[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 57 (Tuesday, March 28, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4696-S4698]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


                       REGULATORY TRANSITION ACT

  The Senate continued with the consideration of the bill.


                       Vote on Amendment No. 411

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The question occurs on amendment No. 411 
offered by the Senator from Iowa [Mr. Harkin].
  On this question, the yeas and nays have been ordered. The clerk will 
call the roll.
  The bill clerk called the roll.
  Mr. LOTT. I announce that the Senator from New Hampshire [Mr. Smith] 
is necessarily absent.
  I further announce that, if present and voting, the Senator from New 
Hampshire [Mr. Smith] would vote ``yea.''
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Are there any other Senators in the Chamber 
desiring to vote?
  The result was announced--yeas 99, nays 0, as follows:

                      [Rollcall Vote No. 116 Leg.]

                                YEAS--99

     Abraham
     Akaka
     Ashcroft
     Baucus
     Bennett
     Biden
     Bingaman
     Bond
     Boxer
     Bradley
     Breaux
     Brown
     Bryan
     Bumpers
     Burns
     Byrd
     Campbell
     Chafee
     Coats
     Cochran
     Cohen
     Conrad
     Coverdell
     Craig
     D'Amato
     Daschle
     DeWine
     Dodd
     Dole
     Domenici
     Dorgan
     Exon
     Faircloth
     Feingold
     Feinstein
     Ford
     Frist
     Glenn
     Gorton
     Graham
     Gramm
     Grams
     Grassley
     Gregg
     Harkin
     Hatch
     Hatfield
     Heflin
     Helms
     Hollings
     Hutchison
     Inhofe
     Inouye
     Jeffords
     Johnston
     Kassebaum
     Kempthorne
     Kennedy
     Kerrey
     Kerry
     Kohl
     Kyl
     Lautenberg
     Leahy
     Levin
     Lieberman
     Lott
     Lugar
     Mack
      [[Page S4697]] McCain
     McConnell
     Mikulski
     Moseley-Braun
     Moynihan
     Murkowski
     Murray
     Nickles
     Nunn
     Packwood
     Pell
     Pressler
     Pryor
     Reid
     Robb
     Rockefeller
     Roth
     Santorum
     Sarbanes
     Shelby
     Simon
     Simpson
     Snowe
     Specter
     Stevens
     Thomas
     Thompson
     Thurmond
     Warner
     Wellstone

                             NOT VOTING--1

       
     Smith
       
  So the amendment (No. 411) was agreed to.
  Mr. LEAHY. I move to reconsider the vote.
  Mrs. HUTCHISON. I move to lay that motion on the table.
  The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.
  Mr. REID addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Nevada.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, what is the matter before this body?


