[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 6 (Wednesday, January 11, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S753-S755]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


                           UNFUNDED MANDATES

  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, we will soon in this Chamber turn to 
unfunded mandates bill, which is a piece of legislation that has been 
worked on by the Governmental Affairs Committee and by many Members of 
this Chamber. I wanted today to say a few words about that legislation 
to try to indicate why I support generally the subject, why I have 
worked on it in the Governmental Affairs Committee, and why I think it 
is important that we pass the legislation, but also why I think at the 
same time we ought to talk about all dimensions of this issue and why I 
intend to offer several amendments to it.
  First of all, it is absolutely true that it has been far too easy for 
Members of 
 [[Page S754]] the House and the Senate to decide that they want to 
offer amendments that will require someone out there in the country to 
do something, most specifically a State and local government, but also 
the private sector, without any given thought about how much the 
mandate would cost. Too often, we overlook the questions of what kind 
of problems the mandate could cause, how heavy the burden will be, and 
on whom will it fall.
  Too often it has been easy to say ``Here is what we impose, and you 
worry about the rest of it. You worry about what it is going to cost.''
  Well, this legislation simply says that when we are prepared to 
impose a mandate, we ought to be responsible enough to understand what 
it imposes on someone. What is the cost going to be?
  Then, if we impose a mandate on State and local government, we ought 
to say, ``Here are the resources with which you can do it.''
  Senator Domenici and I wrote in this legislation provisions that also 
include the private sector. It is not just mayors and Governors who are 
concerned about mandates. What about the private sector? What about the 
businessman and business woman who also get socked with mandates? So 
there is in this legislation language which Senator Domenici and I 
wrote that includes the private sector. We provide that you must, when 
you bring legislation to the floor of the Senate, have with that 
legislation an analysis by the Congressional Budget Office of what this 
is going to cost the private sector.
  Let us vote with full information. Let us vote with more information 
than we have ever had in the past to understand what we are doing and 
what burdens our laws are imposing on people around this country.
  Some will, I suppose, support this legislation in a manner designed 
to suggest that everything Government does is largely unworthy. I do 
not believe that. We have done a lot of things, including imposing some 
mandates that are worthy and important and that I would vote for again 
and again and again. Would anyone here reasonably suggest that we 
should not have passed the Voting Rights Act? I do not think so. That 
imposed a mandate, and it was perfectly legitimate. It was our 
responsibility to do it. We did it, and I am proud of it. I can give 
you other examples.
  My point is that some mandates are important. Some mandates we ought 
to impose. I can tell you one I would like to see imposed. I have been 
trying for years. Hopefully, I will get it done. I do not think it is 
going to cost anybody very much. Do you know there are nine States in 
this country where you can get behind the wheel of your car and, with 
your right hand, put the key in the ignition and, with the left hand, 
hold a bottle of Wild Turkey or Old Crow or your favorite brand of 
whiskey and drive down the street drinking whiskey, and do so within 
the law?
  In my country, I hope that will not last very long. There is not a 
State in this country that ought to allow drinking and driving. Nine of 
them do. At least nine of them do not have laws prohibiting open 
containers in vehicles or prohibiting the driver from drinking. I would 
like to mandate in every State in this country that no matter where you 
are driving with your family on vacation, you know you are not going to 
cross a State line and find in the next State that someone is drinking 
whiskey and driving, or drinking beer and driving, and turning into a 
murderer because the driver is drunk.
  I would like to mandate that, and I have been trying. I have not been 
successful, but someday I am going to. I do not think it is going to 
cost the States that do not have this law a lot of money to decide they 
should comply with a reasonable mandate that you ought not drink and 
drive in this country.
  I indicated over in the Governmental Affairs Committee that trouble 
runs on a two-way street in this country on the subject of mandates, 
and I said to State and local folks who testified that I support this 
legislation for the reasons I have just described now here on the floor 
of the Senate. But I also said as I participate in efforts to reform 
the way the Federal Government does business, we should and we will--
and this bill will pass and will pass with my vote--require State and 
local governments to participate in reform as well. Mandates are a two-
way street. Even as we talk about the burdens we impose upon them, 
there are officials out in other levels of government--Governors and 
others--who are plotting new ways they can hook their hose to the 
Federal tank and suck more Federal dollars out of the Federal tank; how 
