{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["http://www.barrasso.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/news-releases?ID=d26cdec0-5f3b-4bfc-8c1a-5b72a5c192d7", "Barrasso: Obama Regulations Stifle Economic Growth", "2015-10-06", "2015", "2015-10", "Republican", "House", "WY", "John Barrasso", "B001261", "www.barrasso.senate.gov", null, null, "legacy", "Click here to watch Sen. Barrassos remarks.\r\nWASHINGTON, D.C. Today, U.S. Senator John Barrasso (R-WY) delivered the following remarks on the Senate floor about the onslaught of costly and job-crushing regulations coming out of the Obama administration.\r\nTranscript of Senator Barrassos remarks:\r\nLast Friday, the Obama administration released the latest numbers on unemployment and jobs.\r\nOnce again, the numbers were grim. Experts predicted that our economy would create 200,000 new jobs in September.\r\nInstead, they fell woefully short, got just 140,000, so theyre about 60,000 jobs short.\r\nNow thats a big miss  and its nowhere near as many jobs as American families need right now.\r\nSo heres how Investors Business Daily put it in a headline Monday, Oct. 5th, yesterday: Private Hiring Pace Is Worst in 3 Years; Labor Force Shrinks.\r\nWages have gone almost nowhere for six years  they actually declined in September.\r\nIts 74 straight months with wage growth below 2.5 percent.\r\nBefore the recession, we routinely got three percent growth, month after month.\r\nPresident Obama seems to be satisfied with this limping progress.\r\nHe bragged over the weekend about how many jobs have been created while hes been president. Is missing expectations good enough for President Obama?\r\nIts not good enough for me. Its not good enough to give the economic growth that we need in this country and that we should have had coming out of a recession.\r\nOne of the very big reasons for this slow growth is all of the regulations that this administration has piled onto the backs of American families.\r\nSince 2009, this administration has come out with more than 2,500 regulations, new regulations.\r\nAccording to the American Action Forum, the total cost of all these new regulations, this new red tape, is about $680 billion.\r\nNow thats more than $2,100 for every man, woman, and child in America right now.\r\nAccording to the World Bank, the United States is 46th in the world in terms of how easy it is to start a business.\r\nIs 46th in the world good enough? May be good enough for President Obama, I dont think its good enough for the American people.\r\nAll of these regulations, they just make it very tough for someone to start a business right now.\r\nIts also tough for existing businesses to create new jobs.\r\nLast week, the energy company Royal Dutch Shell announced that it was going to suspend drilling for oil off the coast of Alaska.\r\nIt said one of the reasons was the challenging and unpredictable federal regulatory environment in offshore Alaska.\r\nToo much regulation is making it too difficult to produce the American energy that we need  and to create the American jobs that we need.\r\nUnelected, unaccountable Washington bureaucrats have been having a field day at the expense of our economy.\r\nNow as the Obama administration runs down, it is in a race to get even more rules on the books.\r\nJust last week, the administration announced three big new regulations.\r\nOn Tuesday, the EPA finalized a rule on oil refineries.\r\nIts going to require refineries to install new equipment  to spend more money on something other than creating jobs, other than paying higher wages to their workers.\r\nIts estimated that the rule could cost up to $1 billion  and provide very little in the way of health benefits.\r\nThen on Wednesday, the EPA finalized more limits on coal, gas, and nuclear power plants. Just like Tuesdays rule, this one is going to cost another half a billion dollars a year.\r\nThe rule sets the acceptable amount of some emissions at zero.\r\nFinally, on Thursday, the EPA released a new limit on ozone in the air.\r\nThe limit was 75 parts per billion, they cut it to 70 parts per billion.\r\nNow this is a tiny change, were talking parts per billion, but that tiny change is going to cost more than $2 billion a year once the rule is in full effect.\r\nHuge chunks of the country are going to have to adjust to meet the new standard  and the benefit is minuscule.\r\nFarms and small manufacturing companies will to have to buy new equipment, or change the way they do things.\r\nStates and cities will have to change how they do local transportation projects.\r\nAll of that adds up to lost jobs  and even less economic growth than weve had the past six years.\r\nHuge effects, all to chase another few tiny parts per billion of ozone. Five parts per billionits the equivalent of five seconds out of 32 years. Thats how small it is, but the costs are enormous.\r\nThree days last week  three new regulations, that are going to cost our economy billions of dollars at a time when private hiring pace worst in three years, labor force shrinks.\r\nWe all agree that reasonable regulations make good sense.\r\nIn the 1960s and 70s, regulations helped to clean up pollution in our air, in our land, and in our water.\r\nBut now, Washington bureaucrats are chasing after smaller and smaller trace amounts of chemicals, no matter what the cost, how high the cost, how insignificant the benefits.\r\nEPA issued one ruleI mean its hard to believe, I thought this was a misprint but its notthey issued one rule that had about $9.6 billion per year to administer  and what are the benefits? Only $4 million.\r\nI thought they had misplaced or misspelled the b and m but no, $9.6 billion and only $4 million in direct benefits.\r\nThats as much as $2,400 in costs, for every one dollar in benefits. I mean how can they do this?\r\nThe EPA tried to say, well, there are all sorts of what they called ancillary benefits.\r\nWho gets to decide how much these are worth? Apparently the Obama administration says that it does.\r\nIts no surprise that the administration cooks up an imaginary number for those theoretical benefits, not direct benefits, but their ancillary benefits and they say its big enough to balance the very real costs that American families feel.\r\nIts all a way to justify these ridiculous rulesrules that destroy jobs, that restrict freedom, and do very little good for Americans.\r\nIt is Washington and this administration run amok.\r\nIs the Obama administration trying to make sure that our economy continues to limp along like it has for the past six-and-a-half years? Is that what they want?\r\nIn 1972, the Clean Water Act was meant to protect navigable waters. That was reasonable. We want to protect our navigable waters.\r\nToday, the administration has a new water rule, its called the Waters of the United States.\r\nIts going to give Washington bureaucrats control over everything from irrigation ditches to small natural ponds in someones back yard.\r\nThis is unreasonable. Where does it end?\r\nWell, bipartisan majorities in the Congress already say it needs to end now.\r\nIve introduced a bill that would direct the Obama administration to come up with a new rule on Waters of the United States.\r\nOne that protects traditional navigable water from pollution, which we must do, but it also protecting farmers, ranchers, and private landowners.\r\nWe can do both.\r\nThis legislation has 46 cosponsors  Democrats and Republicans. We are telling the Obama administration that enough is enough.\r\nI expect the Senate to take up this bill in the next few months  and to tell President Obama that enough is enough.\r\nRepublicans are also ready to take on some of these other outrageous rules  like the extreme new restrictions on power plants.\r\nThats what Congress is going to be doing to stop the insanity of these out-of-control regulations and out-of-control regulators. We need to cut through the red tape.\r\nAmericans want to get back to work  they want to get our economy going again. Congress needs to help them do it, because this administration certainly is not.\r\nThe Obama administration basically needs to get out of the way.\r\n###", 1, "2026-03-30T12:14:52Z", "2026-03-30T12:14:52Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["http://www.barrasso.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/news-releases?ID=d26cdec0-5f3b-4bfc-8c1a-5b72a5c192d7"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 1.6314368695020676, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}