James Lankford

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. I may not even use all 2 minutes of that, but I do want to be able to just tell the story a little bit of an Oklahoma farm. The things that they're up against right now are common to farms all across the Midwest. They're dealing with drought right now. They're dealing with the threat of new dust particulate rules coming down from the EPA. They just fought through a battle to try to be able to have family farms be able to function with their own kids working on their family farms or their grandparents' farms, or their cousin's farm down the road--is that permissible or not--point source pollution rules that are coming down on them. Farm truck distance rules, if they want to drive 151 miles in their farm truck and the new regulations they deal with on it. All these different regulations. And then imagine the Federal Government contacting them and saying, on top of all those rules and all those threatened rules, now you need to go find a professional engineer to check out your fuel tank, and we want to send a regulator to be able to evaluate it. And we want you to have a whole new set of rules around your tank as well. It assumes family farms and farmers don't take care of their land. Nothing could be further from the truth. A family farm, and farms all around the country, these are individuals that they farm that land, they take care of that land, that water is very important to them. Many of them live on well water itself, and so a spill into their groundwater is incredibly important to them for their own personal family as well. They're great stewards of the land; that's how they make their living. In addition to that, they're careful guardians of their storage tank because that tank itself, if it spills, they lose a tremendous amount of money; and the margins on a farm are not very high. I'd like to stand with my colleagues, as well, to say let's respect the farmer for what they're doing already on their land and not send someone from Washington to come check out their farm and check out their tank and be able to evaluate all those things. Let's allow some trust to the commonsense folks in the country that take care of our food and take care of the land and water every single day. With that, I'd urge my colleagues to support this.

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. Madam Chair, apparently the other side assumes most Americans are corrupt; they're corrupt people who cannot be trusted, and they must be babysat at each moment. Company leaders, company owners, many company employees, city and State leaders have to be supervised at every single moment, because if we don't have a Federal bureaucrat standing over the top of them, goodness knows what they'll do. Well, I happen to trust the American people. The people that I live around and that I work around and that I meet as Americans are great people who drink that water, who eat that food, who interact with their neighbors in an honorable way. And when someone violates and does something criminal, they should be treated in a criminal way. Most Americans are greathearted people that just want to do what's right, and they're just trying to figure out every day what the Federal Government is doing to them, rather than what the Federal Government is doing for them. This bill begins to deal with limiting the regulations so each and every day Americans don't have to wake up and worry about what the Federal Government did to them last night while they were sleeping. Let me give you an example of that. In Oklahoma, we're asking the question, What authority does a special interest group have over our State government? In January of 2009, several environmental groups sued the EPA to force them to review the regional haze standards. The EPA had wide latitude in its response, but it chose to settle with the environmental groups in a private agreement, just the environmental groups and some individuals from the EPA. That private agreement created a way for the Federal Government to take from the States the right to enforce regional haze requirements. The original law clearly gave the authority to the States, not the EPA and the Federal Government to realize regional haze. Let me give you an example. This is in my own State in Oklahoma. Regional haze is not a health issue. It is not a health issue. The way the law is written, it's only a visibility issue. It has nothing to do with health issues. So our own State has a State implementation plan. On one side of this is the picture of our State implementation plan, what it would look like with our restrictions. The other side is the Federal implementation plan, well over $1 billion additional in costs. No one could step up here with confidence and tell me which one's which.

Mr. LANKFORD. This is what happens when the EPA makes a private agreement, overshoots a State agreement, and says we're going to go in and step in and take over: over $1 billion of additional costs to the ratepayers in Oklahoma, with no difference in the two, other than who controls it. This is an issue where there is no public-comment period, no stakeholder involvement, nothing. It is time to resolve how we do our regulations and to make sure stakeholders that are affected are also at the table helping make the decisions on how things will be affected for the good of our country as a whole.

