Emma Hardy: “I thank the gentleman from Texas for yielding. Mr. Speaker, this is our first week back in session after spending the…”

“I thank the gentleman from Texas for yielding. Mr. Speaker, this is our first week back in session after spending the holidays in our districts. While we were meeting with our constituents and enjoying the company of loved ones, the Federal bureaucracy was firing on all cylinders, cranking out thousands of pages of regulations. Mr. Speaker, I hold in my hand what our regulators were doing on Christmas Eve. In my other hand I am holding 298 pages of what our Federal regulators were doing on New Year's Eve. This breakneck pace of activity, deep within the bowels of our executive branch, capped off a record year for the Federal Register, the official record of the government's regulatory and other actions. The grand total for 2015 was 82,035 pages of regulations. This leaves the current administration with an annual page count of nearly 80,000 per year and puts it on pace to contribute more pages of regulations to the Federal Register than any other administration in American history. Mr. Speaker, this is a perversion of our Founding Fathers' intent and a disservice to the American people. Article I, section 1, of the Constitution vests all legislative power in a Congress of the United States, not with regulatory agencies. Article I, section 8, of the Constitution vests all the power to make all laws in Congress to the United States, not with regulatory agencies.…”