On the recordNovember 16, 2011
I think the gentleman has a great point. In fact, it comes down, I think, to about $10,000 for every man, woman, and child in the United States of America for the cost of regulatory compliance. To your point, why it's so critical now is that we've seen agencies in the last administration and in this administration that have gone into overreach. Most importantly, what we saw happen in the last Congress was a Democratic supermajority in the House, in the Senate, with a liberal Democratic President, who was out to keep his campaign promises. I can respect that. The American people spoke in that election, but they also spoke in the election that followed last year in that they did not agree with the overreach, be it legislative or on the regulatory side; and they made a change, certainly, in this body. The administration proceeded at that point to attempt to enact cap- and-trade rules--an energy tax on every American--by regulation. When the Congress in a Democratic supermajority could not pass those bills in order to send them to the President's desk, they were intent on doing it by executive order. It's the same thing that we see happening potentially with the card check-forced unionization bill. It could not pass in the last Congress, so we see attempts to move that by regulation. There are issues with unfunded mandates on our schools. We're even seeing an extension of that inside the Department of Education, which further hamstrings already strapped local school districts.…