can they get more Federal dollars?
  I will tell you one way. They have decided to concoct phony schemes 
for provider taxes in Medicaid. Some states tax their health care 
providers, which brings in more Federal Medicaid dollars. Then these 
states reimburse their health care providers. In effect really the 
providers have paid no tax and the only result is that the states 
increase the Federal deficit by sucking more money out of the Federal 
trough.
  We are going to reform the way we do business. They ought to reform 
the way they do business. It is not acceptable to me to have people 
complaining about unfunded mandates at the State and local level and 
then to see them in every conceivable way line up to see how much they 
can pail out of the Federal trough and get more Federal moneys in their 
area, some of it with schemes that are fundamentally phony.
  Well, my point is, yes, let us change; let all of us change, not just 
the Federal Government but State and local government as well. The fact 
is we send a substantial amount of money back to State and local 
governments, some of it with no strings. I could give a list of 
programs for which we send billions, literally tens of billions of 
dollars, back to State and local governments in which they have the 
control over the spending and in which there are very few mandates, and 
in some cases none.
  And I think, again, this is a two-way street. We need to work 
together. Let us try to stop imposing unreasonable burdens on each 
other, and let us all act responsibly and all construct the kind of 
behavior in Government that the American taxpayers expect us to have.
  The legislation itself is good. There are a number of questions that 
will be asked about it that I think ought to be answered, and some were 
not answered in the Governmental Affairs Committee. It is reasonable 
for us to understand exactly what we are doing even now, as we deal 
with mandates. So there are a lot of questions. But when all the dust 
settles and the questions are answered, this legislation, I think, will 
be improved by some amendments. Then the legislation will pass, and it 
will pass with my vote because I have helped write part of it, 
especially including the private sector. But I am going to offer a 
couple of amendments. Let me describe the three of them.
  One is, there is a commission described in this legislation to do 
some studying. It is a new commission. We do not need a new commission. 
The Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations, ACIR, which has 
existed for a long, long while--I have worked with it, in fact I was 
appointed to serve on it a couple of years ago--is a commission 
existing to do precisely these kinds of things. We do not need to 
construct or produce a new commission. Let us use the commission that 
exists. In fact, the ACIR was the commission in this legislation up 
until a few weeks ago and was replaced for reasons I do not understand. 
So I will offer an amendment to place it back in the legislation.
  Next, I am going to offer an amendment that deals with a mandate that 
sort of gets under my skin. We have a metric conversion act in this 
country. We are forcing America to go metric. It is not that I am 
living in the last century. It is not that I am backward. It is not 
that I fail to understand. I have nothing against metric. I do not 
happen to care how many kilometers it is to the next rest stop. So I do 
not want them taking down the highway signs telling me how many miles 
it is and putting up signs telling me how many kilometers it is. It 
does not matter to me. I want to know how long it takes to get there, 
and I guess I can best measure that by seeing how many miles it is.
  We do not need a Metric Conversion Act that we enforce through the 
Federal Government, through the Department of Transportation, that will 
take down all those green highway signs on the interstate and replace 
miles with kilometers. It is a terrible waste of 
 [[Page S755]] money. But more than that, in the deep recesses of the 
bureaucracy, in every agency, there is some metric conversion 
enforcement officer who is now busy at work, scurrying somewhere 
underneath a pile of paper, trying to figure out how to mess up the 
next project.
  In North Dakota, we are going to try to build 20 little houses up on 
an Indian reservation to house Indian Health Service workers. Do you 
know what? Those 20 houses are held up. Do you know why? Because they 
have to be built under the metric system; metrification. Twenty houses 
have to be built under the metric system. I have been trying for 3 
months to get a waiver. You cannot do it. The bureaucracy simply does 
not bend.
  I am going to offer an amendment that says let us suspend for 2 years 
the enforcement of the Metric Conversion Act. Just suspend the 
enforcement of it. Then let us have this commission that is going to 
study the other things get back to us and tell us what the Metric 
Conversion Act is costing us and why. Of what value is it to build a 
house using metric? It is more expensive and takes longer in the 
planning. This makes no sense to me. I am going to offer an amendment, 
and I hope we add it to this bill, that we suspend for 2 years the 
enforcement of the Metric Act while the study is done, the study which 
I hope will then convince us we ought not to be doing this.
  Yes, parts of the private sector are going metric because if you want 
to compete in certain areas overseas you ought to do it in metric 
measurements. The automobile industry does that when they send cars 
