On the recordSeptember 25, 2015
I am very glad my colleague mentioned jobs because none of us here are fighting against jobs. In fact, I happen to be supporting the full employment legislation that my good friend, Congressman John Conyers, has offered and I have joined. We are not here speaking against jobs. We are speaking for the American people. We are trying to explain the complexity of the permitting process. Whether it is for drilling, whether it is to deal with construction, whether it is to deal with complex environmental issues that have to be addressed impacting the American people or, for example, whether it is dealing with the Volkswagen company that saw fit to do the technology to undermine viable rules that the American automobile industry was complying with, definitely impacting jobs, I would have hoped that we would have had a process of permitting or a process of determining whether the Volkswagen company was violating these rules that were here to help the issue of pollution and other issues here, but also undermining the jobs of our own American companies. Let me say that the Jackson Lee amendment, in essence, is to suggest that there is a lot of complexity that my friends on the other side of the aisle with the RAPID Act--the very name of it suggests that we are throwing judgment to the wind. All we want to do is to move forward, even if they are ill.…
