Regulations from the Executive in Need of Scrutiny Act of 2011

Floor Speech

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Mr. COHEN. I appreciate the time, but I don't appreciate the relocation. I am from Tennessee, the Volunteer State, and from Memphis, in particular. But it is appropriate, I guess, that we be a little confused with States because listening to the debate on the floor, it's obvious we're a little confused about history and Presidents, too, for President Obama has been Bush-whacked here on the floor of the House.

It's not the Obama economy, it's the Bush economy that President Obama saved from going into the second Great Depression that this country would have suffered in 100 years, saved it from depression with great actions at a time of bipartisan action that helped save this country from the Great Depression that it was otherwise looking at. I think we need to commend President Obama and not Bush-whack him when we get the chance here in the partisan discussions.

This bill that has been brought up, H.R. 10, the REINS Act, would rein in government. It would rein in the opportunity for regulations that are promulgated by experts in our agencies, experts who have years of expertise in subject matters, in order to come up with rules and regulations to implement the laws that we pass.

Now, I am proud to be a Member of the United States Congress. I know that we have good men and women in this House and that most of the people are very good men and women. But right now, Congress has a 9 percent approval rating. This bill would tell the American public that it should take the expertise of the people who are in the agencies and in the administration and turn it over to the 435 Members of Congress--535 when including those in the Senate--the least approved government body that exists.

On the one hand, they decry Congress, and their candidate Mr. Perry wants us to work half time, but this bill would make us the super-regulatory commission. We would have to approve every regulation by a positive vote in the House and by a positive vote in the Senate. We would have to do it and have the President sign it within 70 days of promulgation. We'd only have every other Thursday to do this, and we'd only have debate of 30 minutes on each side. So you'd take the least respected body of government in the entire United States of America--maybe of the entire world--and give it a very limited amount of time to make all of the rules and regulations for the biggest government in the world.

Talk about clean air. We wouldn't have it. You'd have more dirty rain. The REINS Act--it should be called the Acid Rain Act. It's raining outside. It's raining prevarications, fabrications, and canards upon us, none of which are appropriate for this body or for the American people.

We've had several bills dealing with regulation in this session, all of which basically tend to emasculate government. These bills take away the people's rights to clean air, clean water, safe products, and to occupational safety and health hazard protection, all of which are almost second nature to the American public.

I'd ask us to defeat this bill and to protect our environment and our workers.

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