John Carter

Mr. CARTER

Mr. CARTER. I'm going to reclaim my time because I think we are about to run out of it. I want to thank the Speaker for this hour.

Mr. CARTER. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I appreciate being recognized. In 1994, when the Republicans were placed in control of the House and Senate, they produced a magnificent piece of legislation, a legislative weapon against the overreaching of government. This was done in the Clinton administration, and it was signed into law by that President. This weapon hadn't been used but once during the Clinton administration and not at all during the three GOP years of President Bush. What it's called is the Congressional Review Act. This is an act that requires all Federal agencies to submit any new major regulation to the United States Congress for 60 legislative days prior to its enactment, during which time the Congress can vote to block these new rules if the Congress sees fit. With Mr. Obama in the White House and Senator Reid still throttling back in the Senate, the Congressional Review Act gives the House the potential to block or at least to expose the outrageous new rules being promulgated on the American people. These were done by the entrenched leftists in the Federal bureaucracy, and they are controversial rules that cost Americans jobs. If there is one thing that the American people have told us they are most interested in, besides the fact that we are running away with spending in this Congress, it's that they want jobs. You can do whatever you want to a family, but if you give a family a job, that family has at least the security of that employment. Since by that very destructive nature these regulations have the potential, rather than to create jobs, to destroy jobs, they should be seriously looked at by this House of Representatives. One of the things that people don't understand about how the Federal Government works--in fact, we had this said to us all the time--is ``you passed X law, and it's really affecting and hurting my business,'' when in reality the law, itself, may not do any harm to one's business at all. The regulations, though, promulgated by the authority that has been given rulemaking power on that legislation have the effect of law. Yet they're not passed by this Congress. They're passed by the various agencies and bureaus of the country when the Congress gives them regulatory authority. Now, if you really don't know what's going on here, you may ask: How important is that? Well, let's just take a look at last year. Last year, the Federal Government issued a total of 3,316 new rules and regulations, which is an average of 13 new rules a day. Seventy- eight of those new rules last year were major rules. The definition of a ``major rule'' is a rule that may result in having an annual effect on the economy of $100 million or more--a major increase in prices or in the cost to the consumer. It may have a significant effect on the economy, including employment. The ObamaCare bill, which was passed by this Congress in the last session of Congress, the health care bill, it arguably is the mother of all rule creators. The Congressional Research Service reports that ObamaCare gives Federal agencies substantial responsibility and authority to fill in the details of that bill and of that legislation with subsequent regulations. There are more than 40 provisions in the health care bill--that is called the overhaul bill--that requires, permits or contemplates Federal rulemaking authority just in that one act of Congress. Forty different agencies can create rules that affect the health care of every American citizen. This House can fight back on those rules with this Congressional Review Act. Now what is the Congressional Review Act? As I said, they filed this with the Congress. And then for 60 legislative days--and ``legislative days'' has a definition. A legislative day is a day that this Congress is available to act. So if the Congress recesses for 3 days, those 3 days are not counted in the number of days. So it's not 60 calendar days; it's 60 legislative days. For instance, if you look at the last Congress, rules that were filed last summer, last June, in fact, which would be more than 6 months from the 1st of January, those rules are still available for review. Now, how is that possible? Well, between the 1st of June and the end of the year, this legislative body was not in legislative session 60 days. We had the longest recess in probably the institute of the Republic that took place in August because of the political world that the majority saw itself in and the fact that they felt like they needed to have 6 weeks back home to do the politics. So the majority gave us the long recess. We had a break in the 4th of July week. Then we came back for 2 weeks. Then we went back home for campaigning. And then we came back, after campaigning, in December for 2 weeks. So, in total, we didn't reach 60 legislative days. But all that counting starts over with a new Congress. Something that most Americans don't know is, every time we have a new Congress, everything starts over. So when we wrote rules for 2 years ago that governed this body, we had to write new rules for this session of Congress. At the end of this 2-year period, we will write new rules for the next session of Congress because we are required--you've heard it's a new world every morning. Well, at least for Congress, it's a new world every 2 years because the nature of our very existence is we are the people's court. The House of Representatives is the people's House, and the people's House changes depending on who gets elected every 2 years. So now we have started a new 60-day period. The 60-day period, the rules that were filed that would be subject to this Congressional Review Act, those rules were all filed on the 15th of February because that was the first time that both Houses were completely in session. And so these things will expire sometime in June. After that clock has run, then this House can no longer act. So the House has, right now, during this period of time, from February to June, to act on a lot of regulations. This gives us a chance to make a determination. This is kind of the Congressional Review Act right here. I want to give you some examples of some kind of rules that are available to be dealt with under the Congressional Review Act and will be dealt with under the Congressional Review Act. The FCC has proposed rules that would allow the Federal Government to act as a gatekeeper and prohibit broadband providers from selectively blocking or slowing Web traffic. These new FCC rules will restrict access to the Internet and stall innovation in our country, further damaging the economy and hindering job creation. Most people think the Internet works