All Economic Regulations are Transparent Act of 2014

Floor Speech

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Mr. COLLINS of Georgia. Mr. Chairman, air and water quality regulations, done properly, serve important goals, and I agree with my friend from across the aisle. He said the bill, however, his interpretation and ours are just different. The bill does nothing to frustrate the achievement of these goals.

But Federal air and water regulations have been the source of many of the most abusive, unnecessarily expensive, and job- and wage-destroying regulations in American history. Air regulations, for example, were precisely the regulations that inflicted the harm on Rob James, Avon Lake, Bob Sells and his workers, and Allen Puckett and his workers that I mentioned in, frankly, my opening statement in discussion yesterday. To remove these areas of regulation from the bill would severely weaken the bill's important reforms to lower the crushing costs of Federal regulation.

In looking at this amendment and looking at the discussion that was just had, Mr. Chairman, by the gentleman offering, it goes back to a tired argument that is not worthy of debate on this floor. For the opposite to present an amendment is fine. To present an amendment to say that you don't like the way we are wanting to do that is fine. But to retread and rework the idea that I or my children or anybody else's children want to breathe dirty air or drink dirty water or have child seats fall apart or child restraints be broken or anything else is just not worthy of debate here on this floor.

Let's take the bill. I will take your amendment, and it is offered in good faith. But when we look at this bill, we are looking at jobs. Again, the argument that was made to protect the government bureaucracy from more work is not also an accurate statement, especially when it does protect the men and women--the workers.

I said it yesterday. I will say it again. Do you want a clear determination on what party is looking out for whom? Do you look out for government workers and more regulations, or do you look out for the moms and dads who go to work to earn their living to take care of their families, to breathe clean air, to have clean water, and to have safety environments in a limited regulatory reform, which is what our Founders intended? That is what we do here.

I urge a ``no'' vote on this amendment and reserve the balance of my time.

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Mr. COLLINS of Georgia. Mr. Chairman, I have learned here through many times here in Congress that we do come from different areas, but I am just amazed at my friend across the aisle because I am not sure which business, which one is working out when you look at the workers that I just named and you look at the businessowners that come to my office and discuss the fact that jobs are being lost and that things are being taken here because of regulatory burden. The tired argument here is not the fact.

The honest argument here is: What is the role that we are supposed to be doing?

Where is the government role that should be there that should provide good regulatory reform? And I think what was actually said was that providing hurdles to keeping regulatory reform open. What we are saying is we want it transparent. We want businesses to be a part. And to have anything said less and to say, again, to rehash an argument that implies that others want to breathe dirty air, to drink dirty water, and to in any way harm the American people by simply bringing sense to our regulatory process is just simply a straw man. When you have got nothing else to talk about, let's throw the kitchen sink at it.

With that, I yield back the balance of my time and urge a ``no'' vote on this amendment.

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