Bob Goodlatte

Mr. GOODLATTE

Mr. GOODLATTE. Mr. Chairman, this amendment exempts from the bill any rule or guidance pertaining to health or public safety. Health and public safety regulation done properly serve important goals, and the bill does nothing to frustrate the effective achievement of those goals. But Federal health and public safety regulation constitutes an immense part of total Federal regulation and has been the source of many of the most abusive, unnecessarily expensive, and job-and-wage destroying regulations. To remove these areas of regulation from the bill would be to severely weaken the bill's important reforms to lower the crushing cumulative costs of Federal regulation. Consider, for example, testimony before the Judiciary Committee last term by Rob James, a city councilman from Avon Lake, Ohio, about the impacts of new and excessive regulation on his town, its workers, and its families. Avon Lake is a small town facing devastation by ideologically driven, antifossil-fuel power plant regulations. These regulations are expected to destroy jobs in Avon Lake, harm Avon Lake's families, and make it even harder for Avon Lake to find the resources to provide emergency services, quality schools, and help for its neediest citizens--all while doing comparatively little to control mercury emissions that are the stated target of the regulations. Let me point out to the gentleman and anyone else concerned that health and safety regulations are a tantamount concern of this legislation. In fact, I will quote from page 19 of the bill: The agency shall adopt a rule only on the basis of the best reasonably obtainable scientific, technical, economic, and other evidence and information concerning the need for, consequences of, and alternatives to the rule. I will also point out that the American Council of Independent Laboratories supports this legislation. Mr. Chairman, I urge my colleagues to oppose the amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GOODLATTE. Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to the motion.

Mr. GOODLATTE. Mr. Chairman, it is my pleasure to yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Marino), the chairman of the Subcommittee on Regulatory Reform, Commercial, and Antitrust Law of the House Judiciary Committee.

Mr. GOODLATTE. Mr. Chairman, at this time it is my pleasure to yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from Washington (Ms. Herrera Beutler).

Mr. GOODLATTE. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. The American people are now four elections and more than 6 years into the worst period after an economic crisis since the Great Depression. Despite some encouraging recent signs, jobs have not truly recovered. Wages have definitely not recovered. The rate of new business startups has not recovered. Instead, permanent exits from the labor force are at historic levels, real wages have fallen, and dependency on government assistance has increased. People have been giving up because they can't find a confident path forward. In this recovery, we are not recovering; we are losing something precious. We are losing what has allowed this Nation to contribute more to human happiness than any other nation in history. We are losing the opportunity to live the American Dream. What is that dream? It is the dream that if you work hard, if you take responsibility for your life, if you reach for the opportunity that your human potential makes possible, you will be free to succeed. You will be free to pursue your happiness. And as you achieve that happiness, your children will have a better chance in life than you did. All across this country, people who have been struggling, people whose jobs and wages have been disappearing, people who have been leaving the labor pool for the dependency pool, people who have seen no way possible to start a new business, can feel in their bones that this American Dream, the dream that they cherish and their children need, is slipping away. What is killing the American Dream? It is not ordinary Americans. It is not foreign enemies. It is not global phenomena. It is not natural disasters. More than anything else, it is the endless drain of resources that takes working people's hard- earned wages to Washington, and Washington's endless erection of regulatory roadblocks in the path of opportunity and growth. Today, the combined economic burden of Federal taxation and regulation is over $3 trillion, almost 20 percent of our economy. Of that, the larger part is the burden of regulation--now estimated to reach at least $1.86 trillion. That Federal regulatory burden is larger than the 2013 gross domestic product of all but the top 10 countries in the world. It is half the size of Germany's entire gross domestic product. It is more than one-third the size of Japan's. Most important, that burden is $15,000 per American household, nearly 30 percent of average household income in 2013. No one says we need no regulation, but who can credibly say we need regulation that costs this much. America cannot possibly retain its competitive position in the world and create opportunity and prosperity for all Americans if the Federal Government continues to drop such a crushing weight on our economy. My Regulatory Accountability Act addresses head on the problem of endlessly escalating, excessive Federal regulatory costs, and it addresses it in clear, commonsense ways that we can all support because it is based on principles proven in bipartisan practice from Presidents of both parties since Ronald Reagan. What are those principles? Here are some of the most important: require agencies to choose the lowest cost rulemaking alternative that meets statutory objectives; if needed to protect public health, safety, or welfare, allow flexibility to choose costlier rules, but make sure the added benefits justify the added costs; improve public outreach and agency factfinding to identify better, more efficient regulatory alternatives; require agencies to use the best reasonably-obtainable science; provide on-the-record but streamlined administrative hearings in the highest-impact rulemakings--those that impose $1 billion or more in annual costs--so interested parties can subject critical evidence to cross-examination; require advanced notice of proposed major rulemakings to increase public input before costly agency positions are proposed and entrenched; strengthen judicial review of new agency regulations to make sure the Federal Courts can enforce these requirements. In a nutshell, this bill says to every agency: Fulfill the statutory goals the United States Congress has set for you. Protect health. Protect safety. Protect consumers. Protect the vulnerable. You are free to do that, and you should do that whenever Congress gives you those orders, but as you achieve those goals, make sure you do it with better public input, better-tested information, and in the least-costly way. The minute this bill becomes law, what will start to happen? America will start to save hundreds of billions of dollars it doesn't need to spend. That is real money that can be put to better use creating jobs and wages for our constituents, real money that hardworking Americans can use to start and grow their own businesses, real money that can be used to restore the American Dream, all without stopping a single needed regulation from being issued. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. GOODLATTE. Mr. Chairman, at this time, it is my pleasure to yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Peterson), who has worked with us across the aisle on this legislation for the last two Congresses. This issue goes back far before that as well. I want to thank him for his work on this.

