Sam Graves Quotes

I will use my position as chairman emeritus on the Energy and Commerce Committee to try to bring some common sense to EPA regulations.

We cannot afford the EPA's continued expansion of red tape that is slowing economic growth and threatening to entangle millions of small businesses.

We need responsible regulations, not regulations that have gone wild. For example, the EPA has a rule that is going to be implemented Jan. 1, 2012, where they're going to begin to regulate dust. That's right, dust. It's called PM 2.5. That is focusing on the wrong thing.

The EPA's greenhouse gas regulations, along with a host of other onerous regulations, are unnecessarily driving out conventional fuels as part of America's energy mix. The consequences are higher energy prices for families and a contraction of our nation's economic growth.

If the EPA continues unabated, jobs will be shipped to China and India as energy costs skyrocket. Most of the media attention has focused on the EPA's efforts to regulate climate-change emissions, but that is just the beginning.

The great fear that hung over the business community in the 1970s was death by regulation, and the great goal of the conservative movement, as it rose to triumph in the 1980s, was to remove that threat - to keep OSHA, the EPA, and the FTC from choking off entrepreneurship with their infernal meddling in the marketplace.

A focus on regulatory overreach, things that the benefit doesn't outweigh the cost, is probably the single greatest opportunity we have for having a positive impact on job creation.

Climate change is not an excuse for the EPA to ignore the bounds of law and issue illegal regulations that will cost jobs, shutter industries, and have little to no positive impact on the environment.

Dust is part of rural America. It is completely unreasonable for the EPA to put a price tag on communities for carrying out activities essential to their well-being. This is a prime example of federal regulations gone too far.

Under the Clean Air Act, the EPA has the ability to more stringently regulate dust. If the EPA determines more stringent standards are necessary, family farmers and ranchers, as well as rural economies, would be devastated.

If the EPA cannot or will not act to halt the toxic e-waste trade to developing nations, then Congress should take action.

The federal government has gone too far on many nonessential regulations that are harming small businesses. Employers are rightly concerned about the costs of these regulations - so they stop hiring, stop spending, and start saving for a bill from the federal government.

From 1859 to 1971, the U.S. oil industry grew virtually continuously, in the process serving mightily to drive our economy and win our wars. But that growth was stopped dead in 1971 and sent into decline thereafter, as the advent of the EPA and the accompanying National Environmental Policy Act made it increasingly difficult to drill.

Reining in the regulatory state would have a massive impact on economic freedom going forward.

There should be an immediate moratorium on federal regulations that endanger jobs.

Regulations have certainly gone too far in a number of areas, but it's important to remember that regulations are meant to be protective, and when it comes to the EPA, that means protecting human health and our world.

I think Congress can pass a bill when the American people start regaining trust in the administration to actually do their job and enforce the laws that are already on the books.

We have bloated, out-of-control, and unresponsive government agencies that need to be reined in and focused by Congress to deliver results.

Dodd-Frank represents the greatest regulatory burden on our economy, more so than all the other Obama-era regulations combined.

The EPA's climate change regulations are based on compromised scientific reports and heavily flawed data.

There are issues the EPA should be dealing with. When I talk about the EPA and its role with the states, it's not an abolitionist view, that we don't need that agency. It's that the agency should act within the outlines established by Congress.

Congress passes statutes, and those statutes are very clear on the job EPA has to do.

As the son of a small business owner, I know how regulatory overreach can stifle our economy and cost Americans jobs.

I hope the EPA will listen to the many votes over the years in Congress opposing cap-and-trade and rescind that proposed rule.

Federal rules and regulations too often become seemingly insurmountable obstacles to simple changes that can have a positive impact.