[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 40 (Friday, March 3, 1995)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E512]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


              RISK ASSESSMENT AND COST-BENEFIT ACT OF 1995

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                               speech of

                           HON. NANCY PELOSI

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                       Tuesday, February 28, 1995

       The House in Committee of the Whole House on the State of 
     the Union had under consideration the bill (H.R. 1022) to 
     provide regulatory reform and to focus national economic 
     resources on the greatest risks to human health, safety, and 
     the environment through scientifically objective and unbiased 
     risk assessments and through the consideration of costs and 
     benefits in major rules, and for other purposes:

  Ms. PELOSI. Mr. Chairman, H.R. 1022 is regulation by strangulation. 
If you think government red tape has been tied in knots, just wait 
until you experience the results of this Republican red flag against 
public health and safety and the environment.
  The cumbersome imposition of regulations on top of regulations will 
only serve to delay approval of anything to protect public health and 
safety and the environment. The resulting delay will threaten the lives 
of many and the future of all Americans. In our daily lives, the delay 
will translate into unregulated food and chemical products and in the 
longer term, the risk will be the loss of our national patrimony.
  Once again, the contract is placing financial interests over the 
interests of American public. A CNN/Time poll taken at the end of 
January determined that Americans consider environmental protection one 
of the most important problems--23 percent--or very important--65 
percent. Only 23 percent of the people surveyed believed that 
protection from pollution had gone too far.
  The risk in risk assessment is great. You cannot put a price on 
preventing illness, saving lives or preserving natural lands. Common 
sense should be brought to this debate on dollars and cents. A 
petroleum industry official had this comment about H.R. 1022:

       This reminds of 1981, when the industry shot itself in the 
     foot * * * Business not only lost but managed to engender 
     much of the strident public environmental sentiment that 
     later resulted in far stricter laws.

  H.R. 1022 does not discriminate between regulations--ones where the 
process should be re-examined or streamlined and ones that should be 
eliminated. The indiscriminate overriding of existing protections 
throws out the good with the bad.
  Like other components of the Republican regulatory reform package, 
H.R. 1022 represents another opportunity for special interests to 
paralyze the Federal regulatory process at the expense of average, 
taxpaying Americans.
  In this case, Mr. Chairman, less government means more government. 
The layers of bureaucracy that will be added to the regulatory process 
by H.R. 1022 will put more lives in harm's way. If you want to vote for 
more government and less public health and environmental protection, 
then you have the right bill in front of you. If you want to vote for 
government reform, you will need to look elsewhere.
  I urge my colleagues to vote for less government--vote ``no'' on H.R. 
1022.


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