Ed Whitfield: “I would say, first of all, with all due respect, we have no intent to pollute additionally the waterways that the…”

“I would say, first of all, with all due respect, we have no intent to pollute additionally the waterways that the gentleman referred to in Michigan, and I rise to oppose his amendment simply because he would say that this legislation would not apply to any rule that relates to air quality or water quality. So this amendment would exclude virtually all EPA rules from the transparency and inner-agency review requirements of the act. I would just summarize, once again, we are talking about energy- related rules that exceed $1 billion. We know that EPA looks closely at health benefits, health impacts; and we certainly favor that. But that's not the only thing that should be examined, and that's what this legislation is about. The Secretary of Energy, with other Cabinet officials in the Obama administration, would look at the impact of the regulation on the cost of electricity, the cost of gasoline, how many jobs might be lost, how many jobs might be created, would it have significant adverse impact to the economy as a whole. And I would think that everyone would say if it does, particularly with the slow economic growth we have today, the last 15 quarters have been the slowest since World War II, and the last quarter of 2012, the first quarter of 2013, the gross domestic product increased less than 2 percent.…”