All Economic Regulations are Transparent Act of 2014
Floor Speech
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Mr. JOHNSON of Georgia. Madam Chair, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Earlier this week, we had a declaration that this week would be ``stop government abuse'' week. My colleagues on the other side called for us to commemorate this week by the introduction of draconian anti-safety legislation that would allow businesses to declare war on the rules that protect Americans, including babies, children, and the elderly. That is why, Madam Chair, I rise in opposition to H.R. 2804, the Achieving Less Excess in Regulation and Requiring Transparency Act of 2014, also known as the so-called ``ALERRT Act.''
The ALERRT Act is a continuation of the same Republican obstruct at all costs paradigm that led to the sequester and to the shutdown of the Federal Government. This race to the bottom approach to the regulatory process is wasteful and dangerous, and it prioritizes profits over protecting Americans.
Although the ALERRT Act purports to ease the burden of regulations on American businesses, it would not create a single job, grow the economy or help any small business to thrive, nor does it address serious issues--the minimum wage, unemployment insurance, pay equity or immigration reform--that would help so many American workers and businesses. Instead, the only purpose of this bill is to straitjacket the same rulemaking process that protects countless Americans every day.
Title I of the bill imposes a 6-month moratorium on rules. The rulemaking process is already transparent, deliberative, and exhaustively inclusive of the views of small businesses and other interested parties.
Adding an additional 6 months to this process would do little except create uncertainty and increase compliance costs.
Instead of cutting through red tape, title II of the bill would add over 60 additional procedural and analytical requirements to the rulemaking process. This is yet another clear message that this bill would lengthen, not shorten or streamline, the rulemaking process, thus undermining the regulatory certainty and predictability that small businesses rely on to make long-term decisions.
In case the first two titles didn't adequately convey the message that Republicans are dead serious about helping deep-pocketed interests create regulatory mischief and confusion instead of offering serious solutions, titles III and IV would authorize virtually any party under the sun to challenge a proposed rule or intervene in litigation in Federal court no matter their connection, or lack thereof, to the issue.
Make no mistake. This bill is a wolf in sheep's clothing. It would jeopardize critical public health and safety regulatory protections and undermine the very small businesses it claims to protect.
By giving a handout to well-funded organizations to challenge proposed rules, consent decrees, and settlement agreements at every opportunity, the ALERRT Act would stack the deck against the public interest and the American taxpayer.
And who would be harmed by this deregulatory train wreck? Every American who wants to be able to breathe fresh air and who wants to drink clean water; every mother who wants safe formula for her baby and cribs that don't collapse on the baby in the middle of the night; and every small business competing for an edge in a marketplace dominated by large, well-funded competitors. And the list goes on and on and on.
I hope you will join me in my observation of stop government abuse by Republicans week and my opposition to the ALERRT Act.
I urge my colleagues to oppose this dangerous legislation, and I reserve the balance of my time.
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Mr. JOHNSON of Georgia. Madam Chair, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mining, construction work, manufacturing, those are the kinds of livelihoods that have made this country a great nation, people being able to go to work with a lunchbox in hand and work hard every day, make a decent wage.
By the way, $7.25 an hour for a full-time worker would equate to about $14,500 a year. That is just simply not enough for a working person to raise a family and take care of that family. They need help when they make $7.25 an hour. They would need help from the government if they couldn't rely on friends and relatives for support.
So that is a shame, in this day and time, where a person working a manufacturing job, or even a job in a mine or on a construction site, would be making $7.25 an hour.
We should, perhaps, Madam Chair, be paying attention to income generators such as that kind of legislation, as opposed to legislation like H.R. 2804, which would simply make it difficult to protect those workers in those unsafe occupations like mining, like construction work, like manufacturing, keeping the work site, the job place safe. Regulations are what do that.
With that, Madam Chair, I reserve the balance of my time.
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Mr. JOHNSON of Georgia. Madam Chair, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Madam Chair, oh, how I wish that my friends on the Republican side of the aisle cared as much about America's workers as they do about America's big businesses.
Oh, how I wish that they cared more to let a minimum wage bill come to the floor, where I believe that most Members of the House of Representatives would find it within their hearts to realize that $7.25, you just can't make it on that without help. Everyone who goes out and works hard every day should be able to be paid a fair living wage and be able to support themselves and their family.