Mr. GOODLATTE. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the amendment offered by my colleague from Virginia.

Mr. GOODLATTE. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the amendment.

Mr. GOODLATTE. Mr. Chairman, I hear from the other side of the aisle about how low-income people are being taken care of already because the President of the United States has told these agencies to ``take into account their status.'' But guess what? That has no judicial enforceability. So if a low-income person really wants to seek redress of their grievances through a regulation that is going to cost them their job, cost them their business, whatever the case might be, they have no recourse to the courts. Among those who suffer most unfairly from overreaching regulations are lower-income families and individuals. The other side has criticized our list of entities supporting this. But these are all job-creating organizations. I haven't heard of many job-creating organizations who are opposed to this legislation. New regulations often represent the policy preferences of elites and pro-regulatory advocates. Recent regulations aimed at driving down the use of coal and other fossil fuels are an example of this. What growing research shows, and what policy elites too often ignore, is that the costs of new regulations often have regressive effects on those with lower incomes. For example, when electricity rates go up because Federal regulators clamp down on the use of cheap energy, real money that lower-income households need to secure better housing, better educational choices, or other essential needs goes instead to pay for unnecessarily excessive regulations. This is unfair. Agencies should be required to identify and reveal the unseen adverse effects of proposed new regulations on low-income households. The gentleman's amendment accomplishes this important goal. I urge my colleagues to support this amendment.

Mr. GOODLATTE. Mr. Chairman, I am pleased to yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Farenthold), the vice chairman of the Regulatory Reform, Commercial, and Antitrust Law Subcommittee.

Mr. GOODLATTE. Mr. Chairman, I am happy to yield an additional minute to the gentlewoman from Washington.

Mr. GOODLATTE. Mr. Chairman, to the point just raised by the gentleman from Georgia, I want to quote Daniel Webster, who is also quoted right up there above us in the Chamber. He says, ``It is hardly too strong to say that the Constitution was made to guard the people against the dangers of good intentions. There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern. They promise to be good masters, but they mean to be masters.'' I share and welcome the gentleman from Georgia's concerns about the impact of regulations on the people and on their jobs, but the right way to address that concern is to join me in supporting this bill. It includes the Rothfus-Barr amendment added to the legislation in the 113th Congress that requires agencies to do a much better job identifying adverse job impacts before they impose the regulations. The gentleman's amendment represents the wrong way to address job concerns. That is because it would give the executive branch a strong incentive to manipulate its jobs impact and cost-benefit analysis to avoid the requirements of the bill, including the Rothfus-Barr amendment, rather than comply with that requirement. The amendment also puts the cart before the horse, offering carve- outs from the bill, based on factors that cannot be determined adequately unless the important analytical requirements in the bill are applied in the first place. For all of these reasons, I urge my colleagues to oppose the amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GOODLATTE

