Directing Committees to Review Regulations from Federal Agencies
Floor Speech
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I think we're a little perplexed over here. There's nobody on this side of the aisle that doesn't feel regulations ought to be reviewed. I don't think there's anybody on the other side that feels that way, and I think that everybody understands it's one of the roles of Congress, and particularly one of the roles of the Government Oversight and Reform Committee. It's in our rules. Every committee has already passed an entire plan for doing oversight.
So, essentially, the real question is we're spending 9 1/2 hours here today to ostensibly give authority that already exists. So we're not spending 9 1/2 hours on dealing with helping 14 million Americans who are out of work. Instead, we're not advancing any bill that would repair our economy or restore our manufacturing industry. We're not ensuring the country's global competitiveness. We're not enhancing our education system. We're not enhancing or reinvesting in our public infrastructure. We're spending 9 1/2 hours allotting authority that already exists on that, and that just doesn't seem to be a good use of the time of this House. I think that's been noted over and over again.
It didn't stop Chairman Issa from issuing 170 letters looking at the regulatory matters the other day. It didn't stop him from having hours of a committee hearing yesterday where we beat this same drum over and over again. Everybody understands that some regulation is sometimes taken to excess and sometimes the enforcements are taken in the wrong direction.
I take a back seat to nobody. I spent 4 years as chairman of the Subcommittee on Foreign Policy and National Security. We had hearing after hearing exposing fraud, waste, and abuse in the billions in the Defense Department and related activities. So, yes, let's do it; but let's not waste our time talking about what we're going to talk about. Let's get out there and have the hearings. The committee is set up for that.
But let's also understand what's going on here. There's one side of this debate, my friends on the Republican side, who want to say the only factor to be considered when we're looking at regulation is its cost, and that's it. Well, if that were the case and we only focused on cost, there would probably be no regulations.
But if we look at our history, we've found it important and that there was undeniable progress when we implemented the regulations on child labor, on civil rights protections, 5-day workweeks, cleaner lakes and rivers, clean air, seatbelts and air bags, child-proof medicine caps, fire safety codes, and on and on.
There's value in some of these regulations that also have to be balanced against the cost. And when in fact the Office of Management and Budget did that, as Mr. Kucinich just noted, their report estimated that between 1999 and 2009 the cost of the regulations was about $43 billion to $55 billion, but they were outweighed by economic benefits that were between $128 and $616 billion.
If you just look at the Clean Air Act, by some estimates that act accounted for $23 trillion in economic and health benefits. Thirty times higher than the cost to businesses. The Clean Air Act has created jobs--lots of jobs. In 2010, 1.7 million Americans were employed in environmental technology industries; 119,000 environmental tech companies produced $300 billion in revenues in 2010. And we're exporting these technologies. In 2008, the United States exported $43.8 billion in environmental technologies--more than any other country in the world.
So, Madam Speaker, let's be serious about this. We're talking about regulations. We're talking about the costs and the benefits and doing an analysis. And let's not waste 9 1/2 hours talking about what we already have the authority to do.
Mr. ISSA. Madam Speaker, in section 2, article 1, asking for regulations that impede private sector job creation, I'm just sorry the other side doesn't understand. That's not cost; that's jobs.
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