pretty good right now, but there are those who think the Federal Government should intervene in the Internet and the agency in the executive branch should have a chance to actually regulate and decide how the Internet is going to operate. We can't affect the Internet worldwide, but we can affect the Internet in the United States. Most of us feel that we should not, in fact, be intruding on the Internet. This is now coming up for disapproval under H.J. Res. 37. Greg Walden is carrying the ball on this, and that clock expires on the 14th day of June. The NESHAP rule for Portland cement manufacturing. What is Portland cement? Portland cement is that bag of powder that you mix with gravel and so forth to make concrete. That's what Portland cement is. Portland cement is manufactured in the United States and manufactured all over the world. There is a regulation which would require the closing of 18 cement plants in this country. These jobs from these cement plants, as a result of the regulations that are being proposed, would be forced to move to India and China if they wanted to continue to produce Portland cement because they would not be able to meet the standards that would be established by this rule. The U.S. cement industry today provides more than 15,000 highway jobs, with an average compensation of $75,000 per year, along with allied industries that account for nearly $27.5 billion of the gross domestic product. A statement made by the concrete industry is that there is only one element in the world that is more prevalent in construction than concrete, and that's water. You have to realize that the second element most important to construction around the world is the production of cement, the production of concrete, and water is the only one that's more important. It's a pretty amazing amount of concrete that is required in the world; and yet as a result of this rule, there is a distinct possibility that we will be looking at about 70 percent of our concrete manufacturing being done outside of our country. Now, there has been a lot of criticism of this challenge to this rule because people are saying, but look, these cement manufacturers put mercury into the air; they don't regulate mercury. Well, I just want to show you something that I think was very interesting when this argument was made. This map, prepared by the Electric Power Research Institute. Now remember, this is the most and this is the least amount of mercury production on our chart. Now, you will notice that all of the red and these green and yellows here, they're scattered in there, is heavy concentration of mercury in the air. The source of that mercury originates outside the United States. This is not the result of American production of Portland cement; this is the result of foreign production of Portland cement, because these are regulated industries already in this country and nobody regulates those industries outside of this country. And because of the prevailing winds from the Far East, more than half of the United States has a major mercury output. And the solution is to write a bill that will force more companies to go overseas. That means more mercury will be in the air because they will be sending them to unregulated countries. This is a bill that wasn't thought out. This rule was not thought out well enough, and so we should stop it. We should sit down and work out a clean air set of regulations that actually work to reduce this mercury production and, in fact, bring more people to producing in this country rather than not producing in this country. One of the things I hear every day when I go back to Texas is: When are you going to stop outsourcing our jobs to other countries? And yet we're writing a regulation right now under Clean Air that is going to outsource thousands of American jobs to other countries. This is something that needs to be thought through. Many times these agencies, because they don't answer to the American public in any form or fashion, other than this review, these are things that they need to be sat down and we need to get their heads on straight. This new rule, we will try to raise this rule. You say, This is how it works in the House of Representatives. How does it work in the Senate? Well, what makes this a really interesting rule is you first need to know what the rules of procedure are in the Senate. It takes 60 Senators to agree to bring anything to a vote in the Senate, which makes it difficult to bring things to a vote when more than half of the Senators have to agree just to bring something to a vote. But written into this act, signed by President Clinton into law, is the provision that this particular examination of rulemaking authority only requires 30 Senators to agree for a vote, that it can be brought to a vote. So when it passes out of the House and goes over to the Senate, it only takes 30 Senators to agree to bring this to a vote. If it passes the Senate, then it is sent to the President's desk. Then basically he's got the only vote left, in many cases to prevent bad regulations. The President told us the last time he had a press conference that he was going to stop job-killing regulations in this country. The regulations we are going to be working on are job-killing regulations. And so we're going to give him the opportunity to do that. If he chooses to veto it, so be it. Basically, he had the one vote that could have stopped the job-killing regulation. The Office of National Coordinator for Health Information Technology has promulgated complex, confusing and costly rules establishing what it means for hospitals and physicians to have a certain EHR, whatever that is. I don't know what that is. If not simplified, the rules will prevent health care providers from receiving incentive payments and increase the cost of EHR installations and limit the innovation in the health information technology market. Another rule that's out there is called the boiler MACT rule. Basically, the Environmental Protection Agency is proposing four separate rules that would establish more stringent emission standards on industrial and commercial boilers and process heaters. The broad- reaching proposals could cost manufacturers over $20 billion in compliance costs and place hundreds of thousands of jobs in jeopardy. This needs to be dealt with by the 21st of June. The Florida numeric nutrient water quality standards rule. This is also by the EPA, as I understand it. This rule mandates nutrient standards for Florida lakes, rivers, streams and estuaries in response to litigation initiated by environmental and special interest groups. The Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services concludes that Florida's agriculture community will lose 14,545 full-time or part-time jobs and $1.148 billion in sales