Madam Chair, I reserve the balance of my time.
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Mr. JOHNSON of Georgia. Madam Chair, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Madam Chairman, the majority deliberately downplays the benefits of regulation and exaggerates the cost of regulation, when in fact, the benefits of regulation far exceed the costs, whether those benefits are defined in monetary terms or in terms of promoting values like protecting public health and safety, and ensuring civil rights and human dignity.
The explosion that occurred down in Texas not too long ago that wiped out an entire town, I believe it was a fertilizer plant. Many lives lost. If there had been adequate legislation and adequate regulation to protect those people and the workers in the plant, then those folks would still be here today.
What we are doing with this legislation is preventing the promulgation of the kinds of rules that would protect the health and safety of people throughout America, not just workers, but people who have to eat, people who have to drink, people who have to breathe. The benefits of regulation far outweigh the costs.
A 2012 draft of the Office of Management and Budget report to Congress on the costs and benefits of regulations concluded that the net benefits of regulation promulgated through the third fiscal year of the Obama administration have exceeded $91 billion.
This amount, which includes not only monetary savings, but also lives saved and injuries prevented, is more than 25 times the net benefits through the third fiscal year of the previous administration, and these are important points that I believe my friends on the other side of the aisle like to omit from their analysis.
With that, I reserve the balance of my time.
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Mr. JOHNSON of Georgia. Madam Chair, the gentleman speaks eloquently as a lawyer, and he makes excellent points.
Regulations do cost. So out of a $15 trillion gross domestic product, $1.8 trillion dedicated for regulatory expenses which protect lives--I can't put a value on one human life--but tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people are dying because of unsafe conditions on the job. It is certainly worth $1.7 trillion out of $15 trillion in a year.
I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Cartwright).
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Mr. JOHNSON of Georgia. Madam Chair, my colleague from Alabama said that we all need to come together to find real solutions to create jobs. I submit that one way that we could create jobs, in addition to making sure that we have equal pay for equal work and that we increase the minimum wage to a living wage, another way to do that is through immigration reform.
The Chamber of Commerce and small businesses everywhere have come together in support of comprehensive immigration reform. Why? Because it creates jobs.
David Park, the cofounder and creator of Job Creators Alliance, wrote in 2012:
Immigration reform is key to spurring innovation and getting the economy back on track. I am a small business owner who realizes the role legal immigrants play in creating new jobs. As founder and CEO of a boutique merchant bank, I have started or acquired nearly 30 small and midsize companies, creating hundreds of jobs for Americans across the country. I am also an immigrant and an example of how highly skilled immigrants educated in the United States can drive job creation right here.
So immigration reform, Madam Chair, is a job creator. We can't seem to get an immigration bill--which, by the way, has been passed by the Senate. We can't get it heard by this Congress. We cannot bring a bill to the floor that would pass the House that would result in comprehensive immigration reform. We cannot bring a bill to the floor of the House that would provide for a raise for Americans who work for $7.25 an hour, full-time. $14,500 a year is simply not enough to feed the family and take care of one's self. We can't get job-creating bills that would stimulate our economy by providing for dollars to go towards transportation and towards repairing and enhancing our infrastructure. Instead, we get caught up on messaging bills like the achieving less excess in regulation and requiring transparency act of 2014, also known as the ALERRT Act.
I oppose this bill for numerous reasons, the most important of which is that it would jeopardize critical public health and safety regulatory protections. For example, the bill requires agencies to consider potential costs and benefits associated with proposed and final rules, notwithstanding any other provisions of law. This supermandate would effectively trump all other statutes--such as the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, and the Occupational Safety and Health Act--that prohibit or limit the use of cost information in setting health and safety standards.
In addition, title II of the bill would require agencies and Federal courts to consider whether a rule has ``significant adverse effects on ..... the ability of United States-based enterprises to compete with foreign-based enterprises in domestic and export markets.'' The practical effect, Madam Chair, of this definition is that it will require agencies and the courts to consider the business and regulatory environment of other nations.
Consider, for example, a proposed rule that imposes heightened clean air requirements on American steel manufacturers. H.R. 2804 would necessarily require consideration of whether this regulation--which could potentially result in higher compliance costs--could make American steel products less competitive in a country, such as China, that has a much less stringent or no regulatory regime.
