Susan Collins

In fact, 41 Senators signed a letter that Senator Landrieu and I sent to the EPA.

I want to thank you for agreeing to hold this hearing today to allow our colleagues to describe their legislative proposals for regulatory reform.

I am optimistic that we can build a bipartisan consensus to achieve this goal.

We recognize that OIRA is not in the business of determining the Administration's positions on regulatory reform bills or any other piece of legislation.

I have introduced my own bill to address this problem. It is called the CURB Act, which stands for Clearing Unnecessary Regulatory Burdens.

I would urge you to work with the Committee at least as a technical adviser as we begin to review all of these regulatory reform proposals.

The idea of using cost/benefit analysis is not new, of course.

If you did a poll of the American people, I doubt that you would find very many who have ever heard of OIRA, and yet the office that you head is extraordinarily important in reviewing all regulations that go through the Federal process.

I think we need to legislate in that area.

I will concede up front, I am not a fan of the ethanol subsidy, but EPA recently increased the amount of ethanol that can be used in gasoline.

I think we do need more attention on the front end.

Reforms like those in the CURB Act, introduced by Senator Collins, S. 602, and S. 1030 would be a great start in ensuring that agencies make public a reasonable estimate of a rule's indirect impact.

What we are trying to do is to come up with balance.

Mr. Pulkkinen's experience is not unique or even unusual. Small businesses all over the country are facing the same kind of pressure from regulators and drawing the same conclusion.

Instead of helping these small businesses create jobs, too many agencies have issued a flood of rules that have swamped small business in red tape.

Job growth in the Federal regulatory agencies has far outpaced job growth not only in the rest of the Federal Government but, much more significant, in the private sector.

OK, let us agree with regard to guilt that your people created it and my people perfected it.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I will tell you that a small business or even a larger business that reads that regulation and looks at what EPA is doing assumes that EPA is saying that the fact that the company has to hire more people to comply with the new regulations…

What I have found is that cost-benefit analysis can be subjected to very strange interpretations on what is the benefit.

Well, I want to thank you for taking a look at many of the regulations that have been issued and applying a more common sense approach, so that we can achieve benefits without so overburdening our businesses that they cannot create jobs…

Does OIRA look at whether there is a less expensive way of achieving the benefits that EPA or other agencies might propose?

Now, I doubt that any small business that was subjected to this new regulation would consider it a benefit to have to hire new employees specifically to comply with the regulation.

As Senator Collins indicated, the process of regulatory review was actually initiated by President Reagan in 1981.

Last month, I offered legislation which I call the Clearing Unnecessary Regulatory Burdens (CURB) Act to clear unnecessary regulatory burdens that are holding our job creators back.