annually if this rule is approved. This is why this Congress ought to look at this rule. HHS rule on medical loss ratio requirements under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. This regulation requires all health plans to pay a minimum of 80 percent of premiums toward health services. Larger insurers should pay a minimum of 85 percent. Industry analysis estimates that as many as 47 percent of the participants in individual and small group plans which have higher administrative costs due to economies of scale will lose their health insurance if this regulation becomes law. So this one regulation, which comes out of what we call the ObamaCare bill, could cause 47 percent of the people who have small to midsize health care plans to lose their health care plan. We actually have a bill that is coming before this Congress. Geoff Davis of Kentucky has introduced this bill. It mandates that all new major rules must be approved by Congress before becoming law. This one is pretty simple, and it just supplements what we're already dealing with. It uses the same definition for major rules and requires Congress to approve all major rules and Federal regulations before they become effective. Why would we do that? To start off with, 3,000-plus new regulations were passed last year. These regulations could cause you or others to lose their jobs. And so if it is our responsibility, and I think it is our responsibility in this House, for us to come up with solutions that make jobs be created rather than make jobs disappear, then those things that have a potential to make jobs disappear, it's part of our responsibility to take a hard look at those regulations that might make jobs disappear. This is not rocket science. This is pretty easy stuff. We who are the people's representatives, who are elected to represent the people of the United States--and remember how our Founding Fathers set up our Constitution: The Senators represent States and the House of Representatives represents people. Our districts are drawn based on the population in those districts. Their district is the whole State, and they represent the State of Texas or the State of New Jersey or the State of New York or the State of California and all the other States. So we are the direct link to the people. We are the only branch of this House and Senate where no one can sit in these seats and be a Member of Congress unless they were elected. That's something a lot of people don't know. If we should have a Senator, heaven forbid, die while in office, that Senator can be temporarily replaced by an appointment by the Governor of the State that that Senator represents. But if we have a Member of Congress, heaven forbid, die while in office, that Congressman has to be elected before they can serve in the House of Representatives. We are the people's House. We are the only House that depends upon the vote of the people to keep us here under all circumstances. So if that's how we get here and our responsibility in today's economy is to try to get ourselves out of the poorhouse with all the borrowing we've been doing and to help create jobs so Americans can get back to work, if Americans get back to work, we will have a solution in many instances to the problems that face our country right now as far as debt and other things, because if they are working, they are paying taxes and those taxes will help alleviate the issues we have. If that's the case, why wouldn't it make just decent common sense that this Congress, the people's House, would have the opportunity to look at regulations that might destroy jobs? And if we have credible people that are saying they will destroy jobs, then we need to look seriously at those regulations. And maybe it's just a matter of killing the job-killing regulations so that we can renegotiate regulations that solve the problem without driving industries overseas or killing the jobs that these industries create. Sometimes agencies are not putting priorities on people; they're putting priorities on other things. Therefore, we need to examine our priorities. Our job on the floor of this House is to make sure of the safety and welfare of our constituents back home and make sure that we do everything we can to make sure that they've got a job so they can support their families and support themselves. Right now, with, not 9 percent anymore, 8.9 percent unemployment, which is about as close to 9 as you can get without being there, we are still in an unemployment nightmare in this country. I can remember back during the Clinton administration when there were public service announcements made that said 5.5 unemployment was full employment for the United States. We later learned that unemployment got down, during the early part of the last decade, to a much, much lower number than that. But we certainly know we cannot continue to tolerate somewhere between the top end of 8 and 10 percent unemployment and expect our economy to be healthy. We've got to get our people back to work. These regulations are part of the issues that are going to be important to discovering the solutions to this problem. Some would say this is controversial. Some would say that if the Congress interferes with regulatory authority then Congress is going to take on something that by plan was passed out to the regulatory agencies to keep us from having to work so hard and getting into the weeds on all these bills. I didn't come up here, and I don't think anybody came up here, not to work hard. If they did, they probably don't belong being up here. If the actions of a regulatory board or an individual that is in charge of a regulatory agency has a dire effect upon the employment of any American citizen, I think we as the Members of this Congress have a duty and a responsibility to at least look at it. If we don't think it's bad, we can vote accordingly. But to just ignore it and let these things be created, and I would argue without a serious due process of law, because the only people that police this up is the various agencies in the executive branch of the government, and it's generally done by career bureaucrats. And they make these decisions. These people don't answer to the American people. They don't go before the American people for a vote every 2 years. Therefore, they don't feel the pressure of the damage that can be done by some of these regulations. Some of these regulations that are going to come before this House are going to be good regulations, and I would expect them to be voted for and upheld. But if we have the responsibility and the duty to protect our fellows, then I think we should step forward and do that job. My friend from Florida is here. Welcome. I will yield you whatever time you would like to join me in commenting on this regulatory overreach.

