John Carter

Mr. CARTER

Mr. CARTER. It is basically permanent. But what we are saying is the real issue is the mercury issue and the hydrochloric acid issue, and those things have not even been discussed.

Mr. CARTER. Having raised four children and being a person who cares about children, I was a little offended that I was being accused of wanting to harm children, which is not the purpose of this. In fact, I would argue that between 75 and 100 percent of the mercury pollutants on two-thirds of the American continent, of the country of America, is coming from foreign sources. Of those who cannot meet these onerous requirements, the only solution they have in order to stay in business is to move to foreign countries, where they do not regulate air quality. I would argue, with this amendment, we are taking it away from the polluters and are saying, Wait a minute. Let's look at this and talk it out. That's really what we are trying to do, and so I would argue that I'm trying to save the lives of American children because the foreigners are polluting our air, and 75 percent of those pollutants were created by foreign companies where the only choice for these people to stay in business is to move there.

Mr. CARTER. I'm a little confused on your question and I may be able to clarify. If you're asking the question are we attempting to defund that czar, we are.

Mr. CARTER. Madam Chair, I would like to inform the Chair and the balance of the people here that it is our intent to finish this amendment and Ms. McCollum's amendment, and then we'll be going to a vote. I thought, for information purposes, I would let everybody know our intent and what we would like to do.

Mr. CARTER. Will the gentleman yield?

Mr. CARTER

Mr. CARTER. I thank the gentleman for yielding, and I want to commend the chairman and his committee for the hard work they're doing here today. While we look at bad rules, Madam Speaker, already on the books, let's not take new, worse rules on in the future. With a split House and Senate, it will be a tough job to repeal existing regulations in light of the Senate requirement of 60 votes to bring something to a vote in the Senate. It will be very difficult, but we have a special parliamentary tool to block new rules with the Congressional Review Act, which mandates a Senate vote on blocking new regulations of just 30 Members of the Senate. So we can have closure in the Senate with only 30 Senators joining us. Today, we face new EPA attempts to shut down the Portland cement industry in our Nation, costing thousands of jobs. We face an EPA grab to take away Texas' ability to issue emission permits, undermining the economy of Texas and destroying job growth in our State. We face an HHS scheme to kick small health insurers out of the market because they can't match the administrative cost ratios of their mega- insurer competitors. But if we use our majority in this body to disapprove these bad rules, we can then convince just 30 of our Senators to join us and go along with it to bring it to the floor of the Senate for a vote, a straight up-or-down vote. I think we have a very good chance to stop these new rules that are in the pipeline. Madam Speaker, I urge all Members to join our effort to use the Congressional Review Act to fight bad rules and save jobs. I thank you.

Mr. CARTER

Mr. CARTER. Two-thirds. Two-thirds of the refining capacity is in Texas. And all of a sudden as this dispute between EPA and Texas rises its ugly head, and we see that the EPA is taking over this permitting, and industry itself is saying, look, we just want to know what to do. We are at a loss of what to do. And we are willing to work. Industry is saying to them, tell us what the new permit is. Tell us how to do this. What's going to happen? And there's a lawsuit pending, and all this stuff. Now the speculators, I think, are starting to say, oh, the price may be going up again. You tell me. Has the price of gasoline gone up in the last 3 months? Does it look like it's going to continue? I'm not saying this is the cause, but I think I can argue it's one of them. What Texas does with industry is the perfect example of government and industry working to fix a problem together. That's what we thought we were going to get from the Obama administration when he started out. Instead, we have government working against industry in this present administration, and because of that we start to see it at every level. And by the way, if you think it's just in this particular area, just a little fact: Last year, the Federal Government issued a total of 3,316 new rules and regulations, an average of 13 rules a day. Seventy-eight of the new rules last year were major rules. A major rule is a rule that will result in an annual effect on the economy of $100 million or more, a major increase in cost or prices for consumers, or significant adverse effect to the economy. And we had, just last year, 78 of those rules, plus an additional 3,000-plus more rules that were passed. I bring this all up, and I will yield to my friend in just a moment, because I want to talk about one of the solutions that we are looking at. It's a little known thing that is now coming to the forefront. It's called the Congressional Review Act. Back in 1996 under the Contract With America Advancement Act of 1996, as part of the Small Business Regulatory Enforcement Fairness Act, they created the Congressional Review Act, this is Public Policy Law PL 104-121. It allows the Congress to review every new Federal regulation issued by the government agencies and by passage of a joint resolution overrule that regulation. The process is the Federal agencies shall--note that word, that means they have to, although I don't think they all do--submit to each House of Congress and to the Comptroller General a comprehensive report on any major proposed rule. Congress has 60--that's legislative--days to pass a joint resolution of disapproval of any rule. The Senate must--must--vote on the CRA resolution of disapproval if 30 Members of the Senate approve having a vote. Only 30 Members are necessary to have a vote in the Senate. So this is a tool where we can, in our small way, be a part of this fight on behalf of Texas. And we will be following this procedure that is set out in this act, and we will be attempting to have, and will have, a vote on this House floor on this rule. And I think when people hear the ``taint fair'' factor in this particular rule, it's going to be a strong vote. I now yield the time to Mr. Gohmert that he wishes to take.