Mr. GOODLATTE. Mr. Chairman, I first want to begin by thanking the chairman of the Subcommittee on Homeland Security of the Committee on Appropriations and the chairman of the full Appropriations Committee, the gentlemen from Texas and Kentucky, for their excellent work on this legislation. It is important that we pass it, and it is important that we use the power of the purse in this process to stop the President's unconstitutional actions. President Obama has embarked on some of the biggest executive power grabs in American history by unilaterally rewriting our Nation's immigration laws. These actions ignore the will of the American people who voted in November to change the way Washington operates, and these actions flout the United States Constitution. They must be ended because these policies threaten the separation of powers between Congress and the executive branch and violate President Obama's obligation to take care that the laws be faithfully executed. Congress must fight to stop these unconstitutional actions from being implemented, and today, the House of Representatives is doing just that. We will consider amendments to this bill that will stop President Obama's executive overreach in its tracks. Two of the amendments will completely defund President Obama's executive power grabs. One offered by Representatives Robert Aderholt, Mick Mulvaney, and Lou Barletta will defund the President's new deferred action program for over 4 million unlawful alien parents. It will also defund the other executive actions he announced on November 20 and DHS' so-called prosecutorial discretion memos that have gutted immigration enforcement within the United States. Importantly, in addition to barring the use of appropriated funds to carry out these policies, the amendment will bar President Obama from using immigration user fees, the filing fees to accomplish his executive fiat, and it will prevent him and subsequent Presidents from carrying out similar policies in the future by whatever means, whether it be by memo, executive order, or regulation. The other defunding amendment, offered by Representative Marsha Blackburn, completely defunds DACA, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, that has granted deferred action and work authorization to hundreds of thousands of unlawful aliens. The third amendment will be offered by Representatives DeSantis and Roby. It will ensure that sex offenders and domestic violence perpetrators are top priorities for removal by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, something that is not the case in this current administration under the President's memos. The fourth amendment will be offered by Representative Schock. It expresses the sense of Congress that the Obama administration should stop putting the interests of unlawful aliens ahead of legal immigrants. Under the President's DACA program, legal immigrants playing by the rules and seeking to come to the United States the right way have paid the price; they have faced longer wait times even though they have paid the fees to have their applications processed and seeing those fees diverted to pay for people who entered the country unlawfully. The fifth amendment will be offered by Representatives Salmon and Thompson. It expresses the sense of Congress that U.S. workers should not be harmed by the granting of deferred action and work authorization to unlawful aliens. In many cases, businesses now have a $3,000 incentive to hire an alien granted DACA benefits over a U.S. citizen or legal immigrant worker, since DACA recipients are not eligible for ObamaCare. So, in other words, an employer has an incentive, either not having to provide health insurance and not having to pay the fine, so a minimum of $3,000 if they hire somebody who is not lawfully present in the United States until the President's executive memos take effect. That should be stopped. If President Obama's unilateral immigration amendments are not stopped, future Presidents will continue to expand the power of the executive branch and encroach upon individual liberty. The time is now for Congress to take a stand against these abusive actions. I urge my colleagues to support this bill and these important amendments and yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GOODLATTE

Mr. GOODLATTE. I now yield to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Joyce).

Mr. GOODLATTE. I now yield to the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Buck).

Mr. GOODLATTE. I now yield to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Eddie Bernice Johnson).

Mr. GOODLATTE. I now yield to the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Pittenger).

Mr. GOODLATTE. I now yield to the gentleman from Vermont (Mr. Welch).

Mr. GOODLATTE. I now yield to the gentleman from California (Mr. McClintock).

Mr. GOODLATTE. I now yield to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Fitzpatrick).

Mr. GOODLATTE. I now yield to the gentlewoman from New York (Ms. Clarke).

Mr. GOODLATTE. I now yield to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Griffith).

Mr. GOODLATTE. I now yield to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Pelosi), the minority leader.

Mr. GOODLATTE. I now yield to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Sean Patrick Maloney).

Mr. GOODLATTE. I now yield to the gentleman from Alabama (Mr. Palmer).