All Economic Regulations are Transparent Act of 2014
Floor Speech
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Mr. BARR. Madam Chair, I thank the chairman for his leadership on the ALERRT Act, and I appreciate the opportunity to respond to my friends on the other side of the aisle who talk about the importance of taking into consideration workers in America.
And I would submit, Madam Chair, that if we truly are interested in the interests of American workers, we would vote immediately to pass regulatory relief in the form of the ALERRT Act.
If my friends on the other side of the aisle were truly interested in the welfare of the working people of America, they would stop the overly burdensome regulation that is putting the American people out of work.
In Kentucky, in my home State, if you don't think this is true, consider the facts, and the facts are these: that the unemployment rate in eastern Kentucky is 1 1/2 percent higher than the national average. There is not a recession in eastern Kentucky.
It is a depression, and it is a depression because of overly burdensome regulations coming out of the EPA, which are putting thousands of my fellow Kentuckians and all of our fellow Americans out of work.
These are heartless policies. We have lost 7,000 jobs in Kentucky's coal mines in just the last 5 years, bringing coal industry employment in the Commonwealth to its lowest level since 1927. If you want to talk about the welfare of workers, these people need paychecks.
It is because of unaccountable, overly burdensome regulations, unaccountable bureaucrats in the executive branch, that these people no longer have the opportunity to provide for their families. This is wrong. We need to roll back these burdensome regulations.
I would just say this in conclusion, Madam Chair. It is dangerous when we combine legislative power into the hands of the executive branch. Madison, in Federalist Paper No. 47, in quoting Montesquieu, said:
The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands; whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective; may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny. There can be no liberty where the legislative and executive powers are united in the same person.
That is what is happening in America today.
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Mr. BARR. Madam Chairman, I thank the gentleman and my friend from Pennsylvania for yielding. I appreciate the hard work that both he and his staff have put into this important amendment, which I had the pleasure to join him in introducing.
As I indicated earlier in the debate on the underlying legislation, in Kentucky, the overregulation of the Kentucky coal industry has really taken a toll. Under President Obama, Appalachian Kentucky has lost about 7,000 jobs in just 5 years, putting coal industry employment in the Commonwealth to its lowest level since records were first kept in 1927.
This amendment would strengthen the underlying regulatory reform legislation by holding accountable those agencies that go after already suffering workers like Kentucky and Pennsylvania coal miners.
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