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. Madam Chair, one quick statement. This particular rule is unique in a lot of our conversation because it's already gone through the process. Currently, the OIRA office has, in fact, had it for the last 30 days. They could issue this at any point. This is right at that point that it's going to be released. It wouldn't even fall underneath this bill. Obviously, we pass this bill tonight, we send it over to the Senate, it works through the process. OIRA can release this at any point that they choose to. While I again have tremendous compassion for the workers that are on the lines, and I have tremendous respect for electric companies around the country and how they take care of their workers, this particular rule has already gone through the process, it already sits in OIRA, and it would not apply to them. With that and also with the knowledge that we have the exceptionary built in for safety, I would choose to oppose this and continue to do that. With that, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. LANKFORD. I thank my colleague for bringing this up, but this again is something that is obviously dealt with already in the text of the bill. As we anticipated, there would be issues like this. On page 3, line 23 of the bill, it actually states the President has the ability, by executive order, in dealing with any significant regulatory action to go ahead and waive this, if it's necessary, because of an imminent threat to health or safety or other emergency. This is already dealt with in the bill itself. While we do need to be able to deal with this, and obviously the vast majority of electricity providers are very attentive to their workers, including the companies that are in my district, and take great pride in how they care for the health and safety of the workers that are on those lines and that are out there in very dangerous situations, it is a very important thing to them. We have the ability already within this bill to be able to address that. For that reason, I would oppose this. With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. LANKFORD. I rise in opposition to the amendment.

Mr. LANKFORD. How unfortunate to have the implication that Members of Congress, including myself--I have workers in my district who live with this same thing--would not have compassion for people in our districts. OSHA has not completed this regulation. They have delayed this. They've had multiple options. They need to complete their work. There is a work safety issue that's here. As it is currently, the bill stands up strong for worker safety. It allows any exception for worker safety currently in this bill. So, while exceptions are pursued to add additional things into this bill, the bill, itself, already contains those things. With that, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. LANKFORD. While I can certainly, certainly empathize and have tremendous compassion for the families involved and for the individuals involved in this, OSHA has been working through this rule since 2009. It has been in the advanced rulemaking phase for a very long time. The struggle they have is this large one-size-fits-all approach. Even under the passage of this particular bill, OSHA has some great options. Option No. 1 for them: to narrow their rulemaking. They're doing a large one-size-fits-all to try to cover all types of dust, all types of factories, all types of places. If they were to narrow their rule to specific types of places, they would be well under the $100 million limit. The second rule they have is very clear: that this bill, itself, already sets in an exemption for health and safety. Clearly, this would be within those guidelines of health and safety. The President could do an executive order and pass that and then allow them to move forward, or he could come back to Congress. The thought that only the folks at OSHA are compassionate about issues like this fails even the most modest of tests. Obviously, people who are within Congress are also compassionate to the needs here. If a regulation comes that deals with a problem in a commonsense manner that can function, certainly Congress would be able to approve that, and certainly a President is going to have tremendous compassion for the health and safety of individuals if they're able to come up with a regulation that clearly deals with this. So, while I have tremendous compassion for these families and look forward to OSHA's completing what they have been stalling on for 3 years, this bill already deals with this, and this exception is not needed in addition to this. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. LANKFORD. I rise in opposition to the amendment.

Mr. LANKFORD. I rise in support of this amendment as well. I am grateful for the bipartisan cooperation and for getting a chance to find more transparency as well as how the Equal Access to Justice Act of 1980 is being implemented. Unfortunately, it seems that some special interest groups, particularly some environmental groups, of late are abusing EAJA. They're financing lawsuits to advance a special agenda. This amendment does shine light on who is receiving attorneys' fees under EAJA by revising and improving EAJA's reporting requirements, which have not been revised in many years. American taxpayers do deserve to know how their money is being spent by the Federal Government, regardless of what the interest group is and where it is coming from, and to know to what extent the financing is being used to advance any kind of ideology. For these reasons, I do support this amendment, and I am grateful for the bipartisan support.

Mr. LANKFORD. Madam Chair, I move that the Committee do now rise.