Mr. CARTER. I thank the Speaker for allowing me this time. I am pleased that I can bring up some issues that I think are important. The title of this is ``The EPA's War on Texas,'' but this is about a lot more than Texas. I think that most people probably don't realize that a lot of the rules and laws that, especially if they're in business, but even in your own personal life, that seem to touch closest to home, you would think they were done by a vote of this Congress in some form or fashion where we decided that this is good for whatever the rule is for your life or for your business or for the good of our Nation. But, in fact, many of these rules actually come from regulatory agencies. These agencies are given rule-making power, and those rules actually have the power of law. And so a body of employees of the United States--and a few of them are political appointees, depending on the agency. Some of them are appointed each term by the administration, but most of these people are civil servants who work for civil service and these agencies. There are agencies across this land that take certain sections of our lives and make rules about them--the rule-making authority is given to them by Congress--and the EPA is one of those agencies, the Environmental Protection Agency. A situation has arisen in Texas which is not only about Texas, but it's about America. The last couple of years I have been talking about the rule of law and the fact that we try to set up a system in this Nation that has basic fairness and that there are certain things that are right and certain things that are wrong. When we do that, we don't expect one group to impose its will upon another group inappropriately; but what has happened to Texas, I would argue, is an overstepping of a regulatory agency. To talk about this, I'm going to have to start off by giving you--so that you understand it not only affects the lives of Texans, but it directly affects the lives of 13 other States immediately, and potentially every State in this Union. In the last 4 years we have been having an ongoing debate and discussion, both at committee level and on this floor, about the effect of carbon emissions upon the environment. There has been an ongoing debate as to whether or not there is such a thing as global warming. That term now, because the globe doesn't seem to be warming up very much, has turned to climate change, and also because of some kind of falsely manipulated facts concerning global warming, the term has gone to climate change. But there are those good-meaning people in this Congress who believe that carbon emissions are the new deadly medicine for this country; and if we don't do away with them, it's going to destroy our ability to live on this planet. Al Gore and others are the lead folks on this, and they think it's very important. That debate has been going on now for 4 to 6 years in this Congress, and an attempt has been made to pass what's called cap-and-trade legislation. In fact, by one vote, I believe it was, cap-and-trade, under the Democratic administration of the last session of Congress, was passed out of this House. Cap-and- trade went nowhere in the Senate, and so it never became law. But its purpose was to cap the emissions and tax folks accordingly. That's very simplified; it's much more complex than that. But basically this Congress, made up of the Senate and the House, rejected as a unit the concept of cap-and-trade. The Environmental Protection Agency decided that even though pretty much America had spoken that carbon emissions were not something that they wanted to impose harshness upon folks about, they decided, well, we don't care what they want, we want the carbon emissions. So they, starting in December, I believe, of last year, they started issuing new regulations about carbon emissions. And then they started passing them on through the Clean Air Act to the various States. Now, I'm telling you this because it's going to have a direct effect on your life. Every Member of Congress here and every person that might be watching this discussion someplace else will see that when you start talking about what is maybe happening in Texas, you have to realize that as you watch the price of gasoline go up at your pump, you have to realize that there can be a direct relationship between what's going on in the market and what happens to the prices for the American consumer. Here's what has happened in Texas. When they created the Clean Air Act, they gave the EPA the ability to promulgate rules and standards for air quality. But the act specifically says that the local authority and the States have a better means of policing up this act than the Federal Government. So the implementation of the rules, of the standards set by EPA, will be done by the States rather than the Federal Government, and each State is to come up with a plan. And that bill was passed, I believe, in 1974 or 1976, something like that. Anyway, it was in the 1970s, and it had nothing to do with carbon. It had to do with noxious gasses and other really bad things that were getting into our air and reducing the air quality, and the standards were important. And