Regulations from the Executive in Need of Scrutiny Act of 2013
Floor Speech
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Mr. JOHNSON of Georgia. Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to H.R. 367, the REINS Act.
I have profound concerns with the REINS Act. This bill would undermine the ability of agencies to protect the public interest. It is a continuation of the majority's obstructionist approach that led to sequestration.
This deregulatory train wreck threatens to send us back to the days before the Wall Street collapse, a financial catastrophe that could have been avoided by responsible policies. This bill comes from the same brain trust that pulled the bill for transportation funding yesterday. Apparently, $4.4 billion in budget cuts is not good enough for these Republicans.
And now we consider the REINS Act, a bill that would require Congress to have the final say on regulations. Stop and think about that. The same House Republicans that could not vote to fund transportation now want to have the final say on all major rules. Never mind that Congress already has that power under the Congressional Review Act. Never mind that House Republican leadership tried this same maneuver in 2011.
If Republican leadership truly believed in growing the economy and creating jobs, we would have come together with a grand bargain long ago. We could even vote on job-creating legislation to strengthen the middle class. But instead, this Republican Congress insists on voting on a messaging bill that will go absolutely nowhere. Few Americans are surprised by yet another Republican leadership failure that has become par for the course.
Mr. Chairman, millions of Americans are still out of work. As we go back to our districts over the recess, I hope my Republican colleagues can look into the eyes of the poor and the unemployed in their communities and say: ``Don't worry, I voted for a messaging bill to deregulate America.''
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Mr. JOHNSON of Georgia. Mr. Chairman, I oppose this amendment because it would add yet another onerous and unnecessary burden on agencies and will further stifle agency rulemaking.
Among other things, the REINS Act requires that an agency issuing a rule submit reports to Congress and the GAO containing a list of related regulatory actions intended to implement the same statutory provision or regulatory objective as the rule at issue, together with the individual and aggregate economic effects of those actions.
This amendment would add to that list actions taken, or that will be taken, by Federal agencies other than the agency issuing the rule to meet the same objectives. Such a requirement means that an agency issuing a rule would now be obliged to survey the vast panoply of Federal agencies to determine what other actions are being taken by other agencies before it could issue a rule.
Congress did not create agencies, Mr. Chairman, to keep tabs on other agencies. This amendment would only serve to divert already limited agency resources away from protecting the American people.
This amendment is just a further effort to derail rulemaking. It's placing another burden on already limited agency resources and is really just busy work.
So for those reasons I rise in opposition.
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Mr. JOHNSON of Georgia. Mr. Chairman, in response, I would point out that with respect to interrelated regulations, different regulatory authorities have different regulatory objectives. And so, to require that one agency survey the other to see whether or not there are any similar or the same objectives, with no power or authority to decide to do away with a particular regulation, based on an objective that is no longer suitable, I think, is not something that this amendment allows for; and it's also something that agencies themselves are not equipped to do.
I agree that we need to have some mechanism whereby regulatory regulations can be looked at, modified, strengthened or weakened or done away with at any particular time. But this anti-regulatory legislation and this amendment will not accomplish that.
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Mr. JOHNSON of Georgia. Mr. Chairman, this amendment presupposes that regulations depress job creation. To the contrary, there's no credible evidence that regulations depress job creation.
The majority's own witness at one of our hearings clearly debunked the myth that regulations stymie job creation. Christopher DeMuth of the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think thank, stated in his prepared remarks that the ``focus on jobs ..... can lead to confusion in regulatory debates.'' Also, he stated that ``the employment effects of regulation, while important, are indeterminate.''
Nonetheless, I appreciate that this amendment recognizes that regulations could create jobs. I am, however, concerned about this amendment because it would add to the analytical burdens of agencies a speculative assessment of jobs added and lost and how many of those jobs would be added or lost to the public and private sectors.
To the extent that regulations have anything to do with jobs, H.R. 367 proponents should overwhelmingly support my amendment, which is upcoming, which simply exempts from H.R. 367's congressional approval mechanism all rules that OMB determines would result in net job creation. This way, job creating rules would not effectively be vetoed, which would be the precise result under H.R. 367.
