Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, I have been standing here listening to this debate. Let's go back and think about this for just a minute. Right now, in the United States, the cost of regulation in our Nation is approximately $2 trillion; $2 trillion is the cost that our Nation spends every year just complying with regulations. In fact, that distills down to the average household spending around $15,000 just to comply with regulations. Now, let me be clear. Regulations are important. We have got to have regulations to make sure we protect our environment, we protect the health and safety of our citizens. That is critical. What this bill does is it simply provides for transparency so we can understand the basis of regulations. That is all this does: make sure that we can understand the science that regulations were based upon. During a public comment process, we should have the ability to scrutinize that science to understand the basis. Because, Mr. Speaker, if you begin hiding the basis for decisions, then you have government, in many cases, acting without providing for transparency, without being able to be held accountable. That is dangerous to have people making decisions based upon secret information. That is dangerous for our economy, and it is going to further challenge the ability of Americans to keep their budgets balanced. It is already $15,000 per household. How many thousands does it have to be before we need to say: Stop. This is unreasonable? Mr.…”