[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 62 (Wednesday, May 18, 1994)]
[House]
[Page H]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: May 18, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                               H.R. 3800

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Brown] was recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, an issue passed today in the 
Committee on Energy and Commerce under the leadership of the gentleman 
from Michigan, Chairman John Dingell, which will help create jobs in 
American cities. I particularly want to applaud and thank the chairman 
of the subcommittee, the gentleman from Washington [Mr. Swift], the 
gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Oxley], and the gentleman from Michigan [Mr. 
Dingell] for their leadership on this issue.
  Every industrial city in America has large tracts of land that are 
abandoned. These tracts used to be auto companies or used to be steel 
plants or used to be chemical companies. These are tracts of land that 
when the businesses close, these tracts of land simply were abandoned 
by the owners, simply are not reclaimable under present law in these 
communities.
  The banks will not lend money to clean them up and to develop new 
industry there. The owners simply cannot afford to clean up. So you 
will see large sectors of land, large tracts of land in all of 
America's major industrial cities, including cities like Lorain and 
Elyria, Ohio, in my district where nothing is happening in those areas.

                              {time}  1920

  What we see, instead, is a Bermuda Triangle of economic growth. There 
is no job creation in these communities, where large tracts of land are 
abandoned. There is an erosion of the tax base, because these lands, 
these tracts of land, used to create jobs, used to house factories 
where there were lots of jobs, where people were working and the tax 
base was expanding and schools were getting money and all of that in 
these cities.
  The third leg of that Bermuda Triangle is the environmental 
degradation in these communities on these sites, where nobody is 
cleaning them up. They are simply sitting there abandoned with fences 
around them.
  These cities where these large abandoned tracts of land are located 
are the cities that built America. They are the cities where ships were 
built and steel was produced and automobiles were made and chemical 
companies produced chemicals for American industry and for American 
consumers, where appliances were built. All of these areas have been 
abandoned.
  I drive by these abandoned sites in Lorain and Elyria almost every 
day. H.R. 3800 will help people go into these communities, will help 
developers go in, will help bankers loan money in these communities, so 
that people can--companies can go in and start new industries and bring 
these areas back, which makes sense for job creation, it makes sense to 
expand the tax base, it makes sense for environmental cleanup.
  Instead, if we do not pass H.R. 3800, these companies will continue 
to go to the suburbs and continue to knock down virgin forests and 
continue to develop lands that are farmlands, instead of going back 
into the cities and using these lands.
  H.R. 3800 will help America reclaim our jobs, reclaim our schools, 
reclaim our cities, and reclaim our environment.

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