Mr. LANKFORD

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

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. I thank Ms. Foxx, my colleague, for her kind introduction on that. All aspects of this bill, each part of it, has gone through the committee process. Multiple of them have had multiple hearings related to them. There has been plenty of opportunity to be able to allow for input and for votes through the traditional committee process on this. The reality is that red tape is strangling our businesses. Each day, they wake up, and they are worried about what the Federal Government is going to do to them rather than what the Federal Government is going to do for them. There is an appropriate role for the Federal Government for regulations, but it seems like there is a never-ending acceleration of regulations--and not just small--they get larger and larger and larger and more and more expensive and more and more nonsensical at times. Let me just give you one quick example of this: community bankers that are facing hundreds of new regulations. When the problem seemed to be the largest investment banks, the one who got hit the hardest with the regulations were the community banks. Now community banks have to step aside. A bank that may have 14 to 20 employees and $50 million or less in total assets, which is a very small rural bank, has to go and prove that these rules don't apply to them. That involves their hiring outside attorneys. That involves setting aside staff that should be doing loans. That involves setting aside additional time to prove these hundreds of rules don't apply to them and that they're not a big bank. Regulations passed on to them-- death by a thousand paper cuts is how they explain it to me. Simplicity and common sense need to be applied to how we do regulations. When there is no check and balance in the regulatory environment, it needs to have that. Now, the other side seems to assume that, occasionally, Americans are in need of daily oversight by the Federal Government, that unless some Federal bureaucrat or some Federal regulator is not standing next to their beds when they get up that they won't know how to get to work and that, when they get to work, they're going to cheat a neighbor and that, on the way home, they're going to cheat another neighbor, so we'd better have a Federal regulator standing right next to them because American citizens can't be trusted to do the right thing without Federal control. I would say the neighbors that I live around, in the cities that I visit all over America, have great citizens who want to do the right thing and are doing the right thing and are serving their neighbors. We have great city and State governments. They're doing very good regulatory schemes. We should trust them more to engage in what they're doing in the communities that they live in, where they eat the food, where they drink the water. They are the first line of defense on that, rather than taking all those things to Washington, D.C., and assuming all Americans can't function without someone from Washington, D.C., checking on them each and every day. Let me just give you a couple things on that. During the first hearing that I participated in here in this Congress, someone from the other side extolled the benefits of adding more regulations because companies were sitting on money and were not spending it. This was a way to force companies to hire additional people by hiring compliance officers--people to oversee regulations-- and that, if we couldn't increase employment in America through producing more goods and services, we would increase employment in America by creating more bureaucrats just in the private business. That's not how I see that you should grow an economy. Let me just highlight one area, one title of this great bill. Title IV of this is the Unfunded Mandates Information and Transparency Act of 2011. This was a bill that started in the previous Congress with Ms. Virginia Foxx as the author. That bill went through multiple processes in the previous Congress. We picked it up in the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, and we did three hearings on it at the beginning of last year. We had city leaders, we had State and county leaders, we had private business leaders, and we had administration individuals from this administration and from the previous administration come and testify. In 1995, the House and the Senate and the President signed a bill called the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act. It was a wide bipartisan act-- 394 votes in the House and 91 votes in the Senate--to give information to the House and to the Senate before decisions were made about what is an unfunded mandate, and what effect will that have. There are large loopholes that have been exploited in the last 17 years. This bill aims to fix those loopholes: It takes in all the independent agencies, and it also puts them under those same requirements; It puts in the language that President Clinton put in in Executive Order 12866 in order to clarify this, that the administration's functioned under. It puts that language and codifies it from President Clinton into this bill. It also takes a clarification of President Obama's that he has for this bill and also adds it into the language; It redefines ``direct costs'' with how the CBO already defines ``direct costs,'' and it actually codifies that language and provides ability; It allows for a ranking member or a chairman of a committee to do an analysis of a rule to make sure that it is not exceeding our unfunded mandates requirements. It is very bipartisan. It's not just the chairman. A chairman or a ranking member can get in on that. It is the intent of this, in this modern regulatory environment, to clean this up and to make sure Congress has the information to make their decisions.

