Red Tape Reduction and Small Business Job Creation Act
Floor Speech
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Mr. MARKEY. I thank the gentleman. I thank him for his great work on this bill.
Despite the best efforts of Republicans in Congress, our Nation has actually made significant progress over the last several years protecting the health and the well-being of Americans.
Democrats have passed legislation ensuring that Wall Street plays by the rules. They can't continue to turn it into a casino where the rich clean up on the way up and the poor get cleaned out on the way down.
Democrats modernized food safety laws so that Americans can feel secure in the knowledge that the food we put on the dinner table won't make our families sick.
Democrats passed legislation to protect the privacy of Americans' sensitive health information.
But all of these laws are still in the process of being implemented. That's what's bothering the Republicans here today and all of their supporters across the country. They cannot go fully into effect to work for the American people until those regulations are finalized. Republicans are determined to keep these vital health, safety, and consumer protections from reaching the finish line to offer protection for ordinary families.
GOP used to stand for ``Grand Old Party.'' Now GOP stands for ``Gut Our Protections.''
I released a report today, called, ``Protection Rejection: GOP Abandons Consumer, Health, and Safety Measures''--across the board. It describes the safeguards that would be jeopardized under this misguided legislation.
If you're a wounded veteran needing home care, it will be harder for your family to take time off work to care for you. Family members were going--finally--to be able to take up to 26 weeks of job-protected leave to care for a wounded veteran back from Iraq and Afghanistan, but the implementation of this new law will be stopped cold by this coldhearted Republican bill.
The bill prevents new fuel economy standards, increasing our dangerous dependence on foreign oil, forcing families to pay more at the pump, rather than a law that backs out 4.3 million barrels of oil a day from OPEC, telling them that we don't need their oil any more than we need their sand. They're saying stop those regulations from going into effect.
And as we approach the 2-year anniversary of the worst environmental disaster in the history of our country, the BP oil spill, this misguided Republican bill would stop new safety standards for the blowout preventers on drilling rigs that could prevent future spills. This makes no sense. The safety of the American people should be put above the special interests that want to stop all of these regulations.
The Republicans say this is about cutting red tape, but it's really nothing more than a red herring, a desperate attempt to distract from the GOP's abject failure to spur job creation in this country. There are so many red herrings out here we might as well put an aquarium here to deal with all of them that the Republican Party is throwing out here on this bill.
We must not allow this Republican regulatory freeze bill to set consumer protections back to the ice age. There's simply too much progress at stake.
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Mr. MARKEY. Hundreds of regulations are going to be taken off the books right now. And over the life of this bill, thousands of regulations that would have protected the health, the safety, the consumer interests across our country will be wiped off the books.
This is a wholesale destruction of the protections that ordinary people need against wealthy corporations taking advantage of them in their homes, in their neighborhoods. And so, ladies and gentlemen, there has not been a more important bill that comes out this year of this Congress onto the House floor.
All of you have access to this report I'm putting out here today, ``Protection Rejection: GOP Abandons Consumer Health and Safety Measures.'' It's on my Web site. If you want to understand the full damage that's going to be done across all of these areas, from Dodd-Frank to health care, to food safety, to privacy protections for families across our country, vote ``no'' on this bill.
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Mr. MARKEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself, at this point, 2 minutes, and it's just to lay out how simple this amendment is.
It would ensure that the government could act to protect the public from extreme weather, including drought, flooding, and catastrophic wildfire.
The Republican bill on the floor today is so broadly and badly written, who knows what could fall through the holes it blasts in America's safety net.
Given the record-breaking extreme weather events our country has experienced in the last few years, it cannot risk tying the helping hands of government when it comes to dealing with droughts and floods and wildfires and extreme events.
Mr. Welch was just talking about these fuel economy standards that lift our fuel economy standards to 54.5 miles per gallon by the year 2026. Well, that's a message to OPEC that we don't need their oil anymore than we need their sand. But it's also a message that we can reduce the amount of greenhouse gases we're sending up into the atmosphere in a dramatic way.
And do you know who's complying with that? Do you know who said they support it? The auto industry of the United States of America.
So it's not that we're doing anything that's radical. The radical activity is coming from the majority, from the Republican Party, that just has an aversion to anything that is put on the books as regulation, even if it helps America's safety, helps America's climate, helps America's foreign policy to back out imported oil. And that's really what's very troubling here today.
I reserve the balance of my time.
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Mr. MARKEY. Corn is shriveling. Pastures are dying. More than 1,000 counties in 29 States are eligible for drought disaster assistance. Increased food prices from droughts act like an extreme weather food tax on every single American. Even if the drought is not in your neighborhood, you will feel the pain at the checkout counter. Even if the heat wave has broken in your State, your cupboard may be emptier as you have to make hard choices at the grocery store. Even if the storm skips your town, the disruptions will be felt all the way to your dinner plate. Many of our Western forests are also extremely dry. Wildfire has already burned millions of acres this summer. Tens of thousand of people have had to evacuate. Hundreds of homes have been destroyed. Lives have been lost.
We also know that increasing carbon pollution increases the risk of extreme weather. We all buy flood and fire insurance for our homes. This amendment is the flood and fire insurance for America from the disaster, the disaster that is this Republican legislation.
On the other side of this spectrum, parts of Minnesota and Florida experienced devastating flooding in June. The rain from Tropical Storm Debby caused Florida to have its wettest June ever. All of this occurred during the hottest 12-month period for the lower 48 States since record-keeping began in 1895, and it follows 2011, when America experienced a record 14 extreme weather disasters that each caused $1 billion or more of damage.
Clearly, extreme weather is a threat to the safety and the security of the American people and the economy, but this Republican bill could smother the government's ability to prepare for a response to extreme weather events. This amendment would make sure that the government's regulatory fire blanket is ready for emergencies. The risk of extreme weather is not going away. In fact, it is increasing. Mark Twain once complained that everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it. Well, now we are with this amendment.
By pumping carbon into the air, we are changing the climate, raising the temperature, increasing the risk of extreme weather. The Republicans just don't accept science. Vote ``aye'' on the Markey amendment.
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