants, prevention of meltdowns is the key. That's why I'm a cosponsor of H.R. 1242, the Nuclear Power Plant Safety Act of 2011, sponsored by Representative Markey, which is designed to help do that. Among other changes, it would require the NRC to impose rules requiring plants to upgrade to withstand severe events, like earthquakes, and to have enough backup power so as to avoid a meltdown for a significant length of time.
The NRC must have the ability and flexibility to impose new regulations quickly to safeguard the health and well-being of Americans. Impeding the Nuclear Regulatory Agency's ability to regulate will not save one job, but it might cost millions of lives in the event of a disaster. Sadly, this bill makes the ability to regulate nuclear power plants all but impossible.
For me, this concern hits close to home. A nuclear power plant at Indian Point about which many people, including myself, have had concerns for years lies less than 40 miles from the center of New York City, in my district. There are 20 million people living within a 50-mile radius around the plant, the same radius used by the NRC as the basis for the evacuation recommended after the Fukushima disaster. Indian Point sits near two earthquake fault lines and according to NRC is the most likely nuclear power plant in the country to experience more damage due to an earthquake.
To keep my constituents and, indeed, all Americans safe, I'm offering this amendment today. It would exempt the Nuclear Regulatory Commission from the onerous new requirements for rulemaking imposed by this bill. With this amendment, the NRC would have the ability to safeguard public health and safety as it should. We must pass this amendment so that rulemaking for nuclear disaster is not impeded.
I urge the passage of this amendment, and I reserve the balance of my time.
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Mr. NADLER. Mr. Chairman, the argument for this amendment is very simple. This bill would make it almost impossible--by putting 60 new requirements in the way of agencies to make new rules, would make it almost impossible for rulemaking and, in fact, especially for emergency or safety rulemaking in the event that we perceive the necessity for such a thing.
At least for nuclear power plants, the potential for disaster, the potential for killing mass numbers of people, we have seen. We've seen it at Chernobyl. We've seen it at Three Mile Island. We've seen it at Fukushima. At least for that situation, allow the government rulemaking agency to continue to have the power to protect our people.
A vote for this amendment is a vote to continue to have the government have the power to protect our people. A vote against this amendment and for this bill is a vote to put the lives of all our people at risk and to prevent the government from protecting the lives of our people, and it would be almost an immoral vote.
I yield back the balance of my time.
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