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. At home, people have just a simple request of Congress: do our job. Just do it. They're tired of worrying about what dumb thing the Federal Government will do to them and their business and their family that will cause them even more pain. They just want us to identify the problem, fix it, and quit messing with the private business world. When a private business sees a threat on the horizon, they prepare for it. If it's good, they ramp up hiring, they add more inventory, they increase training, they increase sales staff. They get ready for something good. They take the entrepreneurial risk. If they see a threat on the horizon that looks bad, they pull back staff, they slow down internal purchases, they freeze inventory and hiring. I have two quick observations. One is this: right now the national threat on the economic horizon is the Federal Government's lack of imperative to resolve this manufactured crisis. We need to fix it now. The second is this: we've got to look up and see there is a financial crisis coming and prepare for it. If we wait until the last minute to act, it creates incredible uncertainty in our economy and businesses and families can't prepare for it. When we wait until the last minute to do something, we have already created economic uncertainty there. Here's what this bill does: it requires that we actually plan for an economic crisis that we know is coming January 2, 2013. It pushes us to do what's essential right now. Federal spending has dramatically increased. As we approach $16 trillion in national debt in our fourth straight year of trillion-dollar deficit spending, we should not guess or try to make up a financial plan at the last minute. Some have proposed that we debt our way into prosperity or that we take even more money from one family and give it to another to make life fair. This bill simply asks the President to let us know the plan, let us know the consequences of sequestration. We know it's bad policy, but the administration has not given us the details of how they will implement the sequestration. Months ago, the House Budget Committee and then the full House worked with six committees to create a specific plan of how we were going to deal with this. We just want to know what OMB's plan is and how things are going to be done. Get us the information now.

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. Madam Chair, I'm honored to rise in support of H.R. 4402, with my colleague Mark Amodei, and to support this. This is about setting a definitive timeline for permits, which creates certainty and encourages private investment. This is not about government investment; this is about private investment. This is not about taxpayer dollars, but taxpayers. This is about jobs and the American economy. Everything from your automobile to your iPhone requires rare Earth minerals. Every solar panel, every wind turbine, every electric battery for every car, every fluorescent light bulb, your UV glass, audio speakers, fiber optics, precision guide munitions, metal alloys, magnets, and a whole lot more all require rare Earth minerals. We need to understand that China now controls the international market of rare Earth minerals, not because they have beaten us in the market, but because we have beaten us. We have the resources, but we simply made the permitting process so long, complicated, and unpredictable that we've killed our supply and allowed other Nations to control our future. In my district, there is a magnet manufacturing plant that creates high-tech magnets dependent on rare Earth minerals. Last year, they were able to purchase a certain rare Earth mineral for $4 a pound. Now, with China as the only supplier, that is now $55 per pound. That drives up the cost of everything that we use those high-tech magnets for, and it's very difficult on the manufacturing industry. We have allowed China to have the monopoly. We should have the ability to produce our own materials here. You cannot turn on your car, your lights, your computer without China sending us the materials to do it. When we are fighting to get control of our energy future, we must not forget that it doesn't matter if we have our own energy future if we can't even turn on what we plug in because we don't have the rare Earth minerals to produce it. We have a manufacturing future if we actually manufacture, and that means rare Earth minerals now in this modern economy. Jobs like mining, geologists, engineers, truck drivers, manufacturing, service industry, yes, even government regulators are all dependent on us getting moving on producing our own stuff. Right now, as the price goes up, it's time for us to bring the price down with more mining.

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. Speaker, Americans know more about this law now. Now that it's been sitting around for 2 years, we've had more time to be able to process it. Two years ago, the cost was estimated by CBO at $800 billion. Now it's estimated at $1.8 trillion. Americans were told that if you like your insurance, you can keep it. But now the administration estimates that up to 80 percent of the small employer plans will lose their grandfathered status and up to 64 percent of large employer plans will lose their grandfathered status and will have to be changed--of course at the end of 2013, after the election. They were told you can keep your doctor, but now we know that physician- owned hospitals, their practice days are numbered since physician-owned hospitals are punished to protect the bigger hospital companies. We were told there are no new taxes on it, that this wasn't a tax bill. Now we know there are 20-plus different taxes on it. The supposed deficit reduction goes down in the days to come because there are so many new taxes that are built into it. Let me give you a couple of my favorites that are built into this: removing the deduction for people with high medical bills. Yes, there's a deduction if you have high medical bills. They move that cap up. So if you have high medical bills, you will pay more in taxes under this. How about the flexible spending account cap change? So if you have a special needs child that currently has special needs and you have that, your taxes will go up. Next year, the Independent Payment and Advisory Board will be introduced. Their sole function is to deny payment for certain procedures, determine which treatments are too expensive. Are there problems in health care delivery, yes--my family has multiple testimonies of that fact. It is not believable to say health care will be so much better, more efficient, more effective, if only we gave control to the Federal government. Let's repeal this bad law and get busy writing healthcare reform that actually focuses on the patient, not the bureaucracy.