each State had the ability to structure their permitting system to fit the needs of their State and then submit that permitting system to the EPA for approval. And the EPA would say, Yeah, I think that's a good system, or, No, we don't think it is a good system. One of the things that happened when they put together this Clean Air Act and set these emission standards was what they call a grandfather clause. And companies that were already in existence long before the time of the passing of this act were grandfathered out of the act. So basically some of these big refineries, electricity power plants, manufacturing facilities, automobile plants had been around long enough that they would be grandfathered in some certain areas on these emission standards and the requirement for permitting under the law. That was just the way this act was written. So Texas had a lot of--Texas is the largest energy producing and energy manufacturing State in the United States and has the largest refinery capacity in the United States. I used to be able to name the refineries in Texas, but I'm afraid I'd fall way short today. But needless to say, there are a multitude of refineries and chemical manufacturing facilities just in the Houston area alone and in Corpus Christ and in other parts of our State, both great, gigantic refineries and midsize and small refineries and manufacturing facilities. And they're all dealing with, basically, the petrochemical industry. The oil and gas industry is the base product that they are refining, manufacturing things from and so forth. So in Texas, looking at what it would take not only to clean up the industries that would fall under the act, which would be the newly permitted industries, but also would start to police up the grandfathered--the folks that could get out under a grandfather clause--police up those facilities, too. The people in Texas got together and they came up with a concept called flex permitting, and here's the way it works: Let's just take a refinery. Baytown has a gigantic refinery that I have visited. They passed a rule that says there's lots of sources of emissions from some form or fashion inside of a refinery--comes from a little thing the size of a faucet to great big smoke stacks can be emitting something into the air. So what we want them to do is take that site and reduce their emissions down to the standard that is required by EPA. And so we're going to let them, so long as their site reduces emissions and meets the goals set up by the Clean Air Act--not every individual place that emits will have to have a permit, but just one permit to cover the whole site. And then as the site reduces its emissions, it all falls under one permit, and it's called a flex permit. So it allows the refinery to go in, fix this first and then fix this second and this third and this fourth; and find the big bad ones first and fix those, and then work down to fix the plant. And by the way, there is a recent letter from the EPA saying that Texas has met and exceeded the standards under this flex permitting. But then along comes greenhouse gasses, and they passed the rule about carbon emissions. And they say, Now you have to put that under your permitting systems. And the other 13 States plus Texas were kind of taken aback by this. But Texas said, No way. We don't think you should be imposing carbon emission standards on us when the Congress refused to impose these standards. And they, as I understand it, started contesting this in the court. So here's where the rub comes in. The EPA then announces to Texas, We don't approve your flexible permitting system, and every industry in your State is now out of compliance, and you are going to have to have a new permitting system, and we're taking over how that's going to work--even though the act says Texas, or any State, shall be people who administer there. Now, you may say, Well, that's not too bad. There's a kicker here. Texas created this permitting system in 1994, and since that time, they have been asking EPA to tell them yes or no. Do you approve it or you don't approve it? And tentatively, they sort of said, Well, we'll approve it, but we're going to study it and look at it. Fifteen years this flexible permitting system has been in place. And now as the dispute over carbon emissions comes along, to batter Texas into compliance, they have depermitted the whole State. They've announced they depermitted the whole State. Now, the State went to court and at least got a stay on that temporarily. But think about that. If you had something that you were doing that the government said, Now we'll have to approve that to do it, and you say, Fine, here's what we're doing; would you please approve it or disapprove it, and they waited 15 years to do it, and then when they announced they're disapproving it they say, Oh, by the way, we plan to go back and fine you for the last 15 years for carbon emissions--that's what I understand it's going to be--something is wrong with this picture. I'm joined by my good friend and fellow judge, Louie Gohmert from Texas, and I'd like to hear his take on this. And if I got anything wrong, he can tell me about it.

