[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 145 (Friday, October 7, 1994)]
[Senate]
[Page S]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: October 7, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                               SUPERFUND

  Mr. DOLE. Mr. President, this week we ran out of time to do 
meaningful superfund reform for this year.
  But I want to make clear that superfund reform has not died because 
we were unable to get a bill through this year. We were in the 
fortunate position of not being forced to act right now. Superfund 
taxes do not expire until December 31, 1995. So we still have time to 
get it right.
  A lot of very useful work has been done already. These early efforts 
have served to help us understand the problems we are facing better.
  Almost everyone agrees that superfund is a bad law, in both the way 
it has been structured and implemented. Superfund reform has not worked 
to date, despite repeated tries, because it has been based on 
retroactive liability, inflexible and gold-plated remedial action 
inappropriate to the situation, and an unfair liability and payment 
scheme always subject to dispute.
  I want to commend the efforts of the coalition of interested parties 
that was formed to identify areas of concern and suggest important 
steps forward. I have heard from a number of coalition members and know 
how strongly they felt about the proposal they had worked out.
  While I applaud these initial efforts, I also heard just as 
vehemently from many other groups. They objected to the process by 
which the agreement was reached, which excluded many groups. Even 
Senate staff was excluded. Many of those not at the table felt that 
special deals were cut that would benefit those included at the expense 
of other private parties and the taxpayers.
  I had heard from many of my colleagues who want to reform superfund 
the right way and were troubled that we might have rushed the bill 
through before we dealt with the fundamental problems that remain.
  Some of the larger areas of concern involved the enlargement of the 
federal bureaucracy, the interrelationship between States and the 
Federal Government--including the issue of cleanups at Federal 
facilities that troubled many of my colleagues, the need to ensure that 
sites addressed present real risk or that the sites with the greatest 
risk are cleaned up first, the need to assure that costs will be 
reasonable, authorizing new unfunded programs costing more than $500 
million, owner-operator participation in the allocation process, other 
equity issues involving both private and public parties, and the 
tremendous uncertainties posed by the environmental insurance 
resolution fund [EIRF], including the constitutionality of a 
retrospective wholly new tax.
  We now can use the time available to us in the next session to make 
constructive changes in these and other areas of concern.
  The efforts of the past year were not wasted. But let's do superfund 
right. The bill reported was not yet real reform. Nobody was interested 
in killing superfund. We want to take this opportunity to get something 
meaningful. That is what I am committed to do.

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