                           Amendment No. 410

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The pending question is amendment No. 410, 
offered by the Senator from Oklahoma.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, the senior Senator from Oklahoma and I, 
among others, have offered this substitute to S. 219 because we believe 
it is a good solution to the problem of excessive bureaucratic 
regulation.
  Mr. President, yesterday on the Senate floor, I outlined in some 
detail the merits of this substitute amendment. During that period of 
time, the Senator from Oklahoma and I, in a number of exchanges, laid 
the foundation for this legislation. What this is all about is the fact 
that we have too many regulations that, in effect, are given to us--and 
when I say ``us,'' I mean the American public--without the Congress 
having any ability whatsoever to review these regulations.
  In fact, Mr. President, since the Chadha decision, the bureaucrats 
have, in effect, laughed at the Congress. When we were concerned about 
an area in which they were going to promulgate regulations, there was 
not a thing we could do about it because they, in effect, said you 
tried once to put up a legislative framework to review regulations and 
you were told by the Supreme Court you could not do it. So, as a result 
of that, I believe personally that we have had a lot of regulations 
that were unnecessary and, in effect, the bureaucrats have told the 
Congress: We will do what we want.
  It is estimated by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce that complying with 
Federal regulations costs over $500 billion a year. The amount of time 
filling out paperwork for these same procedures is about 7 billion 
hours--not million, but billion hours. Multiply that times the minimum 
wage, and it is a lot of money. But, of course, it is more than minimum 
wage.
  Mr. President, we all know that regulations serve a valid purpose if 
they are implemented properly and they serve the intent, what the 
legislature intended, in allowing them to go forward with the 
regulations. We all know that the workplace is a lot safer today than 
it was 50 years ago. We know that there are people today who are not 
permanently disfigured as a result of the workplace rules that are in 
place.
  We have an airline industry that has the finest safety record of any 
airline industry in the world. We know that we have problems that have 
developed, but, generally speaking, our food regulations allow the 
American public to clearly eat food that is given to them.
  Some good things have happened. Twenty years ago, Mr. President, 80 
percent of the rivers were polluted. Now it is 20 percent. It has just 
reversed. It used to be, 20 years ago, that 20 percent of the rivers 
were unpolluted; now 80 percent of the rivers are not polluted. So we 
have made progress and a lot of this is because of meaningful 
legislation and the meaningful implementation of regulations.
  The problem is, though, that too often Congress passes a law with 
good intentions and sound policy, only to have the agencies turn these 
simple laws into complex regulations that even the regulators do not 
understand. And certainly they go beyond the intent of Congress.
  There are a myriad of stories that each of us have in our offices of 
how businesses, large and small, have to hire large legal departments. 
And if that is not enough, they have to have people who specialize in 
other areas, dealing with regulations that have been promulgated.
  The reality is that Americans have become frustrated and skeptical 
about our Government. One reason, I believe, is because of the myriad 
of regulations over which they feel and we as a Congress feel we have 
no control.
  As an example, a survey was conducted by Times Mirror, which found 
that since 1987, the number of Americans who believe regulations 
affecting business usually do more harm than good has jumped from 55 to 
63 percent. In just these few short years, people feel worse about 
government rather than better. So we should get the message.
  Mr. President, yesterday I pointed out to the Members of this body 
the number of regulations that have been placed in effect just since 
the last election. It is a large number of regulations, about 15 pages 
of very fine print that we have of new regulations.
  I talked, Mr. President, about some of the--for lack of a better 
description--ridiculous things that have happened because of some 
regulations. I talked yesterday about a number of companies. One that I 
talked about was a New York company which was told to get benzene out 
of its water supply. They said, ``Fine,'' because they knew how much 
benzene was in their water that they could remove. The manufacturer 
said, ``But we will make you a better deal. We have other processes in 
this plant where we can get rid of significantly more benzene and it 
will only cost us a fraction more of the $31 million that it would take 
to remove the benzene in the water.''
  The regulators said, ``No deal.'' So, in effect, they spent $31 
million and removed a little bit of benzene, where they could have 
spent a few dollars more and removed a lot of benzene. But, no; that is 
how far into space some of these regulations go.
  The Senator from Oklahoma and I believe that we need to eliminate 
many of the problems. To do that, we need to establish a safety 
mechanism that will enable Congress to look at the regulations that are 
being promulgated and decide whether they achieve the purpose they are 
supposed to achieve in a rational, economic, and less burdensome way. 
The substitute does just that.
  The Senator from Oklahoma and I have worked for many years in a 
bipartisan fashion to do something about Government regulations. We 
approached this in the past. In fact, last year, this body passed 
legislation that we introduced which would have put a dollar number on 
regulations that were promulgated.
  Well, I believe this is a more realistic way to approach the problem. 
The legislation that we introduced last year that passed was knocked 
out in a conference committee. So this is a bipartisan approach to 
accomplishing the goal of making Government more meaningful.
  I would like to just mention briefly, Mr. President, that this bill 
provides a 45-day period where Congress can review new regulations. We 
can enact a joint resolution of disapproval and we would do it on a 
fast-track basis. If the rule would have an economic impact of over 
$100 million, it is deemed to be significant and the regulation will 
not go into effect until the 45-day period has expired. This 45-day 
review will allow Congress to hold Federal agencies accountable before 
the regulations become, in effect, law and start impacting the 
regulated community.
  If the rule does not meet the $100 million threshold, the regulation 
will go into effect but will still be subjected to fast-track review.
  Even significant regulations may go into effect immediately if the 
President, by Executive order, determines that the regulations are 
necessary for health, safety, national security or are necessary for 
the enforcement of criminal law. This is not subject to judicial 
review.
  On issuing a rule, the Federal agency must forward a report to 
Congress containing a copy of the rule.
  Mr. President, this 45-day review process will begin when the rule is 
sent to Congress or is published in the Federal Register, whichever is 
sooner.
  I want to spend just a very brief time talking about the Chadha case. 
In that case, the Supreme Court ruled that Congress had no right to 
veto a regulation unless the President was involved 