Mr. CARTER. California.

Mr. CARTER. California.

Mr. CARTER. I yield to Mr. Barton.

Mr. CARTER. And you know, this flex permit's whole purpose was to use common sense and meet the environmental standards without shutting down facilities and losing jobs. That's why they came up with the flex permit. It allowed them, if they met the standards, to do the repairs and fixes in integral parts and not stop until the whole thing is in compliance and have a permit for every faucet in the building that needs to be adjusted or fixed. But rather let them fix the problem as it goes along. And we are the model for meeting the air quality act, the model. I mean most States aren't in as good of compliance as the State of Texas under the flex permit system. And yet exactly as my colleague has pointed out, because of this carbon emissions dictatorship and because they're saying you will do as I say or else, the position that's being taken by this czar from the EPA, Texans are sort of the kind of people that just bow up when people say that like that, so we said ``no,'' and we are in this fight. And I think we are in the fight to win. Because I think anybody would say it would be totally unfair for EPA to sit and ponder their duty to approve a plan and spend 15 years looking at it and not do anything with it, and it's meeting its standards, and all of a sudden, bingo, because of this they're taking over our permitting. I am very pleased to be joined by a gentleman that is probably the most knowledgeable man in Congress about the workings of this particular act, Mr. Joe Barton, former chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee and a ranking member of the Energy and Commerce Committee, and now our Texas expert on all things energy and all things environmental. Mr. Barton, I yield you so much time as you choose to use.

Mr. CARTER. I thank you for coming here. Joe Barton really has been dedicating his life to these types of issues for his long tenure in Congress. But I always wonder if sometimes people back home are sitting around saying so what does this mean to me. Well, I am speculating, okay, I am only speculating, but let me say something that I think everybody agrees. The last time we had a spike in the price of gasoline, it started, I think, everybody points to how it started, it started when they had a refinery fire in Illinois. And all of a sudden, the speculators said, whoa, we've got to reduce refining capacity in the oil and gas industry right now. They shut down about half that plant in Illinois. And all of a sudden, we started to see the futures start to move on oil. And that was the kickoff of $5 gasoline in some parts of the country. Why? Because the speculators say, well, if refinery capacity is reduced, gasoline is going to be in more short supply. Futures, I can buy now, sell later. I can make money off this commodity. And the price started up. Other things happened then, speculators, all of that can be talked about. But it started. Everybody says that there was a fear of reduced refining capacity because right about that same time we had the hurricanes, which reduced refining capacity over in New Orleans. Now, what's happened since this whole thing started right here which could reduce--remember that Texas has the largest amount of refineries anywhere in the United States. Joe, Mr. Barton, if I could ask you, what percentage of the refining is in Texas? It's a pretty good percentage of the national refining. Do you know?

Mr. CARTER. That's right.

Mr. CARTER. Reclaiming my time, I believe the Governor pointed out that of the million new jobs created in America in the last 5 years, 3 years, something like that, 850,000 of them were created in Texas. We are a dynamic economy; and we are a dynamic economy because we have had the foresight of all working together to make jobs, to improve the environment by using logical, commonsense methods of doing this regulation.

Mr. CARTER. I thank you. At this time, I yield back what little time I have, and remind everybody that the stars are still big and bright deep in the heart of Texas.

Mr. CARTER. As we fight this fight, this fight is not just an oil and gas fight. This is going to affect power plants around the country that are operating under natural gas, coal, oil, any kind of hydrocarbon. This is just the tip of the iceberg of what is going to happen in this arbitrary decision by the EPA against the will of the Congress and the American people. We have had 2 years of doing things against the desired will of the American people, and the American people spoke in the last election. It is time for us to make commonsense decisions and do what makes sense. It makes no sense to let people operate under a system that works for 15 years and then come in and say implement this immediately. We are not giving you 3 years to implement it. You will do it now. And when we said, no, wait a minute, let's play by the rules, they say, Fine. We never did get around to giving you the official letter approving your flex permit system, so here is your official letter. It is denied. Because you are not doing anything about it, we are going to come in and take over your permitting system. I don't think the average American thinks that is the way anybody ought to operate. It is not the way that I think anybody ought to operate. I would be surprised if it is not the way that a majority of the people in this House think these agencies ought to operate. You know, we always hear the idiot, crazy things and they come out in the newspaper and you will see some of them. But just to let you know it is not just in this industry where new regulations are going to be going strange; there is a proposed regulation that is going to be affecting Texas for sure and a whole lot of other States in this unions: they want to regulate dust. So, if you've got a dusty road, driving up to your ranch house or to your personal house, they want to come in and regulate the dust that kicks up in the summertime, when it's hot, behind your car. The solution they came up with for this in California--California, the place where they have the drought in the Central Valley, a shortage of water--is to water down your road every day. Take the water you need for the plants and for people, and squirt it on the road to keep dust from going up in the air. Like Mr. Gohmert said, we used to laugh and say, someday, the government is going to regulate the air we breathe and the food we eat. Lo and behold, they are. It's going on right now. So this is just the beginning. As Joe said, this is just the beginning of bringing this to the attention of the American people-- this regulation, what they're doing to Texas--and of standing up for our fellow Texans, who are standing up for our State's compliance record and standing up for our State's ability to create an environment where people can have a job and where they can pay their own way--and good industry jobs. We're standing up for those people. We're making sure that we don't lose those great jobs in Texas because of this regulatory agency. This is only the beginning of the fight. There is more to come. We're going to fight, not only this regulation, but many, many more. We'll be bringing them up to let the American people see that the regulators can be dictators. I just want to correct one thing Mr. Gohmert said. We're no longer having a moratorium on drilling. I was told today by one of my constituents that we're having a permanentorium. They said, Oh, yes. Where the moratorium's lifted, you just have to get a permit. So far, there haven't been any permits.