While the economic analysis under this requirement may be deceptively simple, its dangerous ramifications for public health cannot be underestimated. Chinese officials have only recently begun to acknowledge the health hazard risks presented by extensive air pollution; and if you have been over there and tried to breathe, you know that the air is greatly polluted over there. And so the Chinese have finally awakened to that fact, but the end result is that the public health of Americans and the safety of the environment would be compromised so that American manufacturers can better compete with their foreign counterparts. This is a shortsighted regulatory race to the bottom that prioritizes profits over saving lives.
Another fundamental flaw with H.R. 2804 is that it will greatly lengthen and not shorten the already time-consuming process by which Federal rules are promulgated. Avoiding undue delay in rulemaking is important because strong regulation is vital to protecting Americans in nearly every aspect of their lives. On average, Madam Chair, it takes between 4 to 8 years for an agency to promulgate a new rule. But instead of streamlining the rulemaking process, this bill extensively adds numerous procedural hurdles to the process.
In title II of the bill, 60 additional procedural steps to the rulemaking process are included. Not only that, title II reinstates a long discredited rulemaking process that requires trial-type procedures. Known as formal rulemaking, this time-consuming process was widely rejected decades ago as being highly ineffective.
Recently proposed regulations that could be impacted by this and other provisions in the bill include rules implementing the Food Safety Modernization Act's standards to reduce food contaminants like salmonella, and that would help prevent 1.75 million cases of illness.
Another thing that would be interrupted, another rules process, strengthening chemical facility accident prevention standards in response to the 2013 fertilizer explosion in West, Texas, that resulted in the deaths of 12 volunteer firefighters and two other individuals.
Another interruption would be preventing the manufacture and distribution of tainted and counterfeit prescription drugs.
Also impacted would be the implementation of the Justice Department's national standards to prevent, detect, and respond to prison rape.
Another interruption would be adjusting the reimbursement rates to Medicare providers for end-stage renal disease and setting payments to primary care physicians under the Vaccines for Children Program.
It would also stop the establishment of meal requirements for the National School Lunch Program under the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010.
It would prevent implementation of the Labor Department's standards for H-2B aliens in the United States.
For all of those reasons, Madam Chair, I oppose this legislation, and I would ask my colleagues to do the same.
I yield back the balance of my time.
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Mr. JOHNSON of Georgia. Madam Chair, this amendment simply strikes the moratorium provisions in title I of the bill. Madam Chair, a regulatory moratorium makes absolutely no sense. Cass Sunstein, the former head of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, has observed:
A moratorium would not be a scalpel or a machete; it would be more like a nuclear bomb, in the sense that it would prevent regulations that cost very little and have very significant economic and public health benefits.
This is yet another iteration of an attempt by the majority to obstruct at all costs and stop all regulations. In the last Congress, we considered H.R. 4078, which would have imposed a moratorium for ``any quarter'' where the Bureau of Labor Statistics average of monthly unemployment rates is equal to or less than 6 percent. Although the Republican-controlled House passed the bill, it of course died in the Senate.
A moratorium threatens key health and safety regulations. During the 104th Congress, the House passed the Regulatory Transition Act of 1995, a bill that imposed a regulatory moratorium pending the institution of a risk analysis and assessment regime. The Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Democrats, in their dissent to the reported bill, observed that the legislation was ``ill-conceived'' and that it had ``unknown consequences.'' In particular, they noted:
The bill ignores the interests of the average American. There is no effort in this bill to sort out the good from the bad. It is a one-size-fits-all solution. The bill will threaten key health and safety regulations, such as improved meat and poultry inspection procedures, while also halting regulations favored by business, such as rules at the FCC to allocate portions of the spectrum for new telephone systems.
Accordingly, I urge my colleagues to support this amendment that would strike the bill's pernicious moratorium provision.
I reserve the balance of my time.
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Mr. JOHNSON of Georgia. Madam Chair, the majority is pursuing this legislation in complete disregard of various recent examples of regulatory failure. These include the Massey coal mine explosion in West Virginia which took the lives of 29 miners. In fact, next month will mark the 1-year anniversary of that explosion. The explosion of BP's Deepwater Horizon oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico that stemmed from lax regulation of oil drilling platforms is also a prominent example. The home foreclosure crisis, the 2008 financial crisis, and the ensuing Great Recession, all of which stemmed from the fact that regulators under the Bush administration lacked the direction, resources, and authority to confront the highly reckless behavior of the private sector, and particularly the lending and financial service industries.
