[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 64 (Thursday, April 6, 1995)]
[House]
[Pages H4394-H4396]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


REPORT ON ENVIRONMENTAL QUALITY AND NATURAL RESOURCES--MESSAGE FROM THE 
                     PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES

  The SPEAKER pro tempore laid before the House the following message 
from the President of the United States; which was read and, together 
with the accompanying papers, referred to the Committee on Resources:

To the Congress of the United States:
  The United States has always been blessed with an abundance of 
natural resources. Together with the ingenuity and determination of the 
American people, these resources have formed the basis of our 
prosperity. They have given us the opportunity to feed our people, 
power and industry, create our medicines, and defend our borders--and 
we have a responsibility to be good stewards of our heritage. In recent 
decades, however, rapid technological advances and population growth 
have greatly enhanced our ability to have an impact on our 
surroundings--and we do not always pause to contemplate the 
consequences of our actions. Far too often, our short-sighted decisions 
cause the greatest harm to the very people who are least able to 
influence them--future generations.
  We have a moral obligation to represent the interests of those who 
have no voice in today's decisions--our children and grandchildren. We 
have a responsibility to see that they inherit a 
[[Page H4395]] productive and livable world that allows their families 
to enjoy the same or greater opportunities than we ourselves have 
enjoyed. Those of us who still believe in the American Dream will 
settle for no less. Those who say that we cannot afford both a strong 
economy and a healthy environment are ignoring the fact that the two 
are inextricably linked. Our economy will not remain strong for long if 
we continue to consume renewable resources faster than they can be 
replenished, or nonrenewable resources faster than we can develop 
substitutes; America's fishing and timber-dependent communities will 
not survive for long if we destroy our fisheries and our forests. 
Whether the subject is deficit spending or the stewardship of our 
fisheries, the issue is the same: we should not pursue a strategy of 
short-term gain that will harm future generations.
  Senators Henry Jackson and Ed Muskie, and Congressman John Dingell 
understood this back in 1969 when they joined together to work for 
passage of the National Environmental Policy Act. At its heart, the 
National Environmental Policy Act is about our relationship with the 
natural world, and about our relationship with future generations. For 
the first time, the National Environmental Policy Act made explicit the 
widely-held public sentiment that we should live in harmony with nature 
and make decisions that account for future generations as well as for 
today. It declared that the Federal Government should work in concert 
with State and local governments and the citizens of this great Nation 
``to create and maintain conditions under which man and nature can 
exist in productive harmony, and fulfill the social, economic, and 
other requirements of present and future generations of Americans.''
  Over the past 25 years, America has made great progress in protecting 
the environment. The air is cleaner in many places than it was, and we 
no longer have rivers that catch on fire. And yet, this year in 
Milwaukee, more than 100 people died from drinking contaminated water, 
and many of our surface waters are still not fit for fishing and 
swimming. One in four Americans still lives near a toxic dump and 
almost as many breathe air that is unhealthy.
  In order to continue the progress that we have made and adequately 
provide for future generations, my Administration is ushering in a new 
era of common sense reforms. We are bringing together Americans from 
all walks of life to find new solutions to protect our health, improve 
our Nation's stewardship of natural resources, and provide lasting 
economic opportunities for ourselves and for our children. We are 
reinventing environmental programs to make them work better and cost 
less.
  My Administration is ushering in a new era of environmental reforms 
in many ways. Following is a description of a few of these reforms, 
grouped into three clusters: first, stronger and
 smarter health protection programs such as my proposed Superfund 
reforms and EPA's new common sense approach to regulation; second, new 
approaches to resource management, such as our Northwest forest plan, 
that provide better stewardship of our natural resources and sustained 
economic opportunity; and third, the promotion of innovative 
environmental technologies, for healthier air and water as well as 
stronger economic growth now and in the future.