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. Speaker, I would have to concur. This is an incredibly sad day. This administration that started talking about transparency has now sunk to the level of actually concealing documents. Never has an Attorney General been held in contempt of Congress because every other Attorney General has turned over documents to Congress when they were requested. This Attorney General has not. I would just compare this whole controversy with the Secret Service scandal from several months ago. They put everything out, released all the documents, walked through it. It was done. The GSA scandal, released all the documents, held people accountable. It was done. ATF even, when we started this investigation a year and a half ago, put all their documents out, put all their people out, done. As soon as we get to the Department of Justice, it's slow. It's delay, it's delay, it's delay. The question is, Why? Why this matters when we get to the Department of Justice documents? Because in the Phoenix office, everything was organized in the Phoenix office, then was approved by the U.S. attorney in the Phoenix area, and then went to the Department of Justice--not to the head of ATF--but to the Department of Justice, to DOJ and their leadership, to be approved. It is essential that we know what was done there and who did it in the process. So this is not some ancillary thing that's added to it. This is an important part of this process. Now, there's all this obfuscation to say it's Bush's fault, this is political, there's not enough witnesses. The essence of this particular contempt deals with the documents that, on February 4 of last year, the Department of Justice sent us a letter that said they had no idea about this. And then by December, after all yearlong saying, No, we didn't know, we didn't know, we didn't know, come back in December and say, Oops, we did. It is what Eric Holder has called his evolving truth. We want to know the facts of how it started here and went here. There's 130,000 documents that they say they have. They have turned over a little over 7,000 of those documents. This is not the prerogative for them to continue to hold and conceal those documents.

Mr. LANKFORD. Fast and Furious has moved to slow and tedious. We have got to have those documents to be able to finish up this investigation. It should have long since been done. Eric Holder told our chairman that he has these documents, but he's using the documents as a bargaining chip to get a better deal. This is not the prerogative when we have a subpoena. We are not looking for some conflict with the administration. We're looking to get to the facts.

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. Speaker, this is a truly sad day. This is not stunning, as I have heard. This is a deliberative process that we've tried to work through. We have a border agent that's been killed. We have hundreds of Mexicans that have been killed. And the fingerprints on all of that go straight back to an operation that was done by the Federal Government. This is a moment to get all of the facts, to get it on the table, find out what happened, and to get it done. Now, we started with a subpoena process, over 22 different categories. We narrowed that down to one. How do we get the documents from the time of February 4 of last year, when the Department of Justice told us one thing, and December, when they said, Oops, and changed their story? We found out that they had not told us the truth. And in that time period when they stalled, stalled, stalled, stalled, we just want the information on that. How did this occur? This is essential because Phoenix ATF had a plan, Fast and Furious. It was then approved by the U.S. attorney in that area, and then went up the food chain to the Department of Justice, where it was signed off. This is not irrelevant. It is essential that we know the process of how this was done. If we're going to fix this problem, we've got to know the facts. Instead, they're being withheld.

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. With that, I yield back the balance of my time.

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

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. LANKFORD. By President Clinton at the very end, in early January of 2001--January 10, actually.

Mr. LANKFORD. Yes. Actually, in 2001, the President did Executive Order 13586. That executive order extended that out to all agencies dealing with the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. So it does extend this out to the Department of Transportation as well, as well as all their agencies. Now, if they're going to prosecute, obviously it's going to be the Department of Justice, and the rules are going to be promulgated out of Fish and Wildlife, but all agencies are affected by it based on the executive order from 2001. So we're just trying to take this for transportation only because it is such an issue for much of the transportation across the entire country.

Mr. LANKFORD. Will the gentleman yield?