Mr. CARTER. Reclaiming my time, that is exactly what is going on, Mr. Barton. They are all indications. You can stop your new neighbors and ask them why they came, and they will tell you because Texas is where things are happening. It is where you have a tax structure where we can prosper in business, and yet it is a fair tax structure. You are doing things right so that rather than throwing up roadblocks to new businesses, you are throwing up enhancements to make it easier for new businesses to come and prosper. Not the big monstrous refineries, the little bitty mom-and-pops. Some of those mom-and-pops are a chain of mom-and-pop stores that are all over the State and soon to be all over the Nation. Texas makes sure that we follow basic rules and we don't turn people loose, but we come up with methods where government and industry work together to solve problems.

Mr. CARTER

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

Mr. CARTER

Mr. CARTER. Mr. Speaker, I am delighted to find that the President has finally found common ground with the conservatives. The President wrote in The Wall Street Journal yesterday that he issued an executive order calling for all agencies to identify job-killing and costly red tape that could be eliminated. We should help him resolve this by eliminating thousands of new regulations that will be dumped on individuals and businesses over the next 4 years by this bad health care law. The Federal Register contains 6,123 pages of requirements for the new health care rules created by this law. The Center for Health Transformation lists 159 new Federal agencies created by this law. We can replace this bad bill with bipartisan reforms that can let the people both keep their job and their health insurance. Mr. Speaker, let's support the President's initiative and reduce bad regulations by repealing this bad law.

Mr. CARTER

Mr. CARTER. Mr. Speaker, I come over here today because about 3 weeks ago, 4 weeks ago, on a plane coming back from Washington, DC. flying to Dallas, where I changed planes and also Gabrielle Giffords changed planes, was my first opportunity to interact with this young lady. I watched her visit with the fellow travelers on the plane. She espied a couple of her constituents and talked with them. She visited with me. And then as we shared a cart to our changing gates, I was just touched by what a really, really nice person she was. We interact in this building and we have our debates and so forth, but I got a chance to just ride and talk about family and talk about life with a charming, intelligent and quite honestly captivating young lady. And that's why I came down here today, because you don't cross paths with individuals like that very often. And when you do, it's a blessing that comes into your life. And then when I turned on the television and discovered that this blessing had been attacked by this vicious, vicious attack that took place in Arizona, and not only was this sweet life placed at risk but a 9-year-old child was killed senselessly, others were murdered, others were wounded on the streets of Tucson in the United States of America at a congressional event. It makes you stop and pause and think. We have to get back together and work on these issues. We have to get civility into the world. And I am concerned about the violence. Violence has entered our House and injured one of our own and killed one of our own. I hope justice is swift and I hope justice is severe. But as we go forward, we need to work together to secure not only this House, but to secure this Nation.

