[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 61 (Tuesday, May 17, 1994)]
[House]
[Page H]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: May 17, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]


                              {time}  1040
 
       LIVING IN THE PAST WITH THE INTERSTATE COMMERCE COMMISSION

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Strickland). Under the Speaker's 
announced policy of February 11, 1994, the gentleman from Colorado [Mr. 
Hefley] is recognized during morning business for 5 minutes.
  Mr. HEFLEY. Mr. Speaker, the spring issue of Audacity magazine has an 
article on Malcom McClean. He is the man who invented those intermodal 
containers that you see used on trains, trucks, and ships.
  Here is a real self-made man with a high school education who works 
his way up from hauling dirt in a pickup truck to raising the world's 
standard of living. A story of triumph over adversity.
  Unfortunately, those adversaries included the Federal Government. 
Listen to this quote:

       * * * his moves alarmed railroaders, who complained to the 
     Interstate Commerce Commission. And the ICC responded by 
     telling him he must choose between trucks and ships.

  Here is a man poised to revolutionize an entire industry--and the ICC 
worked to stop him.
  That, in a nutshell, is the problem with the Interstate Commerce 
Commission. The ICC does not protect consumers; it protects industries. 
It does not lower transportation costs; it raises them. And it does not 
protect communities from abandonment; it speeds the process up!
  Last year, an amendment I offered came a handful of votes short of 
eliminating this unnecessary agency. Today, let me address several of 
the issues raised during that debate.


                            quasi-government

  Mr. Speaker, some Members argue that the ICC's quasi-legislative, 
quasi-executive, quasi-judicial nature makes it more accountable.
  I suggest this is a quasi-bad idea.
  Unlike the executive branch, which is responsible to the President, 
the ICC is responsible only to a handful of powerful Representatives 
and Senators.
  When something goes wrong in the executive branch, we blame the 
President. When something goes wrong with the ICC, who gets blamed?
  When a President's policies fail, he gets fired. The chairman of the 
Energy and Commerce Committee will never lose an election due to his 
failed policies at the ICC.
  That is not accountability, and that is why the ICC has managed to 
survive so long despite its questionable record.


                              undercharge

  Mr. Speaker, the filed rate doctrine and the related undercharge 
litigation are other ICC topics worth revisiting. Here is an 
explanation of both:
  Imagine you bought a few hamburgers a week from the corner fast-food 
stand when you were younger and thinner. Now, years later, you receive 
a letter from a lawyer representing the creditors of that hamburger 
stand.
  Apparently, the stand went broke since you stopped eating there, and 
the lawyer discovered that the owner violated Federal law by selling 
hamburgers below the price he listed with the Interstate Hamburger 
Commission.
  Under Federal law, fast-food operators must file their hamburger 
prices with the IHC in order to protect consumers from discrimination 
and cut-throat competition. Since you consistently paid less than the 
filed rate, you inadvertently violated the law. Now the creditor's 
lawyer is demanding several thousand dollars that you owe her clients.
  Sounds absurd, does it not? But substitute transportation for 
hamburgers and ICC for IHC and that is exactly what happened to 
thousands of shippers during the 1980's, when free markets ran head 
long into the archaic filed rate doctrine.
  What is the cost? Congress spends about $40 million a year to run the 
ICC. Shippers are paying lawyers millions to settle undercharge claims. 
It costs American consumers billions to pay for the filed rate 
doctrine.
  Those who support the ICC also support the filed rate doctrine. 
Chairman Dingell argues that rates should be set in an open forum only 
available at the ICC. What he does not explain is why the ICC should 
set rates at all.


                              abandonments

  Mr. Speaker, when I offered an amendment to cut funding for the ICC 
last year, Chairman Dingell claimed the author--that's me--does not 
know what the ICC does.
  As an example of my ignorance, Chairman Dingell cited the rail line 
abandonment duties of the ICC. He said, ``The ICC can approve the 
abandonment of rail lines as long as 1,000 miles or longer.''
  ``What would you do,'' he asked, ``if rail service were to be 
abandoned in your district involving a single community or a number of 
communities?''
  I would suggest that abandoned rail lines may have been a problem 
when Congress was busy regulating our rail industry into oblivion, but 
since deregulation, contested abandonments have become the exception 
rather than the rule.
  Look at the numbers. Formal abandonment filings averaged 155 requests 
affecting over 3,000 miles of track per year in the 1970's. In 
contrast, the last 4 years formal filings have averaged 16 per year, 
affecting only 500 miles per year.
  What is more revealing is the number formal abandonment requests the 
ICC denies. Throughout the 1970's and 1980's, despite the filing of 
thousands of abandonments, the ICC only denied a few applications each 
year.
  That number has declined in the 1990's to average one per year. What 
Chairman Dingell's rhetoric described as huge areas ``being affected by 
the closure of rail service upon which those communities are 
dependent'' was, in the real world of 1993, one line totaling 1 mile.
  Mr. Dingell's point was that without an independent agency handling 
these cases, we cannot protect our communities from abandonments. As 
the record shows, ease of entry and exit into the rail industry is the 
best protection our communities have.


                           living in the past

  Mr. Speaker, every argument in support of the ICC details what the 
Commission was supposed to do--not what it actually accomplished. The 
words are tributes to a glorious age of price fixing and consumer 
protection that never existed.
  The record is clear. Before deregulation, all the industries under 
the ICC's jurisdiction were in serious financial trouble. Since 
deregulation, those industries have rebounded with a vengeance.
  The ICC is not only unnecessary, it is destructive and costly. This 
year, I again plan to offer an amendment to kill the ICC. I hope my 
colleagues will support it.

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