  Stronger and Smarter Health Protection Programs. Throughout my 
Administration, we have been refining Government, striving to make it 
work better and cost less. One of the best places to apply this 
principle in the environmental arena is the Superfund program. For far 
too long, far too many Superfund dollars have been spent on lawyers and 
not nearly enough have been spent on clean-up. I've directed my 
Administration to reform this program by cutting legal costs, 
increasing community involvement, and cleaning up toxic dumps more 
quickly. The reformed Superfund program will be faster, fairer, and 
more efficient--and it will put more land back into productive 
community use.
  Similarly, EPA is embarking on a new strategy to make environmental 
and health regulation work better and cost less. This new common sense 
approach has the potential to revolutionize the way we write 
environmental regulations. First, EPA will not seek to adopt 
environmental standards in a vacuum. Instead, all the affected 
stakeholders--representatives of industry, labor, State governments, 
and the environmental community--will be involved from the beginning. 
Second, we will replace one-size-fits-all regulations with a focus on 
results achieved with flexible means. And at last, we're taking a 
consistent, comprehensive approach. With the old piecemeal approach, 
the water rules were written in isolation of the air rules and the 
waste rules, and too often led to results that merely shuffled and 
shifted pollutants--results that had too little health protection at 
too great a cost. With its new
 commonsense approach, EPA will address the full range of environmental 
and health impacts of a given industry--steel or electronics for 
example--to get cleaner, faster, and cheaper results.

  Better Stewardship of our Natural Resources. Just as representative 
of our new approach to the environment--and just as grounded in common 
sense--is the Administration's commitment to ecosystems management of 
the Nation's natural resources. For decades ecologists have known that 
what we do with one resource affects the others. For instance, the way 
we manage a forest has very real consequences for the quality of the 
rivers that run through the forest, very real consequences for the 
fishermen who depend on that water for their livelihood, and very real 
consequences for the health of the community downstream. But until 
recently, government operations failed to account adequately for such 
interaction. In many cases, several Federal agencies operated 
independently in the same area under different rules. In many cases, no 
one paused to ponder the negative consequences of their actions until 
it was too late.
  Often, these consequences were catastrophic, leading to ecological 
and economic train wrecks such as the collapse of fisheries along the 
coasts, or the conflict over timber cutting in the Pacific Northwest. 
When I convened the Forest Conference earlier this year I saw the 
devastating effects of the Federal Government's lack of foresight and 
failure to provide leadership. Here, perhaps more than anywhere else, 
is a case study in how a failure to anticipate the consequences of our 
actions on the natural environment can be devastating to our livelihood 
in the years ahead. Our forest plan is a balanced and comprehensive 
program to put people back to work and protect ancient forests for 
future generations. It will not solve all of the region's problems but 
it is a strong first step at restoring both the long-term health of the 
region's ecosystem and the region's economy.
  Innovative Environmental Technologies. Environmental and health 
reforms such as EPA's common sense strategy and natural resource 
reforms such as the forest plan provide an opportunity, and an 
obligation, to make good decisions for today that continue to pay off 
for generations to come. In much the same way, sound investments in 
environmental technology can ensure that we leave to future generations 
a productive, livable world. Every innovation in environmental 
technology opens up a new expanse of economic and environmental 
possibilities, making it possible to accomplish goals that have eluded 
us in the past. From the very beginning, I have promoted innovative 
environmental technologies as a top priority. We've launched a series 
of environmental technology initiatives, issued a number of Executive 
orders to help spur the application of these technologies, and taken 
concrete steps to promote their export. Experts say the world market 
for environmental technology is nearly $300 billion today and that it 
may double by the year 2000. Every dollar we invest in environmental 
technology will pay off in a healthier environment worldwide, in 
greater market share for U.S. companies, and in more jobs for American 
workers.
  Innovations in environmental technology can be the bridge that 
carries us from the threat of greater health crises and ecological 
destruction toward the promise of greater economic prosperity and 
social well-being. Innovation by innovation, we can build a world 
transformed by human ingenuity 
[[Page H4396]] and creativity--a world in which economic activity and 
the natural environment support and sustain one another.
  This is the vision that Jackson, Muskie, and Dingell articulated more 
than two decades ago when they wrote in the National Environmental 
Policy Act that we should strive to live in productive harmony with 
nature and seek to fulfill the social and economic needs of future 
generations. We share a common responsibility to see beyond the urgent 
pressures of today and think of the future. We share a common 
responsibility to speak for our children, so that they inherit a world 
filled with the same opportunity that we had. This is the vision for 
which we work today and the guiding principle behind my 
Administration's environmental policies.
                                                  William J. Clinton.  
  The White House, April 6, 1995.
  

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