Mr. CARTER

Mr. CARTER. Reclaiming my time for a moment, this morning, in an airport, as I was coming to Washington, I was on one of the earliest flights going out of Austin, Texas. We're a midsized city, and I've never seen so many lines in my life. I mean, they were a good half mile long. They were back and forth and back and forth. All I could think was that I got there early enough that, by the time I got through, I could just sit and watch the rest of those lines build up. They built up, built up, built up. It was unbelievable. A guy sitting next to me said, well, there are going to be a lot of people missing their flights today, they're not going to make it-- because these were all the people, I guess, who were coming back from Thanksgiving and instead of flying on Sunday when the cost was more they waited until Monday to get a cheaper flight. Well, what is that going to do to the airline industry? They are going to have planes flying empty. They are going to have people demanding refunds. It's going to hurt the airline industry. Before we turn around, we're going to have somebody coming in here and saying, holy cow, TSA put together this regulation, and now we're causing all these airlines to get in serious financial problems and we're going to have to buy the airline industry like we bought the automobile industry. I think we should get out of that business. That's why this Congress, or somebody who must respond to the American people, needs to be involved. That is why I think putting teeth in the Congressional Review Act through the REINS Act is good. I will yield as much time as Mr. Westmoreland needs.

Mr. CARTER. Thank you, Madam Speaker. We've been talking for a couple of years now about the rule of law and how the rules that we set up for ourselves are rules that glue our society together. But there are times when there are rules that people have a misconception about. This happens more and more when you're back home, somebody will come to you in the business community or even in their personal life and complain about something or some way that the government was interfering with their lives. There are times when, at least in my office, where people come in griping about it and unfortunately it's not the Federal Government. It's rarely not the Federal Government, but sometimes it's not the Federal Government but it's the State government. But almost always people presume that the law that is intrusive upon their life, and these are people that are not in the regular course of dealing with Washington, those laws were passed by Congress. So, therefore, Congress did this to you. And, in a way, it's true. Tonight, I want to talk about Federal regulatory authority. Federal regulations. We're at a time right now that some would argue is at least equal to the Great Depression in a time of joblessness and in a time of economic stagnation. Some would argue we're second to the Great Depression. Whichever it is, we have literally hundreds of thousands and millions of people in this country who need a job. They need to work. They want to work. They want to be out there and be productive members of society. That's the most important thing in their life. Feeding your family. People go to great strains to try to make sure that they can provide for their families. And I think all Americans feel that way. Nothing hurts more than to realize that whether it's your fault or the fault of the economy or what, you can't find a job in the town you live in, or maybe even anyplace within driving distance of where you live. You hesitate to move all the way across the country to someplace where you hear there are jobs because it's so disruptive to your family. The pressure is tremendously bad on people in this country right now. There are folks that are trying to create jobs, and they have things that are interfering with their lives. There's all kinds of reasons why you get stagnation and you get companies that are fearful to create jobs, that people are, as we hear, quote, hoarding their profits. One of the reasons we talk about all the time is uncertainty--``I don't know what's going to happen and until I know what's going to happen, I'm holding onto my money.'' That might be actually some pretty good planning in many ways. But there's also that ``I can't explain it'' factor that is in people's lives. ``I can't explain it; I just don't feel good about things right now.'' I believe that a lot of the ``I can't explain it, I just don't feel good about things right now'' feeling that a lot of Americans have, actually you could go back to what FDR said: ``The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.'' We can't define what causes us to be afraid in many instances. But there are things that go on that we create in this Congress. Through acts of Congress, we create authorities, agencies, boards, commissions, departments, all kinds of entities that have career Federal bureaucrats that work for them, and we give them what's called regulatory authority. Regulatory authority basically gives them authority to write additional rules to implement the overall plan of what the Congress perceived to be a need of the country and passed in the form of a piece of legislation. From that standpoint, I guess all rules are the resulting fault of the Congress. But in the vast majority of instances, the regulations are never addressed by the Congress. Tonight, some of my friends are joining me and I'm really proud to have them here. We're going to talk about the fact that this is not the first time this has been recognized as an interference in the ability to create growth and create jobs in this country. Back in the nineties, back in, I believe it was right after the 1994 Republican takeover of the House, the Contract with America, there were a lot of pieces of legislation passed. Some of the things they tried to do were things that would get some of the regulators off the backs of small and large businesses which would prevent the creation of wealth, prevent the creation of jobs. They passed something called the Congressional Review Act. It was signed into law by President Clinton. The Congressional Review Act requires all Federal agencies to submit any new major regulation--that's what I was telling you about; agencies have regulatory authority and those regulations are like laws written by bureaucrats--to Congress for 60 days prior to the enactment of that regulation, during which time Congress can vote to block the new rules. With President Obama in the White House and Reid still throttling the Senate, the CRA, the Congressional Review Act, gives the House the potential to look at these things and to realize that probably the largest concentration of regulatory rules that will ever be written in the history of this country are probably going to be written, or are in the process of being written on ObamaCare right now. You hear all these many things that are going on, if you just watch your television, about the Secretary has come up with a new rule and has granted a new waiver to rules, a temporary waiver, a permanent waiver, a 60-day rule; a rule forever. Rules are actually epidemic. Last year, the Federal Government issued a total of 3,316 new rules and regulations, an average of 13 rules a day. Seventy-eight of those new rules were major rules. A major rule is any rule that may result in an annual effect on the economy of $100 million or more; a major increase in cost or prices for consumers; or a significant adverse effect on the economy. We are already seeing that ObamaCare seems to be the mother of all rules. The Congressional Research Service reports that ObamaCare gives Federal agencies substantial responsibility and authority to, quote, fill in the blanks, fill in the details, for the legislation that was passed by this Congress and submitted for regulations. There are more than 40 provisions in the health care overhaul that require, permit, or contemplate Federal rulemaking. We have this tool called the CRA. And I've got a board here that tells you a little bit about it, and I told you some of it. So it passed as part of the Small Business Regulatory Enforcement Fairness Act of 1996, part of the Contract for America Advancement Act of 1996. The purpose was to allow Congress to review every new Federal regulation issued by the government, government agencies, or passed by a joint resolution and overrule that regulation. The way it works is the Federal agencies shall submit to each House of Congress and to the Comptroller General a comprehensive report on any major proposed rule. Congress has 60 days to pass a joint resolution of disapproval of any rule. The Senate must vote on the CRA resolution of disapproval if this House votes to disapprove the rule. So that's the way it works. This is a tool that I have a lot of questions with. My first job out of law school when I was a young, stupid lawyer and had a lot to learn was to be drafting legislation for the Texas Legislative Council. And I didn't learn a lot there, but I learned one thing: When the word ``shall'' appeared, it meant you do it. If it said ``may,'' you had other options you could take. But if the legislation says ``shall submit,'' you shall submit it. You shall do it. You have to do it. But interestingly enough, I don't think that this tells you what happens if you don't. So there are a lot of questions in this bill. This bill needs some further work. A good friend of mine, Representative Geoff Davis, has actually been looking into putting a little bit more teeth into the Congress' power to oversee these regulations. So, at this time, I'm going to yield as much time as he wishes to consume to my friend, Geoff Davis, to tell us about what he looked at when he started with his REINS Act that he proposed and tell us about it. Take the time you need.