Also, instead of trying to make Congress a superadministrative agency, what we should be doing is considering actual job creation legislation. We also should be talking about how to help middle class families who are struggling financially.
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Mr. JOHNSON of Georgia. In response, Mr. Chairman, I would say that the old ways of creating or producing energy--those ways that foul up our environment and pollute our air and water and cause health concerns to the people of this great Nation--those types of jobs, fortunately, yield to a brighter day of new renewable and clean forms of energy. That's a growth industry that, if this legislature could only see the brightness of the future, I think we would have a whole lot more jobs created as the jobs of the past recede into history.
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Mr. JOHNSON of Georgia. Mr. Chairman, ObamaCare is resulting in 30 to 40 million people having access to the health care system, and that's not going to create any jobs? When you're bringing that many people into the health care system, that's going to kill jobs? How many more doctors will be needed? Maybe 20,000 will be needed to accommodate and treat those people. How many nurses and medical care practitioners will we need to train in order to accommodate the growth in the health industry that ObamaCare brings about?
We have to use our common sense. ObamaCare is not going to result in job loss.
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Mr. JOHNSON of Georgia. Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of my amendment, which is very simple: it would exclude from this bill any rule that would result in net job growth.
I ask that my colleagues support this commonsense amendment to promote job growth and help to strengthen the middle class. After all, the stated purpose of the REINS Act is to grow the economy and create jobs, isn't that correct?
Although this bill purports to grow the economy and create jobs, nothing could be further from the truth. This bill's myopic focus on gumming up the regulatory process will not create a single job. It will, however, result in the loss of much-needed rules that protect the health, safety, and well-being of the men, women, and children of America.
I have profound concerns about the REINS Act. What would be its impact on air and water quality? This bill would undermine the ability of agencies to protect the public interest. It is a continuation of the majority's anti-middle class, pro-big business, anti-regulatory approach to governing.
The majority continues to rely on debunked partisan studies. Thee studies presuppose that regulations have harmful effects on job growth. Far from it. There is ample bipartisan evidence in support of the opposite conclusion.
Regulations ensure that the water we consume, the air that we breathe, the places where we work and where our kids go to school are safe. Regulations ensure fairness in the workplace and in the marketplace. Regulations are necessary to protect the have-nots from the haves; whereas the REINS Act protects the haves from the have-nots.
Nevertheless, the House Republican leadership continues like an out-of-control freight train to drive its reckless deregulatory agenda through Congress. This deregulatory train wreck threatens to send us back in time to the early 1900s, when there was no minimum wage, no workplace protections, and no limits on Wall Street.
If Republican leadership truly believed in growing the economy and creating jobs we would have come together with a grand bargain a long time ago. We could have agreed to a mix of spending cuts and tax reforms to address the government's long-term debt. We could have prevented the mindless austerity of sequestration which threatens our still-fragile economic recovery. Instead, this Tea Party Congress could not even muster the will to vote to fund the transportation bill yesterday. This is yet another example of a ``do-nothing'' Congress under the leadership of an anti-middle class Republican leadership.
Americans have a right to expect that their elected legislators will enact laws that help create jobs, like doing something about sequestration. My colleague, Mr. Hal Rogers, chairman of the Appropriations Committee, hit the nail on the head yesterday when he said, and I quote:
``Sequestration--and its unrealistic and ill-conceived discretionary cuts--must be brought to an end.''
American workers continue to face hurdles to providing for their families, and I'm gravely concerned about the effects of sequestration on my home State of Georgia. Last month, furloughs began for most civilian Defense Department employees at Robins Air Force Base and other military bases across Georgia. This won't just affect the hardworking people at the base, like firefighters; it will also have a substantial impact on the local economies.
As retired General Robert McMahon reports, the furloughs which began last week will take $50 million out of the economy around the Robins Air Force Base alone. Multiply that with the economic catastrophe across other military bases in Georgia and throughout the country, and you begin to understand the truly caustic effects of sequestration on small businesses and on the economy. But instead of working together to come to a bipartisan solution to the sequestration fiasco, this Congress is continuing an agenda to make life worse for American families.
I urge all of my colleagues to support this commonsense amendment to promote job creation, and I reserve the balance of my time.
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