[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 65 (Friday, April 7, 1995)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E852]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


                               EARTH DAY

                                 ______


                          HON. BRUCE F. VENTO

                              of minnesota

                    in the house of representatives

                         Friday, April 7, 1995
  Mr. VENTO. Mr. Speaker, with a new Republican majority, Americans 
hoped for the best--now we know after 3 months, to expect the worst: 
Republican partisanship serving special interests, not the American 
people and their families.
  As citizens all across America prepare to celebrate the 25th 
anniversary of Earth Day, I am deeply troubled that in our Nation's 
Capital, the 104th Congress is working furiously to destroy almost all 
that has been accomplished in the last three to four decades. This 
``contract'' on America--on America's landscapes, on America's air, on 
America's water, on America's parks and wilderness, will take a 
terrible toll. This environmental assault is an insult to the American 
people.
  That first Earth Day, in 1970, was based upon an enthusiastic 
grassroots movement that fueled a conservation ethic and commitment to 
the environment for future generations. In the 1970's Americans were 
rightly concerned about clean air and clean water and even the 
threatened extinction of our national symbol--the bald eagle. In 
response Congress enacted landmark conservation legislation, which 
today are household words--the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, and 
the Endangered Species Act.
  Our Nation was energized about the progress in addressing these 
concerns and extended this American conservation ethic and vision to 
challenge global problems of rainforest destruction, Antarctica's 
preservation, biodiversity, ozone depletion, and global warming. In 
response the United States has been an architect in the development of 
international conferences and numerous treaties to save the spaceship 
Earth.
  But on this silver anniversary of Earth Day, we face a new 
challenge--a corrosive and embarrassing tarnish to America's Earth Day 
1995. In Washington we have a new congressional majority with ``an 
attitude'': pay back the Democrats, antiregulation, antienvironment and 
anti-Federal Government. A Congress set to set back the environment to 
the thrilling days of yesterday. A new majority inexperienced and 
arrogant and legislating by anecdote based upon misinformation, 
misperceptions and fraud, but hell bent on destroying our Nation's 
public commitment to preservation, conservation, and restoration of 
future generations' natural legacy.
  The intense assault on our national environmental policy and laws 
isn't stated clearly in the ``contract,'' but between the lines and 
veiled from public scrutiny under the guise of ``regulatory reform,'' 
property rights, unfunded mandates--the examples and justification for 
such action is the mosaic of environmental law.
 This new Congress seems intent on walking away from science and 
decades of environmental policy and serving as the complaint tool to 
special interests whose only interest is the bottom line.

  Today, everything is at stake: clean air, safe drinking water, park 
and wilderness protection, forest conservation preservation and 
protection of our endangered species. The pace of the assault is 
purposeful and relentless--a ``hundred days'' of force fed legislation 
without deliberation or accountability.
  Last month the House passed appropriations legislation that savages 
our national forests by mandating sales which would double the timber 
harvest nationwide in just 2 years--without regard to any current 
environmental law and shut off from public comment as required by law. 
Last week, by a single vote, the Senate refused to moderate this 
policy. The same House appropriations bill slashed funding needed to 
implement the Clean Air Act, the Safe Drinking Water Act, and the 
Endangered Species Act.
  This month a House committee is considering legislation to rewrite 
the Clean Water Act. It was reported that this new proposal was 
actually written with the help of lobbyists in closed-door sessions 
without input from the Environmental Protection Agency or other Members 
with environmental concerns. This is not good clean water policy--the 
measure has been aptly dubbed ``the polluters' bill of rights.''
  All this follows House-passed legislation now making its way through 
the Senate, that puts a freeze on all regulations with a special 2-year 
hold on the Endangered Species Act, forces the Federal Government to 
pay regulatory compensation to property owners impacted by 
environmental laws and requires agencies that promulgate rules to do 
elaborate analysis before issuance subjecting all to court challenge--
simply a formula to paralyze the Federal Government.
  Laws like the Endangered Species Act serve as the ``canary in the 
coal mine.'' Rather than denying the problem or blaming the messenger, 
Congress should be solving the problem-stop rationalizing excuses and 
promoting paid critics who justify reneging on the laws. We should 
become engaged in the tough job of problem solving and changing our 
Nation's behavior, to live in balance with the limitations of the 
natural environment.
  Regulations are the wheels which carry the laws into effect. They are 
based upon the perception, knowledge, and views of the people we 
represent. Frustration in America has grown. In the easy politics that 
bemoans government and redtape and seeks instant gratification, the 
environmental laws have become the stumbling block, the symbol that 
complicates life and limits behavior. The Federal Government leads such 
policy because the problems don't know political lines. But it is a 
collaborative role--environmental policy cannot be taken for granted, 
cannot be permitted to be politically expedient. Rather, environmental
 policy is a special trust. Its application should work with States--
but especially and most importantly, with citizens.
  The American citizen during the next 3 weeks, while Members are in 
their Districts, can help stop this assault. Challenge your policymaker 
to see the light--or feel the heat. They need to be forcefully reminded 
that environmental policies and laws now brutally attacked were not 
forged through partisan warfare. They are not the work of Democrats or 
Republicans alone--rather they are uniquely derived from years of 
deliberation, of listening and responding to the core conservation 
values and ethics of the American people.
  These policies are based on the wisdom of Americans who by 
experience, education, and ethics understood that there are some areas 
of this vast Nation that shouldn't be despoiled. They are based on the 
right of all Americans to breathe clean air and drink clean water. They 
are based on a commitment to the future that we all share--to hand down 
to the next generation a healthy planet. These views are basic to the 
definition of us as a people and culture.
  Americans will not turn over our natural legacy to those who would 
destroy it. We must educate those in office with on-the-job training or 
by removal from office if they are incorrigible.
  This vast and beautiful planet is like the design of a rare and 
complex tapestry. The weaving is made valuable not by any one thread 
but by the way that hundreds of strands are arranged. Each section is 
connected to the next in innumerable ways, as each thread in our eyes 
is connected to the next in innumerable ways to make an impression--a 
mosaic.
  Understandably, difficult environmental policy questions follow from 
this example. As policymakers our task is to use this ecologically 
sensitive and irreplaceable resource, without arbitrarily cutting it to 
pieces and destroying this biosphere forever.
  This involves understanding the impact of activities, measuring of 
the biodiversity, and the relationship of the physical and natural 
environment, which are all part of a larger cycle. A thread that is 
pulled one place changes the rest of the picture. Every action has a 
consequence. For these reasons and many more, the Federal Government 
enacted environmental laws and policies to help us be reasonable 
stewards of our land and resources. The intent was to guide us and 
limit our individual actions--a policy path that would optimize our 
utilization today while maintaining and enhancing the prospects for 
tomorrow's generations.
  Citizens after all are a significant and much-needed force in these 
policy debates. Recruit more people, continue to make yourselves heard. 
Have faith. Americans haven't stopped caring, they have assumed that 
these issues were once achieved and are cemented in place. Americans--
make yourselves heard--if the people lead, the Members of Congress will 
follow.


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