Mr. CARTER. I am glad you brought that up. You know, what's really interesting, Mr. Posey, is they've got this new rule, I am not sure who promulgated it, that if you are a volunteer on a commission or a board that has anything, any form or fashion that handles money, you have to pay a $600 licensing fee to get a license to serve on the volunteer board. You know, the one that comes to mind is, every city of any size has what's called a planning and zoning commission. I happened to serve as the chairman of that commission in my hometown of Round Rock, Texas. It's a hard job. It's in many ways a thankless job. But now, in order for a volunteer to come in and serve to decide how the city's going to plan and zone its area for various construction and business, you got to pay a fee to volunteer, 600 bucks. But that's not how ridiculous it is; any board, agency, or commission. And every State has literally thousands of these volunteer positions that people do to help out their State, their city, their county. If there is any form or fashion of bonding capacity for any relative group that you serve, you have to buy a license for 600 bucks because you are considered to be in the investment business. I yield to the gentleman from Florida.

Mr. CARTER. Reclaiming my time, we're joined by the gentleman from Arkansas (Mr. Crawford), one of our new Members. We're proud to have you.

Mr. CARTER. We're talking about the regulatory overreach of the Federal Government.

Mr. CARTER

Mr. CARTER. I thank my friend for yielding. This law, and I understand that a point of order has been raised, but this is serious business we're talking about here. The sovereign State of Arizona is being overrun by dangerous people, that being murderers, up and down that border. I've been to that Arizona border. I've seen the fence being built in Arizona, and I've seen the fence that it replaced, which wouldn't even hold in a pair of goats. And yet we have a flood flowing across this border. And so what does the Governor of that State do? Steps forward and says that the Federal Government is not meeting its obligation. We are going to protect our citizens. Now, one of the things that I have been very concerned about--I will yield to my friend in a moment. One the things I have been very concerned about, as I've watched the judiciary and the legal system develop, is we've learned how to use our court system as a battering ram against our opponents, both our opponents in business and now our opponents in politics and in other places, just to batter them into position. The United States Government should not be battering the State of Arizona into a position that the State believes is contrary to the will of their people. I now yield to my friend from Arizona.