Mr. CARTER. I thank the gentleman. My good friend, the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Westmoreland) is here, and I want to let him make the comments he wishes to make.

Mr. CARTER. Reclaiming my time, what you just described is part of the American frustration factor that is part of what has got Americans frustrated in this economy right now. It is the unknown. It is the what is the government going to do to me next that's out there that has got businessmen, job creators standing around, scratching their heads, then they hear this story. I want to tell you a story from my youth. I was working for the legislative counsel, and then when I left that job, I got hired as the attorney for the Ag Committee of the Texas House of Representatives. I will make this short, but it is a great story. The Federal Government passed a new meat-cutting law, and it was going to affect all these mom and pop sausage makers all over the State of Texas--at that time we had literally thousands of them. We were having hearings from these people complaining about what these new regulations were doing to them, and in comes two people from the Department of Corrections with a guy in a prison uniform. They put him on the stand in the Ag Committee and said, what are you here to testify about? And he said, me and my brother were the best sausage makers in east Texas, we were the best. And this fellow comes in our door one day and says, I'm from the Federal Government, I've got some new regulations. You're going to have to tear out all your equipment and buy new equipment. He said we went to the bank and we borrowed $25,000 because he said we made the best sausage in east Texas and we put it all in. Six months later that same fellow came through our door and said we've got new regulations, you've got to have a drain and a cement floor and you've got to have all stainless steel, so all that stuff has got to go. He said, me and my brother, we went down and borrowed another $50,000 from the bank and we redid all that. He said, about 1 year later that same fellow walked in the door and said, I've got bad news for you, so I shot the guy, and now I'm in prison for attempted manslaughter. That is a true story.