On the recordFebruary 26, 2014
The majority is pursuing this legislation in complete disregard of various recent examples of regulatory failure. These include the Massey coal mine explosion in West Virginia which took the lives of 29 miners. In fact, next month will mark the 1-year anniversary of that explosion. The explosion of BP's Deepwater Horizon oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico that stemmed from lax regulation of oil drilling platforms is also a prominent example. The home foreclosure crisis, the 2008 financial crisis, and the ensuing Great Recession, all of which stemmed from the fact that regulators under the Bush administration lacked the direction, resources, and authority to confront the highly reckless behavior of the private sector, and particularly the lending and financial service industries. It was a direct response to these regulatory failures in the financial realm that Congress passed the Dodd-Frank Act and other measures during the 111th Congress, and Republicans have tried to repeal those measures and have tried to repeal the Affordable Care Act. Of the 58 bills that were passed out of this so-called do-nothing Congress in the first year of this session, not one of them was a jobs bill; not one job created. Do we set ourselves up again for the kind of regulatory Wild Wild West that got us into trouble in the first place? I reserve the balance of my time.
