On the recordJanuary 11, 2017
This bill's bold reforms deliver the heart of the regulatory reform this Nation desperately needs; and I cannot overstate how desperately we need it because, after 8 years of the Obama administration's blowout administrative state, what do we have? We have an economy that for 8 straight years has failed to produce enough good, new, full-time jobs to sustain growth and restore dignity to the unemployed. We have 92 million Americans outside the workforce, a level not seen since the Carter years. We have nearly $2 trillion of American wealth commandeered each year to be spent as Washington bureaucrats demand, through runaway regulation--$2 trillion. This is more money than the GDP of all but eight countries in the world. We do not need a regulatory state that is that size; we need a regulatory system that is cut down to size. And lest we ever forget, we need a regulatory system that never again allows a runaway executive branch to do what the Obama administration did: use a pen and a phone to undertake an end run around Congress and force on the American people job-crushing policies that their elected representatives in Congress never supported. This motion to recommit turns a blind eye to all of that. It says to the runaway administrative state: Keep on running as fast as you can; we don't care. It says to the American people: Sit down and be quiet. Washington bureaucrats are your betters, and you need to just keep doing what they tell you to do.…
