Sec. 611. Policy statement on Federal regulatory policy

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The House finds the following: Excessive regulation at the Federal level has hurt job creation and dampened the economy, slowing our recovery from the economic recession. In the first two months of 2014 alone, the Administration issued 13,166 pages of regulations imposing more than $13 billion in compliance costs on job creators and adding more than 16 million hours of compliance paperwork. The Small Business Administration estimates that the total cost of regulations is as high as $1.75 trillion per year.

Since 2009, the White House has generated over $494 billion in regulatory activity, with an additional $87.6 billion in regulatory costs currently pending. The Dodd-Frank financial services legislation ( Public Law 111–203 ) resulted in more than $17 billion in compliance costs and saddled job creators with more than 58 million hours of compliance paperwork. Implementation of the Affordable Care Act to date has added 132.9 million annual hours of compliance paperwork, imposing $24.3 billion of compliance costs on the private sector and an $8 billion cost burden on the states.

The highest regulatory costs come from rules issued by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA); these regulations are primarily targeted at the coal industry. In September 2013, the EPA proposed a rule regulating greenhouse gas emissions from new coal-fired power plants. The proposed standards are unachievable with current commercially available technology, resulting in a de-facto ban on new coal-fired power plants. Additional regulations for existing coal plants are expected in the summer of 2014.

Coal-fired power plants provide roughly forty percent of the United States electricity at a low cost. Unfairly targeting the coal industry with costly and unachievable regulations will increase energy prices, disproportionately disadvantaging energy-intensive industries like manufacturing and construction, and will make life more difficult for millions of low-income and middle class families already struggling to pay their bills. Three hundred and thirty coal units are being retired or converted as a result of EPA regulations.

Combined with the de-facto prohibition on new plants, these retirements and conversions may further increase the cost of electricity. A recent study by Purdue University estimates that electricity prices in Indiana will rise 32 percent by 2023, due in part to EPA regulations. The Heritage Foundation recently found that a phase out of coal would cost 600,000 jobs by the end of 2023, resulting in an aggregate gross domestic product decrease of $2.23 trillion over the entire period and reducing the income of a family of four by $1200 per year.

Of these jobs, 330,000 will come from the manufacturing sector, with California, Texas, Ohio, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Michigan, New York, Indiana, North Carolina, Wisconsin, and Georgia seeing the highest job losses. It is the policy of this resolution that Congress should, in consultation with the public burdened by excessive regulation, enact legislation that— seeks to promote economic growth and job creation by eliminating unnecessary red tape and streamlining and simplifying Federal regulations; pursues a cost-effective approach to regulation, without sacrificing environmental, health, safety benefits or other benefits, rejecting the premise that economic growth and environmental protection create an either/or proposition; ensures that regulations do not disproportionately disadvantage low-income Americans through a more rigorous cost-benefit analysis, which also considers who will be most affected by regulations and whether the harm caused is outweighed by the potential harm prevented; ensures that regulations are subject to an open and transparent process, rely on sound and publicly available scientific data, and that the data relied upon for any particular regulation is provided to Congress immediately upon request; frees the many commonsense energy and water projects currently trapped in complicated bureaucratic approval processes; maintains the benefits of landmark environmental, health safety, and other statutes while scaling back this administration’s heavy-handed approach to regulation, which has added $494 billion in mostly ideological regulatory activity since 2009, much of which flies in the face of these statutes’ intended purposes; and seeks to promote a limited government, which will unshackle our economy and create millions of new jobs, providing our Nation with a strong and prosperous future and expanding opportunities for the generations to come.

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Pub. L. 111-203

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Sec. 611

Policy statement on Federal regulatory policy

Pub. L.Pub. L. 111-203

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