Hank Johnson: “This amendment presupposes that regulations depress job creation. To the contrary, there's no credible evidence that…”

“This amendment presupposes that regulations depress job creation. To the contrary, there's no credible evidence that regulations depress job creation. The majority's own witness at one of our hearings clearly debunked the myth that regulations stymie job creation. Christopher DeMuth of the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think thank, stated in his prepared remarks that the ``focus on jobs . . . can lead to confusion in regulatory debates.'' Also, he stated that ``the employment effects of regulation, while important, are indeterminate.'' Nonetheless, I appreciate that this amendment recognizes that regulations could create jobs. I am, however, concerned about this amendment because it would add to the analytical burdens of agencies a speculative assessment of jobs added and lost and how many of those jobs would be added or lost to the public and private sectors. To the extent that regulations have anything to do with jobs, H.R. 367 proponents should overwhelmingly support my amendment, which is upcoming, which simply exempts from H.R. 367's congressional approval mechanism all rules that OMB determines would result in net job creation. This way, job creating rules would not effectively be vetoed, which would be the precise result under H.R. 367. Also, instead of trying to make Congress a superadministrative agency, what we should be doing is considering actual job creation legislation.…”