Mr. CARTER

Mr. CARTER. Will the gentleman yield for a moment?

Mr. CARTER. Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of the Scalise amendment. I actually also have an amendment which I filed which I am withdrawing to de-fund 24 czarships, instead of czar and czarina-ships to suit the other side. But I decided that comity would be better if I joined Mr. Scalise. I think he has a good amendment here. My chairman has asked that we move forward, and I agree. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. CARTER. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

Mr. CARTER. I promise not to mention cement.

Mr. CARTER. I thank you for yielding. I just want to point out what my friend from California was pointing out. Under the plan that's before us from the EPA, we're pretty well sure that 18 of our 90 plants are going to move offshore. So we get to add 18 plants to the people who are polluting this area of the United States at an almost hundred percent pollutant, and good scientific evidence already tells us that 75 percent of the mercury pollution, which is the argument the gentleman made, is coming from outside the United States. Now we're adding 18 new plants to the 75 polluters and we're taking 18 plants away from the 25 percent side. To me, I wonder how that balances out to make good sense for those poor sick kids that he was talking about. We're adding more pollution to the unregulated, full-scale polluters, and we're harming and taking American jobs, the fathers and mothers of those very children he was talking about. They're no longer going to have a job and somebody in China or India is going to have that job. And I think the American people are pretty fed up with us trying to constantly ship good American jobs overseas. I hear my friends talk about, we are outsourcing. This is a form of outsourcing by regulating us out of business and sending those jobs over to where they open with open arms and no regulations and lower wages, come on in, make your cement, we'll ship it back to the United States and use that New York terminal to bring it into the United States. I think we need to rethink this. All we're asking is an implementation that doesn't drive us out of the country. It's that simple. It's not that tough.

Mr. CARTER. Will the gentlelady yield?

Mr. CARTER. I thank the gentleman for yielding. I would like to address for a moment some of the things that were said by my friends on the other side of the aisle. It's true that there may be 1,300 new jobs, as he quoted. But 1,300 new inspectors are not jobs in the cement industry. The cost of doing the conversion, according to the industry spokesman, is about $3.5 billion industrywide, and even then they're not sure they're meeting all standards that are being required by EPA. One for-instance in this requirement of EPA is, hydrochloric acid has never been considered a problem by EPA, and all of a sudden there's a regulation on hydrochloric acid. This is an almost $4 billion cost to an industry whose total net worth is approximately $10 billion. That is a tremendous, tremendous burden to place on this industry. Quite honestly, what we're trying to accomplish by this before this regulation is actually implemented is to say, Time out. We're not funding this until you get back to the table and start working out a reasonable way to save American jobs and not encourage foreign jobs to take jobs away from America. That's what this does. And obviously with this thing that's going on in the port in New York, that's even more horrendous, that we are actually attacking American jobs by our own efforts.

Mr. CARTER. Will the gentleman yield?

