[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 101 (Thursday, July 28, 1994)]
[Senate]
[Page S]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: July 28, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
   JUDGE STEPHEN BREYER'S BOOK ``BREAKING THE VICIOUS CIRCLE: TOWARD 
                       EFFECTIVE RISK REDUCTION''

  Mr. DUREBERGER. Mr. President, in 1993 Judge Breyer published a book 
with the title, ``Breaking the Vicious Circle: Toward Effective Risk 
Reduction.'' The central premise of his book is that the efforts of the 
federal Government to reduce risks to public health and the environment 
are not well focused and produce inconsistent and illogical results.
  The cause of this problem in Judge Breyer's view is the disjointed 
decisionmaking process that we in the Congress and as a nation use to 
choose the risk reduction policies that are actually imposed. The 
sources of risk to human health and the environment come to the 
attention of the public and the Congress one-at-time. They are 
considered by a multitude of committees and subcommittees in the 
legislature. They are regulated under a series of statutes with 
disparate goals and objectives. The statutes are carried out by several 
departments and agencies of the executive branch.
  In Judge Breyer's view, the result is a confusing and wasteful web of 
regulations that do not achieve the greatest risk reduction for the 
dollars we invest. He points to a swamp in New Hampshire that is 
cleaned up to extraordinary levels under the Superfund Program, while 
Boston Harbor remains polluted. He cites a fivefold discrepancy in risk 
assessment outcomes between EPA and FDA methods. He reports examples of 
risk reduction regulations that may actually increase health risks from 
other sources.
  Judge Breyer is not alone in raising these concerns. In 1987, the EPA 
itself published a study called ``Unfinished Business'' which suggested 
that Government and private sector resources were being wasted because 
Government policy too often regulated low-level risks while larger 
threats went unaddressed. And in 1990, the Science Advisory Board of 
EPA came to a similar conclusion in its report, ``Reducing Risk.''
  No one could argue with the proposition that we ought to allocate the 
resources we devote to risk reduction as carefully as possible. And 
everyone would agree that decisions based on solid scientific 
information are usually better than decisions guided by hunches, 
superstition or bias.
  However, we must often make decisions before all the evidence is in. 
Congress is constantly called upon to make decisions that allocate 
billions of public and private dollars toward one problem or another 
often before the science on causes and solutions is settled. We make 
difficult choices that are criticized from every direction.
  Judge Breyer proposes a new superagency with wide-ranging authority 
to reallocate Government efforts as a solution to these problems. But 
there is no technical, scientific or bureaucratic fix for our 
condition. There is no philosopher king or group of senior bureaucrats 
who can relieve the Congress of the difficult job of setting priorities 
in a world of competing interests and limited knowledge. And there is 
no reason to believe that Congress has chosen incorrectly in the past.
  A complete response to the concerns that Judge Breyer raises in his 
book would fill many pages of the Record. I would make just two brief 
points, today.
  First, this is not a technical problem that can be solved by 
appointing an agency with broader powers and better staff. Allocating 
budgets, imposing regulatory costs, is an act of expressing values, and 
in a democracy we do it by voting.
  There is not one objective yardstick on which one can rank the 
relative importance of all these competing objectives. How much do you 
spend on children' health, before you start spending money to save 
endangered species? This is a question of preferences that in our 
system of government is assigned to elected members of the Congress, 
not appointed members of science boards.
  Second, even where one yardstick of risk can be applied, for instance 
the risk of contracting fatal cancer, it does not necessarily follow 
that allocating resources to achieve the largest risk reduction is an 
absolute guide to policy. I believe that the public is more willing to 
accept small risks widely distributed, than large risks focused on the 
few. It is not just the absolute mortality, but also the equity, the 
distribution of the risk, that informs the public's sense of 
priorities.
  The public gets incensed about hazardous waste sites and leaking 
underground storage tanks because they are immediately devastating to 
their victims, even if those victims are few in number, and hundreds 
more could be saved by spending the same dollars cleaning up indoor air 
quality. Allocating public and private resources to achieve the 
greatest reduction in risk for each dollar spent is not the best public 
policy, because it fails to reflect the public's sense of equity and 
justice. How much an industry should be required to spend to prevent 
its externalities from imposing unjustified costs on others is, unless 
one takes an absolutist view, a value-laden decision that can only be 
made in the context of our entire social experience.
  I am all for more science. And the Congress has a fundamental 
obligation to spend the taxpayers' money as wisely as possible. We 
often make mistakes. But I do not agree that the anecdotes cited in 
Judge Breyer's book call into question either the process we have used 
to select environmental priorities or the allocation of resources now 
reflected in the budget and regulations of EPA and the other agencies 
we charged to protect public health and the environment.
  Mr. PELL addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Rhode Island.

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