WASHINGTON – U.S. Representative Candice Miller (MI-10) today spoke on the Floor of the U.S. House of Representatives in favor of passing the EPA Regulatory Relief Act of 2011, H.R.2250, bipartisan legislation focused on eliminating new Boiler MACT (maximum achievable control technology) rules that threaten thousands of American jobs:

“Mr. Speaker, we certainly all understand that our economy is struggling. Millions of Americans can’t find a job. Too many families are struggling to make ends meet. The American people are frustrated the Washington is simply not doing enough to get our economy moving. I would argue that not only is Washington not doing enough to help get our economy moving, but it is actually harming the efforts of American innovators, of manufacturers and small business, of the job creators because of government over regulations.

“The fact is that today the Obama Administration has publicly listed almost 220 new regulations just this year alone – that’s a 15 percent increase in one year alone in new regulatory actions under consideration, each one of them is estimated to cost $100 million, if you can imagine. The bill currently under consideration would provide relief from some of the new EPA regulations that would cost American job creators more than $14 billion and threaten over 230,000 jobs.

“In my home state of Michigan this government over-regulation would cost nearly $800 million and put nearly 13,000 jobs at risk. My home state of Michigan we are on our knees economically and we cannot tolerate this anymore – it has to be stopped. At home I have talked to so many business people from small family businesses to major corporations, etc. The message from all of them is the same: that government over-regulation is absolutely killing their efforts to grow and to create jobs.

“I’ll give you one example, there’s a company over in Port Huron, Michigan in my Congressional district, Domtar Company. Port Huron has been hit particularly hard, currently has an unemployment rate approaching 20%, if you can imagine that and is unbelievable how bad it is at this time. Domtar is a paper company and currently employs 245 people and generates between $8 to $12 million in revenue annually. I talked to them about this regulation we are considering today, and they estimate that this regulation today would cost them $9 million to scrub the coal they use to operate their boilers or would cost $3-4 million to convert to natural gas and have an additional annual cost of $3-4 million each year to stay compliant. They estimate that these costs would likely force the company to shut down two of their four paper machines, of course possibly forcing a reduction in jobs.

“This company, this community, this nation cannot handle that kind of loss in additional jobs that this regulation would force. It seems that today the three most feared letters to American job creators which used to be IRS, today those letters are EPA. And why is that? Well on April 30, 2010, the EPA issued a statement on a study of the impact of one of their proposed regulations, this is what they said: ‘The regulatory impact assessment does not include either qualitative or quantitative estimation of the potential effects of the proposed rule on economic productivity, economic growth, employment, job creation or international economic competitiveness.’ In other words, they don’t care about what their regulations have to do with job creations, much less stifling and killing job creation in this country.

“This is what our own government is doing to our job creators and this is from an Administration who claims that job creation is its number one priority. We have to stop putting all of this government over-regulation that is killing jobs and House Republicans have been trying to lift the boot of big government off the necks, off the throats of job creators and workers who are looking for a job. We have heard repeatedly from this President about the need to invest in transportation infrastructure. At the same time the President and his Administration is talking about how infrastructure is such an economic life-blood to our economy – which I agree with and I think House Republicans agree with. But at the same time the President is saying that we have to invest in infrastructure and fixing roads, his Administration is moving forward on one of the regulations that we were talking about today which would put large sections of American cement manufacturers out of business. I would tell the President that it is very hard to have infrastructure investment, to build roads if you don’t have any cement. I speak in favor of the underlining bill before us now and call on my colleagues to pass this bill now – pass this bill and let’s get America moving again.”

Note: The EPA’s new Boiler MACT rules are exceedingly complex and unduly onerous. Hospitals, factories, universities, farms, and thousands of major American employers will be directly impacted by these rules. EPA officials have estimated that the capital cost of implementing these rules will be $9.5 billion. A recent study prepared by IHS Global Insight puts the figure at more than $14 billion with over 230,000 jobs at risk. Another study by the American Forest and Paper Association had concluded that for the forest products sector alone, the final Boiler MACT rules put at risk over 20,000 jobs, or 18% of the entire workforce, for U.S. pulp and paper mills.

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