ms. collins: mr. mr. president,i ask unanimous consent i permitted to proceed for 15 minutes as if in morning business. the presiding officer: without objection. ms. collins: thank you, mr. president. mr. president, last month's dire economic news is a call to urgent action to get america working again. in august, our nation produced no net new jobs. productivity fell, home sales fell, construction spending fell, the manufacturing index declined, unemployment is stagnant at 9.1%, and consumer confidence is plummeting. businesses, our nation's job creators and the engine of any lasting economic growth, have been saying for some time that the lack of jobs is largely due to a climate of uncertainty, most notably the uncertainty and cost created by new federal regulations. mr. president, the regulatory time-out act, which i am introducing today, with 14 of my colleagues, provides job creators with a sensible breather from these burdensome new regulations. this would give businesses time to get back on the

ms. collins: mr. president the boiler regulation are exactly the kind of significant rules that my regulatory time-out act is intended to reach. the moratorium applies to rules issued by independent regulatory agencies such as the national labor relations board, as well as executive branch departments. the impact of the regulatory burden under president obama can be the impact of the regulatory burden under president obama can colag be seen in the pages of ther federal register. as my colleagues know, the federal register is the publication for all federal regulations. last year alone, the federal 82,6 register expanded by nearly und 82,600 pages a level higher than any year under president bush. the worse yet, the obamast administration has 144 rules in the pipeline that would each cost to the economy at least tt $100 million. this is nearly twice as high as the number of such rules that were in the pipeline each year m of the bush administration. now, mr. president, let me clarify that the legislati

collins, those are very good questions, but that's our response. >> thank you. secretary lute. i want to turn to the management challenges that both the comptroller general and ms. berrick have mentioned today. particularly in the area of procurement. i mentioned in my opening statement that there had been a string of procurement failures. it spans both administrations. it has cost the taxpayers literally billions of dollars. and equally troubling, it's delay the deployment of much-needed technology and equipment. he is just a partial list. t. h. -- ths determines that the explosives trace detectors, that puffers machines that we saw for a while at the airport did not work in a real-world environment. they worked fine in the lab but not at the airports. there was the advanced portal, which dnd element to deploy before proper testing and evaluation had been completed. there have been two major consolidated financial data system failures. that emerged to system, $52 million was spent before the project was canceled. the transformation and systems consolidation project was abandoned this year in may. after multiple protest and gao ruling against dhs, a lot of mone