Press Releases

Congressman Morgan Griffith (R-VA) issued the following statement regarding the Senate’s short-term payroll tax holiday package, which excludes the House-passed language fixing Boiler MACT regulations:

“The Senate has again failed to act on House-passed legislation that would help American businesses, hospitals, and universities facing unreasonable Boiler MACT regulations. The Senate’s decision to exclude this reasonable fix for the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Boiler MACT rules from the payroll tax holiday package is disappointing.  Insufficient compliance times threaten the future of thousands of jobs in Virginia and nationwide.  One of the main reasons I introduced the EPA Regulatory Relief Act of 2011 (H.R. 2250) was to give boiler owners necessary time to comply with workable regulations.  Due to the complexity of these regulations, the three years currently provided, even with a possible one year extension, are not enough for many businesses.  Legislative action is also needed for technological achievability reasons. The EPA's pollutant-by-pollutant approach mandates boilers with multi-faceted emissions control technology that may not even exist today.  Investments required by these rules are costly and irreversible.  For those businesses that cannot make these investments, and decide to stop producing their product at a particular location, the job losses are also irreversible.

“However, just because the Senate does not want to take up this reasonable bill, H.R. 2250, at this time, does not mean that the jobs created by the Keystone XL pipeline and the Middle Class Tax Relief and Job Creation Act should be caught in the crossfire of partisanship and not acted on immediately. For this reason, I hope the House will pass the Senate’s diluted jobs bill.

“The good news is that a legislative fix to the current Boiler MACT rules lives to fight another day.  H.R. 2250 passed the House with bipartisan support and now rests in the Senate where they can act on it at any time.  Over the Christmas holidays, I hope that Santa will bring the Senate enlightenment and that they will realize the need to pass H.R. 2250 immediately upon their return in order to allow for additional compliance time and to free American industry from the chains of uncertainty and excessive regulations.”  

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