It was a direct response to these regulatory failures in the financial realm that Congress passed the Dodd-Frank Act and other measures during the 111th Congress, and Republicans have tried to repeal those measures and have tried to repeal the Affordable Care Act.
Of the 58 bills that were passed out of this so-called do-nothing Congress in the first year of this session, not one of them was a jobs bill; not one job created. Do we set ourselves up again for the kind of regulatory Wild Wild West that got us into trouble in the first place?
I reserve the balance of my time.
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Mr. JOHNSON of Georgia. Madam Chair, I think everyone can agree that the Federal agencies need the resources to be able to go back and review and rescind and repeal any unnecessary regulations, but we have been busy cutting government for the last 3 years. This legislation before us won't cut any regulations, but it certainly will keep any regulations from coming forward. I think that would accomplish the objective of the Republicans here, which is to protect Big Business.
With that, I yield back the balance of my time.
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Mr. JOHNSON of Georgia. Madam Chairman, this amendment would add an additional level of analysis in the regulatory process that examines whether or not regulations have a negative impact on jobs and wages.
Adding this additional requirement that is highly speculative and analytical would further slow down the rulemaking process, adding more red tape.
I invite the gentleman to support my amendment, amendment No. 9, which we will get to shortly, that would exclude from the bill any rule, consent decree, or settlement agreement that would result in net job creation or have greater benefits than costs.
I would also hope that my friends on both sides of the aisle would have a desire to improve the economy and take actions to foster job growth, instead of adding more red tape to the regulatory process.
To the extent that regulations have anything to do with jobs, H.R. 2804's proponents should overwhelmingly support my amendment No. 9, which exempts from the bill all rules that OMB determines would result in net job creation.
With respect to regulations stifling job creation, the evidence, Madam Chairman, is to the contrary. If anything, regulations can promote job growth and put Americans back to work.
For instance, the BlueGreen Alliance notes:
Studies on the direct impact of regulations on job growth have found that most regulations result in modest job growth or have no effect, and economic growth has consistently surged forward in concert with these health and safety protections. The Clean Air Act is a shining example, given that the economy has grown 204 percent and private sector job creation has expanded 86 percent since its passage in 1970.
In reference to the Clean Air Act, the Office of Management and Budget observed that 40 years of success with this measure have demonstrated that strong environmental protections and strong economic growth go hand-in-hand.
Regulations create valuable jobs and research across industries. For example, a pending regulation limiting the amount of airborne mercury will not just reduce the amount of seriously toxic pollutants, but create as many as 45,000 temporary jobs and possibly 8,000 permanent jobs, as The New York Times noted last month.
Heightened vehicle emissions standards have spurred clean vehicle research, development, and production efforts that in turn have already generated more than 150,000 jobs at 504 facilities in 43 States across the United States of America.
The majority's own witness clearly debunked the myth
that regulations stymie job creation during his testimony at a Judiciary Committee hearing held in the last Congress on an antiregulatory bill.
Christopher DeMuth, with the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank, stated in his prepared testimony:
The ``focus on jobs ..... can lead to confusion in regulatory debates'' and that the employment effects of regulation, while important, ``are indeterminant.''
The claim by the bill's proponents, namely, that regulatory uncertainty creates a disincentive for businesses to add jobs, was rejected by Bruce Bartlett, a senior policy analyst in the Reagan and George H. W. Bush administrations.
He observed:
Regulatory uncertainty is a canard invented by Republicans that allows them to use current economic problems to pursue an agenda supported by the business community, year in and year out. In other words, it is a simple case of political opportunism, not a serious effort to deal with high employment.
That was Bruce Bartlett.
Leading scholars, such as Wake Forest Law Professor Sidney Shapiro has testified:
All of the available evidence contradicts the claim that regulatory uncertainty is deterring business development and investment.
Scant demand, not regulations, drives hiring choices.
In sum, there is no credible evidence that regulations depress job creation.
I yield back the balance of my time.
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Mr. JOHNSON of Georgia. Madam Chair, this amendment reminds me of how things used to be when I was a young parent and I had my children at home. When it came time for my favorite TV program, I would tell them to go upstairs and clean up their room again.
They would say, Daddy, we already cleaned up the room, and I would say, Go clean it up again.
