[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 77 (Friday, June 17, 1994)]
[Senate]
[Page S]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


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

 
                     REGULATING US OUT OF BUSINESS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentlewoman from Maryland [Mrs. Bentley] is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mrs. BENTLEY. Madam Speaker, few Members of the Congress have escaped 
the almost daily complaints of the business community over the growing 
number of regulations coming at them from every government agency at 
Federal, State and local levels. Besides the anger arising from the 
frustrations of trying to comply with endless demands to file piles of 
paper filled with more information about the business than the IRS ever 
demanded, there is another common denominator among these complaints--
fear. Fear of how much farther the government(s) will go--how many more 
regulations the businesses can tolerate.
  Over time we have seen businesses go under. Not because they were 
poorly managed, not because they had lost a market, but because they 
were operating in a location which over years of usage had soaked up 
industrial pollution and they could not raise the money to clean it up. 
Since at the time most of this pollution occurred, normal industrial 
waste was not considered either a pollutant or illegal, the 
responsibility is happening ex post facto--the owner is guilty of 
breaking a law before it became a law.
  We have seen the value of great lots of commercial real estate 
plummet because of these laws--properties become unsaleable because no 
bank wants the liability of being caught with polluted property. How 
extreme these demands have become is indicated by what happened to the 
city of Columbus, OH.
  Three years ago, according to Tony Snow writing in the Washington 
Times, Columbus decided to pave over some land behind the city's 
municipal garage. In order to comply with Federal regulations, they had 
to excavate 2.4 million pounds of dirt, ship the soil to Texas for 
burning in an incinerator and install devices to measure air quality 
outside the garage as the work progressed to insure that the digging 
would not send toxins into the air affecting bystanders.
  When Columbus added the cost of this project to other federally 
mandated requirements, it estimated the cost of such mandates to the 
city in the 1990's would be $1.6 billion. A study commissioned by the 
U.S. Conference of Mayors estimated that environmental mandates alone 
in 1993 forced the country's largest cities to expend 87.2 million 
hours in staff time, $1.73 billion in salaries and $4.39 billion in 
indirect costs. The 5-year costs to the cities of such orders will be 
$51.8 billion if no extra environmental mandates are added and 
inflation doesn't exceed 2.7 percent.
  If the Congress has been loath to interfere with draconian 
regulations strangling businesses, maybe when the taxpayers are faced 
with the bills being run up by the cities and States, the Congress will 
decide that the requirement to test public drinking water for a 
pesticide banned 15 years ago and last used by pineapple farmers in 
1985 can be dropped.
  There may be a change in attitude, also, when some of these cities 
begin to lose parts of the tax base, and good jobs, because 
manufacturing companies are forced to move away from the harsh 
restrictions being laid upon 10 States--among them Maryland--to clean 
up the air by restricting commuting to work by car.
  The program, Employee Trip Reduction, aims to have workers car pool 
or use public transportation and the companies will be responsible for 
seeing this gets done or face heavy fines. The restrictions are placed 
on companies with over 100 employees.
  One of our larger employers, after making a survey of his worker's 
driving patterns and home locations, stated if this regulation is 
enforced that he will be forced to relocate his plant to another State, 
because the work force he now has cannot comply with the law. Maryland 
will lose 350 jobs if the company leaves.
  Other employers, with work forces barely over 100, says that they 
will be forced to cut back on jobs, adding more overtime for the 
remaining employees.
  An analysis of the effect of all of this economic and personal 
hardship on our companies and our workers in order to clean-up the air 
is startling. The most hopeful report is that 2 to 3 percent of all 
commuter traffic will be affected.
  At this point, I would like to say that I just don't believe that 
this great body of which I have been apart for almost 10 years could 
promulgate such a mischievous, destructive act on our people. Before we 
start losing our plants and jobs in critical urban areas, we had better 
have some oversight hearings as to the effects of these regulations.
  It seems to me that somewhere, someone has run away with an idea and 
hang the consequences.

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