Bob Goodlatte

Mr. GOODLATTE

Mr. GOODLATTE. Mr. Chairman, for the reasons already cited, I urge my colleagues to oppose this amendment which would gut the bill, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GOODLATTE. At this time, I am pleased to yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Gowdy).

Mr. GOODLATTE. May I inquire how much time each side has remaining?

Mr. GOODLATTE. Mr. Chairman, Mr. Nadler's amendment purports to clarify that nothing in this legislation limits or otherwise affects prosecutorial discretion. If this amendment is adopted, it will only serve to cause confusion regarding the scope of the President's duty under the Take Care Clause and the ability of Congress to bring a lawsuit pursuant to this legislation. The underlying bill provides that the House or Senate may authorize a lawsuit based upon adoption of a resolution declaring that the executive branch ``established or implemented a formal or informal policy, practice, or procedure to refrain from enforcing'' Federal law in violation of the Take Care Clause. Adoption of a ``policy, practice, or procedure'' is not an exercise in prosecutorial discretion; rather, the exercise of prosecutorial discretion involves a determination as to whether a particular individual or entity should be the subject of an enforcement action for past conduct. In other words, nothing in this bill limits prosecutorial discretion. Thus, inserting into the bill an exception for the undefined term ``prosecutorial discretion'' would only serve to cause confusion. Worse, including an exception for prosecutorial discretion would also allow the executive branch to move to dismiss every case brought pursuant to this bill on the grounds that it was merely exercising prosecutorial discretion. This would result in costly and wasteful delays in the court's ability to decide the merits of these important separation of powers disputes in a timely manner. Additionally, if adopted, the amendment would cause confusion as to the meaning of the Take Care Clause itself. The clause imposes an affirmative duty on the President to ``take care that the laws be faithfully executed.'' This amendment proposes to interpret that duty by codifying into statutory law that there is a ``constitutional authority of the executive branch to exercise prosecutorial discretion.'' However, unlike the duty imposed by the Take Care Clause, the words ``prosecutorial discretion'' appear nowhere in the text of the Constitution. We should not place an undefined limit on the Take Care Clause into the United States Code. Finally, the amendment would, in practice, act to prohibit the Federal courts from further refining the contours of appropriate prosecutorial discretion. The base bill seeks to encourage courts to engage in active constitutional issues, not to put entire categories of subjects off-limits from review by the Federal courts. I urge my colleagues to oppose this amendment, and I reserve the balance of my time.

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

Mr. GOODLATTE. Reclaiming my time, the amendment is clear that it would prohibit the language of the bill from bringing a lawsuit when the President fails to enforce the civil rights laws. Mr. Chairman, I oppose the amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GOODLATTE. Mr. Chairman, I oppose this amendment, as it would allow the President to rewrite the civil rights laws on his own without any accountability in court. The amendment, if adopted, would literally provide that nothing in the bill shall affect any action taken by the President or by the head of an agency or, indeed, any action taken by ``any other officer or employee of the United States,'' with regards to the protections provided under the civil rights laws. If adopted, this amendment would immunize from accountability in court this President and any President and other Federal employees when they fail to enforce the civil rights laws, as written. What if a President decides that certain groups should not be protected under the civil rights laws and fails to enforce those laws to protect certain groups? Indeed, what if any entry-level employee of the Federal Government decides the civil rights laws should not be enforced to protect certain groups that are protected under the clear terms of the civil rights laws? This amendment, if adopted, would immunize the President or any entry-level employee of the executive branch from accountability. In fact, this amendment stands for the very policy this bill opposes. This bill provides for holding accountable the President or any other Federal employee whenever they fail to faithfully execute the law. This amendment, in stark contrast, would prevent the Federal courts from ordering the President and other Federal officials to enforce the civil rights laws when they are failing to faithfully execute them. It was a sad day when Members of this House stood up and applauded this President when he said, during his State of the Union Address, that he would seek to circumvent Congress when the people's duly elected Representatives oppose his proposals and when a senior member of the Senate called for the President to unilaterally stop enforcing the law against certain individuals if legislation is not passed by September, as Senator Schumer did last Thursday. It is another sad day when an amendment is offered to explicitly shield the President or any other Federal employee from accountability when their actions are not authorized by the laws enacted by the people's elected Representatives. The President should not be above the law; and by that, I mean any law, not the least of which are the civil rights laws of the United States. Because this amendment would codify the terrible policy of allowing a President carte blanche to enforce or not enforce the civil rights laws as he deems fit, it should be opposed by every Member of this body, especially those who would like to see the civil rights laws protect everyone, as they are written.