Then when they would scamper upstairs, I would put the TV on and watch my program in peace. So it gave them some busy work.
That is pretty much what this amendment does. It creates an additional requirement in the rulemaking process for an agency to articulate achievable objectives and metrics indicating progress toward those objectives.
This amendment piles on the bill's numerous mandatory new rulemaking requirements, and it implies that agencies issue rules that lack an achievable objective, notwithstanding the fact that regulations already go through an extensive public notice and comment period as well as being subjected to judicial review.
The bill would impose unneeded and costly analytical and procedural requirements on agencies that would prevent them from performing their statutory responsibilities. It would also create needless regulatory and legal uncertainty, increase costs for businesses and State, local, and tribal governments, and it would impede commonsense protections for the American public.
That is why, Madam Chair, there are more than 150 consumer groups, environmental organizations, labor unions, and other entities that are strenuously opposed to this bill. These organizations include the AFL-CIO, the Alliance for Justice, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, the American Lung Association, the Consumer Federation of America, the Consumers Union, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, the UAW, the League of Conservation Voters, the National Women's Law Center, the National Resources Defense Council, People For the American Way, Public Citizen, the Sierra Club, the Service Employees International Union, the Union of Concerned Scientists, and the United Steelworkers, just to name a few.
Likewise, the administration has issued a strongly worded veto threat against this bill. It warns that the bill would impose unneeded and costly analytical and procedural requirements on agencies that would prevent them from performing their statutory duties.
For those reasons, I strongly urge my colleagues to oppose this amendment.
Madam Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.
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Mr. JOHNSON of Georgia. Madam Chair, this amendment harkens me back to the time when my kids were young and when I was trying to make sure that they would not jump into something where one of their schoolmates might be being bullied, and then they would jump in on the part of the bully or would just participate in the antagonism against the victim, and I told them not to pile on.
This amendment is a classic case of piling on. It would add an eighth requirement for the initial regulatory flexibility analysis specified by the bill. The agency would have to provide a detailed statement describing any impairment of the ability of small entities to have access to credit. The bill already requires agencies to consider all indirect costs, which would include this issue. This amendment would allow yet another ground for a regulated entity to challenge a rulemaking.
Title III does nothing to help small businesses and other small entities reduce compliance costs or to ensure agency compliance with the RFA. Instead, this amendment would impose another unnecessary burden on agencies. This is just another piling on of the already burdensome new rulemaking requirements.
This amendment as well as the bill ignore the fact that the small businesses, like their larger counterparts, can substantially impact the health and safety of their workers as well as that of the general public. Small businesses, like all businesses, provide services and goods that affect our lives and carry the same risks of harm as the services and goods that large businesses provide. It makes no difference to someone who is breathing dirty air or drinking poisoned water whether the hazards come from a small or a large business.
Speaking of business, the American Sustainable Business Council is a growing national coalition of businesses and business organizations committed to advancing policies that support a vibrant and sustainable economy. The American Sustainable Business Council, through its partner organizations, represents over 200,000 businesses and more than 325,000 business professionals, including industry associations, local and State Chambers of Commerce, micro enterprises, social enterprises, green and sustainable businesses, local livable economy groups, women and minority business leaders, and investors and investor networks.
While some inside the beltway claim that regulations are holding back our economic recovery, the American Sustainable Business Council has a different view. It, along with other small business organizations, released a February 2012 poll of small business owners which found that small businesses don't see regulations as a major concern. Its polling confirmed that small business owners value regulations if they are well-constructed and fairly enforced.
They found that small business owners believe certain governmental regulations play an important role: 86 percent of them believe some regulation is necessary for a modern economy; 93 percent of respondents believe their business can live with some regulation if it is fair and manageable; 78 percent of small employers agree regulations are important in protecting small businesses from unfair competition and to help level the playing field with big businesses; 79 percent of small business owners support having clean air and water in the community in order to keep their family, employees, and customers healthy.
Madam Chair, I include the letter from the American Sustainable Business Council in the Record, and I yield back the balance of my time.
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Mr. JOHNSON of Georgia. It is to my horror that I would agree to this amendment, but it simply corrects a drafting error. So we do not oppose this amendment. It makes a thoroughly flawed bill slightly less thoroughly flawed.
With that, I yield back the balance of my time.
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