Mr. CARTER. Mr. Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. CARTER. Mr. Chairman, the U.S. cement industry is among the most regulated in the world and has long served not only as a responsible steward of the environment, but as a provider of high-wage family jobs in communities throughout this country. It competes against imported Asian cement, which has the advantage of low wages and nonexistent environmental regulations. Yet the EPA has plans to drop a bomb of job- killing, ineffective regulations on this industry which, by the EPA's own admission, could result in an increase in global mercury pollution as production moves to those countries with no air quality standards. Specifically, in September of 2010, EPA finalized the Portland Cement National Emissions Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants, NESHAP, a rule based on questionable science. The U.S. cement industry provides more than 15,000 high-wage jobs with an average compensation of $75,000 per year, and, along with allied industries, accounts for nearly $27.5 billion of the gross domestic product. Due to the recession, the cement industry has already lost over 4,000 jobs. This bad rule threatens to close another 18 of the 97 cement plants nationwide and throw another 1,800 Americans out of good-paying private sector jobs. Mr. Chairman, as bitter as this would be in the middle of a horrible recession, if it were to guarantee that it would reduce mercury pollution, at least this high human cost might be justified. But when the cement production from these plants is shifted to China and India with no air quality standards, we could face increased mercury pollution worldwide and in this country. Today, 75 percent of our annual mercury deposits are already coming to the United States from outside this country. That is indicated by this map prepared by the Electric Power Research Institute. If you look at this map very briefly, here is the regulation chart. Red is somewhere between a little under 80 percent and 100 percent of the mercury. If you look west of the Mississippi, in fact it actually crosses the Mississippi, all this area of red, that means the Asian pollution, Asian pollution, pollutes the mercury in this part of the United States in a percentage between 80 and 100 percent. Now, as you move across into the Midwest and the South, it is only between 60 and 78 percent that is provided by the winds bringing pollutants from Asian pollution. Of course, Florida is down here. It is in the red, so it is between 80 and 100 percent. It is only on the east coast that you get down in this range here, which is 20 to a little over 55 percent, and the blue is below that, which is just a few dots over here on the east coast. So right now our mercury problem is not our problem; it is from outside the United States right now. And we are going to implement rules and regulations dropped on this industry by the EPA, which is going to drive at least 18 of these plants and possibly the vast majority of these plants offshore. Where are they going to go offshore? They are going to go to Asia. Right now we have ways to measure this and protect ourselves in our plants already in place, and most of the things that EPA is asking for are in place. But they changed the rules in the middle of the game. Therefore, we are asking that we do the right thing and force the EPA to sit back down at the table and draft a rule that actually reduces mercury pollution and saves U.S. jobs. This is important. This is a bad rule, and it is going to be bad for our environment. And the best thing we can do is say time out on this by basically saying no funds will be spent on the enforcement of this. And we would hope that EPA would go back to the table, sit down with industry, and come up with a real solution for what they are trying to do. This is the purpose of my amendment, and this is what this is all about.

Mr. CARTER. I yield to the gentleman from Washington.

Mr. CARTER. Basically, I don't have a timeframe in here.

Mr. CARTER

Mr. CARTER. If the gentleman will yield, we also will accept the amendment.

Mr. CARTER. Mr. Chairman, I move that the Committee do now rise.

Mr. CARTER. I thank the gentleman for yielding. I rise in support of this amendment. I disagree with my friend across the aisle. I don't believe this amendment will be a job killer. I believe it will be a job protector. But more so, it's a faith protector in the opportunity to have a job. When we were debating in Congress this very issue of cap and trade, back home where I live and all across the State of Texas and in other parts of the country where I was privileged to travel, people were asking, Please, are they really going to impose this crazy legislation upon us at the cost of our jobs and jack up the cost of our energy? A lot of small businesses said, I don't know what to do, because this thing is looming out there. If it becomes law, I have the feeling it's going to put me out of business because I'm not going to be able to afford the disastrous cost it's going to take to keep me in operation. These are just small business owners. Meanwhile, those in the refining and power industries looked at this thing and said, Good Lord, what is this going to do to us? How many people are we going to be able to keep on? And who are we going to have to lay off so we can meet these onerous requirements? And the people of the United States and this Congress basically said no to the President and no to the Democratic majority of the last few years. So the result was a sigh of relief, not only in my hometown but in hometowns across America; a sigh of relief, because they looked at this thing and said, This doesn't make sense. They're trying to regulate the air we breathe. It just shocks people as to what it might do to their cost. Now I just came tonight to ask one question, a very simple question, the question everybody in my district has been asking me. What is it about the word no that these folks don't understand? Because they have been told no, and I think it should remain no. We should support this amendment.

Mr. CARTER. Mr. Chairman, I reserve a point of order on the gentleman's amendment.

Mr. CARTER. We have no objection to this amendment and are prepared to accept the amendment.

Mr. CARTER. Will the gentleman yield?

Mr. CARTER

Mr. CARTER. Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.