Mr. GOODLATTE

Mr. GOODLATTE. Mr. Chairman, the amendment is unnecessary and could needlessly block important energy construction projects from breaking ground. The March 2011 ``Project No Project'' study identified 351 energy projects, including nuclear projects, that, if approved, could generate $1.1 trillion for the economy and create 1.9 million jobs annually. I appreciate that my colleague is concerned about the safety of nuclear power, including in earthquake fault zones. The RAPID Act does not require agencies to approve or deny any particular project or permit application. It simply ensures that the environmental review and permitting process is conducted by agencies in an efficient and transparent manner. It is consistent with the administration's own guidance, the President's Jobs Council's recommendations, prior, bipartisan legislation, and the all-of-the-above energy strategy that America needs. I urge my colleagues to oppose the amendment, and I reserve the balance of my time.

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

Mr. GOODLATTE. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. The RAPID Act will create jobs by ensuring that the Federal environmental review and permitting process works like it should. The RAPID Act is drafted to make agencies operate efficiently and transparently; it does not prevent citizens from participating in this process. In fact, the bill makes sure that agencies provide the public with reasonable public comment periods. It authorizes up to 60 days of public comment on Environmental Impact Statements, up to 30 days of comment on environmental assessments and other documents, and grants the lead agency authority to negotiate extensions or provide them on its own for good cause. This is more than fair. By comparison, the National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA, regulations only require agencies to allow 45 days for public comment on draft Environmental Impact Statements and 30 days for public comments on final Environmental Impact Statements. The RAPID Act also reasonably requires that a person comment on an environmental document before challenging it in court, and bring any suit within 6 months, as opposed to 6 years. Opponents should not be able to delay a project indefinitely by playing hide-the-ball with agencies or by resting on their rights. I urge my colleagues to oppose this amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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

Mr. GOODLATTE. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous materials on H.R. 2641.