overseas. I see nothing wrong with that. But we do not have to use 
metric when we want to build a house on an Indian reservation. That 
makes no sense to me.
  I am going to offer another amendment, on the Federal Reserve Board. 
The Federal Reserve Board imposes the ultimate mandate. In fact, I 
think next week they will decide once again--closing their doors and in 
secret with their brethren, the banking community, the central 
bankers--decide to increase interest rates. And they will increase the 
cost of paying for the Federal debt by the Federal Government. They 
will increase the cost for State and local governments, and more 
important, they will increase costs on every American citizen. That is 
mandated. They are going to mandate an increase in interest rates that 
will cost every American citizen additional money.
  So I am going to offer an amendment that is very simple but will give 
them an apoplectic seizure, I am sure, because even if you suggest 
somehow that they are maybe a part of America and we ought to 
understand what they are doing behind those closed doors, they say you 
are Fed bashing. I am not Fed bashing. But I am going to offer an 
amendment that says when the Federal Reserve Board meets in secret to 
decide once again they want to increase interest rates, within 30 days 
of that decision they must send a report to Congress and a report to 
the President that tells us how much that action cost us, what it cost 
the Federal Government in increased debt service.
  Incidentally, the Fed's actions last year--again in secret, by the 
Fed, the central bankers who control the money supply--their actions 
last year increased the cost of debt service over the coming 5 years by 
nearly $125 billion. In other words, they, by their decisions, took 
back nearly one-fourth of the deficit reduction savings that we 
agonized over and debated and wrestled over here on the floor of the 
Senate for months the year before. They did not wrestle. They did not 
debate much. Actually, we do not know that because the door was closed. 
But I assume they reached a consensus very quickly on behalf of their 
constituencies. They took back, by their action to increase interest 
rates, about $125 billion in deficit reduction. Said another way, they 
took action to increase the Federal deficit by $125 billion because 
they increased the cost of paying for the Federal debt. But it was more 
than that. They increased the cost of home payments for people who have 
adjustable rate mortgages.
  My point is this. When the Federal Reserve Board meets and decides it 
is going to mandate another interest rate increase, I just say, within 
30 days you have a responsibility to tell us and tell the President 
what this increase will cost. The reason I make this suggestion is that 
I asked at a recent hearing of Federal officials what did this cost, 
your five or six interest rate increases last year? Do you know what 
was the cost of it, and who is going to pay it? They had not studied 
it.
  So I am saying I would like the Fed to study it and give us a report. 
I will offer that amendment as well to this legislation, and I hope 
that some of my colleagues will support that and that we could add that 
provision to the unfunded mandates bill.
  Let me finish where I began on this subject. This is a piece of 
legislation that I believe will be supported by substantial numbers in 
both political parties. Most of us understand it has been too easy to 
impose mandates on others, both State and local governments and, also, 
the private sector. There are mandates that are important, necessary, 
and which I support. We would not want, I believe, in this country, to 
decide we will retreat on the question of child labor. We have child 
labor laws prohibiting the hiring of 12-year-olds and paying them 12 
cents a hour. We would not want to retreat on that. We would not want 
to retreat on the issues of worker safety. Should we have a safe 
workplace? Should we have child labor laws? There are dozens and dozens 
of things that we have done that helped create a better country. They 
are important and they have been in mandates.
  But in recent years it has been too easy. In recent years there has 
been a call for us to be more responsible, and that is what this 
legislation says. Let us understand what this mandate is, who it costs 
and what it costs. If we do understand, we will make this Senate a 
better legislative body.
  I hope that next week when we really debate this bill, Senators will 
not tell us that this bill is just the way it has to be as it comes out 
of committee and that they oppose all amendments. This bill is not 
perfect. I helped work on it and I know it is not perfect, and that is 
why I think we ought to have a free and open exchange, agree to some 
amendments where amendments have merit, and get this bill ready for 
final passage. We will have accomplished something together as 
Republicans and Democrats, and we will be responding to what I think is 
a real problem.
  Mr. President, with that I yield the floor, and I make a point of 
order a quorum is not present.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. DeWine). The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. DeWine). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.


                                  note

  Due to a printing error, the following statement from the Record of 
January 10 is reprinted in correct form at this point.

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