[[Page S4698]]  in it; in effect, unless we treated this like regular 
legislation.
  In the Chadha instance, the President had no power to do anything. It 
would just be the Congress would overturn the regulation.
  No matter whether you agree with the reasoning of the Court or not, 
that is the rule of the land, and so to meet the problems that were 
encompassed in that decision, the Senator from Oklahoma and I drafted 
this substitute so that the President would have the right to veto our 
legislative veto.
  If a regulation is submitted to us and we do not like it, both Houses 
turn it down, and the President does not like it, he can veto it. The 
only way we can override his veto is by a two-thirds vote. That is 
fair. I am sorry we have to take it to the President, but that is what 
the Supreme Court said we have to do.
  I think this procedure meets all the constitutional requirements that 
people raised in the past.
  Mr. President, I hope that we can have a strong bipartisan vote on 
this bill. It is time that we worked together on issues. There is not a 
Member of this body, on either side of the aisle, who does not 
recognize, I hope, that we have all kinds of problems with regulations. 
If one goes home to a townhall meeting and there is a businessman 
there, big or small, that is what they complain about more than 
anything else, the paperwork that is burying them. And in the process 
of burying them, people are losing jobs, and it is just not good for 
the American process.
  So I hope that we will respond with a strong vote. This bill sets 
forth procedures that are designed to make sure the process of 
evaluating new regulations does not give an advantage to either the 
President or to the Congress. So I hope that we can move forward on 
this bill at the earliest possible date.
  Mr. GLENN addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Ohio.
  Mr. GLENN. Mr. President, I, too, share the concerns about 
regulations that the Senator from Nevada just talked about. We all have 
heard from our people back home, our constituents, our businessmen, our 
industry, our farmers, our average citizens about the impact of Federal 
regulations. How we deal with that is something else again. That is 
what we are grappling with.
  We have had a couple things happen here. One, over in the House there 
is H.R. 450, which we view as rather draconian. It would stop 
everything from just a few days after the election on for a year, stop 
all rules and regulations from going into effect.
  That is draconian in that it throws out the good with the bad. We 
have a lot of rules. Many of them are final rules and some of them are 
proposed rules that have taken effect since the election last year. 
Many had been in preparation for a year, a year and a half, some of 
them maybe even a little bit longer than that.
  But the rules on health and safety, for instance, would be thrown out 
by that House legislation. They would be held up. In other words, the 
protections against E. coli bacteria, which killed children, or 
cryptosporidium, which killed 100 people in Wisconsin and some 400,000 
ill, were not in effect.
  Airline safety is another one where we have rules and regulations 
that would be held up now even though they should be in there.
  Those are some examples of things that would be held up if we passed 
that House bill. That is not what we are dealing with today. But the 
companion bill in the Senate is S. 219, which was introduced by the 
distinguished Senator from Oklahoma. S. 219 drew a lot of amendments, a 
lot of fire in committee, enough so that when it was finally voted out 
of committee, over our objections on the minority side, this substitute 
for it was brought forward.
  This substitute is a legal veto or legal reconsideration which is a 
long ways from the original S. 219 that it replaces.
  If we then sent this legislative veto to the conference with approval 
today, and it is goes to conference with the original bill in the 
House, H.R. 450, they are poles apart in what they provide; what our 
concern has been all along is that if we go to conference with the 
House and then give in to the House, we could come back with something 
completely unacceptable, and it will not be amendable by our rules for 
consideration of conference reports.
  There is another situation we have. In the Governmental Affairs 
Committee, we already considered and voted out a regulatory reform 
bill, of which a similar legislative veto like this is a part. I have 
wished, if things had been different, that we would be working on that 
bill on the floor instead of on this measure that only encompasses part 
of the regulatory reform problem.
  That is not what we are voting on, though, today. I think most of us 
will probably vote for the legislative veto provision that the Senator 
from Oklahoma has proposed. We do have some perfecting amendments. 
Senator Levin, who is not on the floor at the moment but I understand 
will be here very shortly, has two or three amendments. I have one I 
may propose later this afternoon. I think there are a couple on the 
other side of the aisle to be proposed.
  Regulatory reform is a very, very complex matter. It is not easy. I 
think we should be taking it up in its entirety and not just piecemeal 
with things like this where we drag out parts of it for consideration 
and do not consider the other parts of it.
  Our regulatory reform that we voted out of committee, for instance, 
had provisions in it for risk assessment and cost-benefit analysis for 
rules above $100 million. It had a requirement that all the regulations 
be reviewed at least once every 10 years. If they were not reviewed, 
they would be sunset. We had the 45-day legislative veto in that 
legislation, which this substitute amendment to S. 219 provides, and we 
had judicial review only on the final rule.
  That is a good, tough bill. Let me say that Senator Roth, our 
committee chairman now on the majority side, moved that bill through 
committee, and I think it is an excellent bill.
  We supported that bill. We voted it out of committee 15 to 0, our 
committee membership being a total of 15. All Democrats, all 
Republicans got together. It is a good, tough, workable regulatory 
reform bill. I hope that we could consider it shortly.
  But meanwhile, just a part of that bill--in effect, the 45-day 
legislative veto--is what we are considering now as a substitute for S. 
219. Yesterday we held the floor for several hours talking about our 
concerns and what could happen under the original moratorium bill, 
which is H.R. 450, or the S. 219 as voted on the floor. What we are 
doing today is substituting this legislative veto for S. 219.
  I have gone through this a couple of times because it is a little bit 
complex, and in talking to some of our Members, they do not understand 
exactly where we stand with regard to the legislative veto or the 
moratorium bill.
  So the legislative veto substitute, in effect, replaces the Senate 
version of the moratorium bill, S. 219.
 So the examples I gave on the floor for a couple of hours yesterday 
were things that would occur if we went to conference and came back 
basically with the House bill, which we think goes way, way, way too 
far.

  So I think Senator Levin will be on the floor shortly with some 
amendments to be proposed first, and then I hope we can move along and 
complete action on this bill today.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Abraham). The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. HELMS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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