Mr. GOODLATTE. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. 5\1/2\ years after the financial crisis struck in 2008, America remains in a jobs recession. Millions of Americans would call it a jobs depression. The RAPID Act responds to America's urgent need for new jobs with critical help. According to testimony received by the Regulatory Reform Subcommittee, the RAPID Act would help to stimulate the creation of 3 million jobs. In an economy in which the labor force participation rate has reached record lows, there is little more urgent jobs legislation that Congress could pass than the RAPID Act. The jobs the RAPID Act would create, moreover, are high-wage, highly- skilled construction jobs. This is not just sure-fire legislation to create millions of jobs; it is sure-fire legislation to create higher wages for hardworking Americans. Why do we need legislation to create these jobs? The reason is simple. Since before the financial crisis began and up to this day, the Federal Government's outdated and overly burdensome environmental review process has kept legions of jobs and workers waiting too long for approval from Federal bureaucrats. The United States now ranks a dismal 34th in the world in the procedures, time, and costs needed to obtain governmental approval of new construction permits. The heart of the problem lies with delay in the completion of reviews under the National Environmental Policy Act, commonly known as NEPA. When NEPA was first implemented, neither Congress nor the executive branch contemplated that the NEPA process would bog down responsible Federal permitting. On the contrary, when Congress debated the issue, it talked about timeframes like 90 days to complete review. In 1981, the Council on Environmental Quality, or CEQ, thought all review could be done in a year. A recent study, however, found that the average length of time to complete just one part of the process, the preparation of an environmental impact statement, was 3.4 years and growing. Examples abound of cases in which it takes far longer. The port of Savannah, Georgia, for example, has seen a potential dredging project mired in review for over 13 years, with no end to review in sight. Cape Wind, a significant wind energy project in Massachusetts, took 12 years to reach the end of review. Making matters worse, many projects that finally emerge from the administrative review process only become bogged down again in lengthy litigation challenging agencies' permitting decisions. Clearly, the system needs to be reformed. Vice President Biden summed it up dramatically during a visit to the Savannah port in 2013 when he said: What are we doing? We're arguing about whether or not to deepen this port. It's time we get moving. I'm sick of this. Folks, this isn't a partisan issue. It's an economic issue. How do we get moving? The key is to find the right balance between economic progress and the proper level of analysis. The RAPID Act strikes this balance. It does not force agencies to approve or deny any projects. It simply ensures that the process agencies use to make permitting decisions, and the timeline for subsequent litigation, are transparent, logical, and efficient. To do that, the RAPID Act draws upon established definitions and concepts from existing NEPA regulations. It also draws upon commonsense suggestions from across the political spectrum, including from the President's Jobs Council and the administration's Council on Environmental Quality. Most significantly, the RAPID Act sets hard deadlines, including an 18-month maximum deadline for an environmental assessment and a 36- month maximum deadline for an environmental impact statement. It cracks down on prolonged lawsuits by establishing a 180-day statute of limitations for lawsuits challenging permitting decisions and limiting claims to those presented during the permit's public notice-and-comment process, and it consolidates who manages the process by empowering lead agencies to manage environmental reviews efficiently from start to finish in order to avoid waste and duplication of effort among bureaucratic agencies. In many respects, the bill is modeled on the permit streamlining sections of Congress' SAFETEA-LU and MAP-21 transportation legislation, which commanded bipartisan support. A study by the Federal Highway Administration found that this legislation has cut the time for completing an environmental impact statement nearly in half. President Obama, himself, moreover, strongly supports permit streamlining consistent with the recommendations of his Jobs Council. In his 2014 State of the Union Address, the President expressed his desire ``to slash bureaucracy and to streamline the permitting process for key projects so that we can get more construction workers on the job as fast as possible.'' Congress should transform the President's rhetoric into action and enact this legislation to streamline permitting on all federally funded and federally permitted construction projects. I want to thank the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Marino) for his leadership on this issue, and I urge all of my colleagues to support this critical legislation and cut down the time it takes America's workers to see a real jobs recovery. I reserve the balance of my time. Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, House of Representatives, Washington, DC, February 27, 2014. Hon. Bob Goodlatte, Chairman, Committee on the Judiciary, Washington, DC. Dear Mr. Chairman: I write concerning H.R. 2641, the Responsibly And Professionally Invigorating Development Act of 2013, as ordered reported by the Committee on the Judiciary on July 31, 2013. There are certain provisions in the legislation that fall within the Rule X jurisdiction of the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure. In order to expedite this legislation for floor consideration, the Committee will forgo action on this bill. However, this is conditional on our mutual understanding that forgoing consideration of the bill does not alter or diminish the jurisdiction of the Committee with respect to the appointment of conferees or to any future jurisdictional claim over the subject matters contained in the bill or similar legislation. I request you urge the Speaker to name members of the Committee to any conference committee named to consider such provisions. I would appreciate your response to this letter, confirming this understanding and acknowledging our jurisdictional interest, and would request that you insert our exchange of letters on this matter into the committee report on H.R. 2641 and the Congressional Record during any consideration of this bill on the House floor. Sincerely, Bill Shuster, Chairman.

Mr. GOODLATTE. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 30 seconds just to say to the gentleman from Georgia that the provisions on the projects that he mentioned are exactly why we need this legislation. It is because this legislation incorporates those ideas which started, by the way, in this House with the work of the Transportation Committee, in the transportation bills, and that now needs to be codified and put into law so that it can be made available not just in those projects but in every project in which the Federal Government has a regulatory role. At this time, it is my pleasure to yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Alabama (Mr. Bachus), the chairman of the Regulatory Reform Subcommittee.

Mr. GOODLATTE. Mr. Chair, I rise in support of the gentleman's amendment. Mr. Chair, I support the amendment. It is bad enough that agencies already take too much time to conclude construction permit reviews. It is even worse for them to draw out the process on the basis of junk science. And that is precisely what the Obama Administration's pronouncements on the ``Social Cost of Carbon'' appear to be. To be specific, multiple commenters on the Administration's latest ``findings'' argue that ``carbon's social cost is an unknown quantity; that [social-cost-of-carbon] analysts can get just about any result they desire by fiddling with non-validated climate parameters, made-up damage functions, and below-market discount rates; and that [social- cost-of-carbon] analysis is computer-aided sophistry, its political function being to make renewable energy look like a bargain at any price and fossil energy look unaffordable no matter how cheap.'' Junk science and sophistry have no place standing between hardworking Americans and new, high-paying jobs. I urge my colleagues to support the amendment.

