Regulatory Accountability Act of 2011

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. COHEN. I want to thank the ranking member for the time.

I have a nice speech that was written by a fantastic staffer that I'm not going to use today because I've used it in the past. Most of the speeches today have been used--or parts of them--on the other bills we've had.

Because of what we've done this week and the wonderful gentlemen on the opposite side--Mr. Smith and Mr. Coble are two great, wonderful people who I think dearly of. They just have different philosophies than I have. Different perspectives.

These bills have been bills to basically be anti-government bills. That's what this Congress has been about. It's been about being anti-government, and it's been about defeating the President of the United States. These bills which we've got would destroy the Administrative Procedure Act and destroy the whole process of government that we've known for decades.

The fact is, President Bush had as many, if not more, rules than President Obama; but we didn't hear from the other side anything about the nefarious rulemaking process, the need for reform, the jobs that could be created by eliminating the rulemaking authority or stifling it and changing it, until President Obama became the President. We heard this morning from the other side that it's the administration that's at fault because of all the rules they've produced, and now they say some of rules can change. They say the administration is at fault for all the rules they passed. They made fewer rules than President Bush made. And there was silence on the other side. Silence.

All of a sudden there's a roar. This whole week, when we need jobs, when our economy needs job, when our people need unemployment compensation, unemployment insurance continued for the 99ers--not the 99 percent, although they're part of that--the 99ers in terms of weeks they get unemployment insurance; when we need the doctors and medical folks to get the Medicare fixed that we always put in to make sure that we continue to pay doctors a reasonable rate to treat our Medicare patients, we're not dealing with that. And when we need to be dealing with the payroll tax cut for the middle class, we're not dealing with that. We've spent a whole week on destroying government and being anti-government.

Rick Perry, one of the candidates for President on the other side, has talked about making Congress half time. How could we be half time when we're not accomplishing our jobs and creating jobs full-time?

As Mr. Conyers talked about, next week we've got the mother of all anti-government bills, the REINS Act, which really is reining in government, a bill that would require every rule to be passed by both the House and the Senate and signed by the President within 70 or 75 days before it goes into effect. That's Star Wars--or anti-Star Wars. It's really a big dark hole out there in the universe where all rules and regulations would go and die and never be seen again and just disappear.

Well, that's not the way government is supposed to work or should work. And if we had that, how could we work half time under President Perry? We'd have to be working time-and-a-half. And we know there's not enough money for overtime. And President Perry doesn't want us to do that. He wants us to get a separate job when we go home. We go back to San Antonio, we serve half time as a Congressman and half time we work at Walmart. That's what he's suggesting.

Who would really love this bill? The tobacco companies. Wouldn't it be great if we didn't have rules and regulations on tobacco and we didn't put little notices on tobacco that smoking can kill you; smoking can cause damage to infants; that pregnant women shouldn't drink or smoke. Tobacco companies would love this. Those rules and regulations, very burdensome, giving notice to people about the dangers of tobacco, which Europe has been doing forever and we need to put an end to because it costs us so much in medical costs and the lost of precious lives.

The polluters would love this. The destroyers and plunderers of our environment, they'd love it, because wow, Olly, Olly, in free, we can do whatever we want. Removal of mountains, drilling; more oil spills, less regulation.

In an emergency, the government can't even respond to clean up the mess. That's what they're talking about. It's all phrased in the tones of small business, small business, small business. Small business is wonderful. We do a lot with small business. Small business is a jobs creator. But this affects big business as well. And it's big business who is behind this, not small business. Small business is the front used to help the polluters, the tobacco companies, and the others that don't want to see regulations that protect the American public's food, air, water, transportation, and other areas.

The issue of judicial review has come up, and in this bill we give the courts more power than they otherwise had. The other side usually talks about the importance of the judicial branch simply being an equal partner; but in this position, the judicial branch could review any rule and regulation and make its own determination of cost-benefit analysis without expertise that the agencies have, and it would be the judiciary that had the final say. So it would give more power to the courts and more power, in fact, to the administration. The OIRA office in the White House would have more power than ever. So it's antithetical to much of which the other side argues about.

This is not a good bill. It's not good government. And I would ask that we all vote against it and we get back to the jobs that we should be for--creating jobs for the American people and getting us out of this deep, dark, long recession.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source