Darrell Issa: “This is a critical amendment. If not now, then when? If not on this bill, then when are we going to get to looking at…”

“This is a critical amendment. If not now, then when? If not on this bill, then when are we going to get to looking at American job creators in a positive way? There is no question if this amendment is held to a point of order that it will be seen again and again by those of us who care about jobs in America. The Web site that my committee launched, AmericanJobCreators.com, has already seen countless examples, in the thousands now, of different ways in which regulatory excesses have in fact cost jobs. Moreover, what we're seeing is a pattern of no cost-benefit analysis being done in any way, shape, or form on new regulations. Promulgating regulations if they don't cost jobs, if they are a net benefit to the economy, wouldn't be a problem, at least not overall. But in fact, we have had the EPA administrator, the former Minerals Management Service, now Ocean Energy, the Assistant Secretary of the Interior, and countless more before our committee, each of whom seems to be muddled about cost-benefit on the regulations they create. They often say, of course we do cost-benefit. Then if you say, well, what do the cost-benefits show on a particular regulation, they are never familiar with it. It is in fact very clear that we know that we're costing jobs. The estimate by the Small Business Administration, I repeat the estimate by the U.S. Small Business Administration is that regulations cost $1.75 trillion, or about $8,000 per employee, perhaps as much as $10,000 per employee.…”