Mr. GOODLATTE. I thank the gentleman, and I rise in strong support of the gentleman's amendment. Mr. Chair, I support the amendment. The RAPID Act includes important reforms to assure that agencies wrap up their environmental reviews for construction permits within a generous four-and-one-half years. The current language of the bill applies these reforms to all ``environmental reviews'' and all ``environmental decisionmaking processes'' begun after the bill's enactment. The amendment takes the next step and applies the bill to environmental reviews and environmental decisionmaking processes begun before enactment. But it also generously provides that the time remaining for agencies to conclude a review or decisionmaking process will be calculated as if the review or process had begun on the date of enactment--just as with a new permit application. Other deadlines in the bill will likewise be calculated as if the relevant timeframe began on the date of enactment, not before enactment. The amendment thus represents a very reasonable balance between assuring that pending permit applications will at last be wrapped up and providing agencies with adequate time to wrap them up. I urge my colleagues to support the amendment.

Mr. GOODLATTE. Mr. Chairman, I urge my colleagues to oppose this amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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

Mr. GOODLATTE

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

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

Mr. GOODLATTE. Mr. Chairman, the amendment seeks to shield the Department of Homeland Security, a department in need of good government reform, from all of the government rulemaking reforms in this bill. We should not do that. The bill does not threaten needed regulation in the Department of Homeland Security's jurisdiction but simply ensures that DHS will avoid unnecessary regulation, issue smarter, less costly regulation when necessary, and not enter into sweetheart backroom deals for more regulation under the cloak of judicial orders. I urge my colleagues to oppose the amendment. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. GOODLATTE. First, let me be very clear to my good friend from California. I share his concern about the kinds of explosions that he is concerned about and want to see appropriate ways to deal with these problems through the regulatory process. It is pretty clear that OSHA has done a pretty poor job of it thus far, and I believe that this legislation will help to improve the rulemaking process and create greater transparency, so that we will get to a resolution of what needs to be done and not do what does not need to be done, in the most effective way. The amendment attempts to shield yet another agency in need of good government reform from all of the good government rulemaking reforms in the bill. The bill does not threaten needed regulation in OSHA's jurisdiction, but it simply assures that OSHA will avoid unnecessary regulation; issue smarter, less costly regulation when necessary; and not enter into sweetheart backroom deals for more regulation under the cloak of judicial orders. Ironically, the amendment actually could slow down the progress of improving safety in the workplaces of concern. The whole point of the bill is to assure that regulation remains effective while imposing lower costs. If employers could spend less money on equally effective OSHA dust regulations, then they would be free to invest in additional safety measures on their own; or, of course, they could use the money to hire more workers and pay higher wages. I urge my colleagues to oppose the amendment, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. GOODLATTE. Mr. Chairman, in response to the gentleman from California, let me say that, with regard to the efforts that need to be undertaken when a regulatory process is already underway, is accommodated for in the bill in the new section 553(g), subsection 2(A): When the agency for good cause, based upon evidence, finds (and incorporates the finding and a brief statement of reasons therefor in the rules issued) that compliance with subsection (c), (d), or (e) or requirements to render final determinations under subsection (f) of this section before the issuance of an interim rule is impracticable or contrary to the public interest, including interests of national security, such subsections or requirements to render final determinations shall not apply to the agency's adoption of an interim rule. So I would argue that this is going to improve and enhance the process, but it is also going to create more transparency; it is going to create more cost-effective rulemaking; and it is going to prevent lawsuits being brought--the so-called sue-and-settle lawsuits--where a friendly government agency is sued by an organization that wants something; and the settlement of the suit leaves out all the parties who are going to have to provide for it, have to pay for it, have the impact on their workers considered. They don't even get notice of that. So all of these reforms are good reforms that make the regulatory process better. I do not believe that it will be appropriate to adopt this amendment. I urge my colleagues to oppose it, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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

Mr. GOODLATTE. Mr. Chairman, when inspectors general find agency waste, fraud, and abuse and recommend that new regulations be issued or old regulations be modified, the natural instinct of the guilty agency is to try to evade the recommended corrections to its bad behavior. By shielding agencies from the bill's transparency and accountability requirements, the amendment would help them do just that. It would further entrench the ability of recalcitrant agencies to shirk the recommendations of inspectors general and continue their habits of waste, fraud, and abuse. Especially in these times of fiscal austerity, we must do everything we can to make sure that agencies pay heed to inspector general recommendations and purge all waste, fraud, and abuse from their operations. The ALERRT Act includes powerful tools to make them do just that. I urge my colleagues to oppose the amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.