[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 113 (Thursday, July 13, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S9829-S9830]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                REGULATORY REFORM COST-BENEFIT LANGUAGE

  Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, the Senator from Tennessee at the 
conclusion of his remarks started talking about something that is very, 
very significant and has been left out of this debate. I have a few 
comments to make, and then I wish to follow up on that. And that is the 
budget ramifications of an overregulated society.
  I am an original cosponsor of the Dole bill. However, I will say that 
I do not believe the bill goes far enough. I would like to have it 
stronger. It does not include a supermandate which would make the new 
cost-benefit provisions apply to all regulations. It specifically 
exempts those statutes which set a lesser standard in the statutory 
language. These exempted laws include many of the environmental 
statutes such as the Clean Air Act, which really does need a strong 
cost-benefit provision.
  Half of all regulations issued are from the EPA, and half of all the 
EPA regulations are under the Clean Air Act. So that is why that act is 
so significant. We need to protect human health, but the EPA has gone 
way too far.
  At the time of the Clean Air Act, the head of the Department of 
Health and Human Services told the Office of Management and Budget that 
they had no issues with the air bill. The only health benefit, 
according to HHS, was removing benzene from gas. This is the head of 
the public health department saying the bill was not protecting health.
  When EPA determines risk in their risk assessments they use something 
called the maximum exposed individual, which is a person who spends 
every day of their life, 24 hours a day for 70 years, underneath the 
factory vent breathing the discharges. And I do not know anybody like 
that. That is totally unreasonable.
  They also use the maximum tolerated dose for rats, which is when they 
stuff so much of the substance that they are studying into a rat the 
rat is going to die from stress.
  For part of the Clean Air Act, they also observed the effects of 
emissions on asthma patients. But what they did was take away their 
medicine and force them to jog in 110 degrees heat, and nobody does 
this. This again is not realistic. The only realism you will find is in 
the minds of bureaucrats who do not live in the real world.
  We can get 90 percent of the benefits from 10 percent of the costs. 
What EPA is trying to do is reach that final 10 percent of the benefits 
which incurs the rest of the costs, which is 90 percent. You do not 
need to be a rocket scientist to understand that 10 percent of the 
benefits is not worth 90 percent of the costs.
  We should require that benefits outweigh or exceed the costs of 
regulation. When you reach that 90 percent benefit level, you reach a 
point of diminishing returns. We are paying for much more than we are 
getting. Businesses do not operate this way, at least they do not 
operate this way very long, and neither do consumers. The Government 
definitely should not either. For an incremental benefit of 1 percent, 
we should only have to pay an incremental cost of 1 percent or less. 
Nowhere else but in the Federal Government do people spend $1 million 
to get $100 worth of benefit, and we must end this practice.
  The Clean Air Act refinery MACT rule is a perfect example. As 
proposed, the rule would cost approximately $10 million and only save 
less than one-half of one life.
  The cost-benefit language in the Dole bill is good but not good 
enough. And it is a shame it does not apply to all existing statutes. 
As a Member of the Environment and Public Works Committee, I will 
strive to place good cost-benefit language in all future 
reauthorizations, yet I must point out my disappointment with the cost-
benefit language in this bill. Perhaps we can work together and 
strengthen it later. And, 

[[Page S 9830]]
of course, it is the only dog in this hunt at this time.
  Let me suggest something. Yesterday, I ran out of time when I was 
talking about the Regulatory Reform Act, and there are a couple of 
examples that I wanted to use. I had used some examples from around the 
country, but I did not use the local examples.
  Once before, when we were talking about Superfund abuse, which we are 
dealing with here also, I told the story of a very close personal 
friend of mine in Tulsa, OK. His name is Jimmy Dunn. His family has 
Mill Creek Lumber Co. It is the third generation to run this lumber 
company--highly competitive. It is in an environment in which many of 
them do not exist; they are not able to survive.
  He called me up. At that time, I was a Member of the House. He said, 
``Congressman Inhofe, the EPA has just put me out of business.'' I 
said, ``What did you do wrong?'' And Jimmy Dunn said, ``I don't think I 
did anything wrong, but for the last 10 years we have been using the 
same contractor to sell our used crankcase oil.'' And that contractor 
was licensed by the Federal Government; he was licensed by the State 
Government; he was licensed by Tulsa County, and yet they traced some 
of the crankcase oil from this contractor to the Double Eagle Superfund 
site.
  He read the letter he received from the administrator of the EPA, the 
last paragraph of which said we are going to impose $25,000-a-day fines 
on you and possible criminal sanctions.
  Now, we were able to stop that, but for every one that we find out 
about and are able to help, there are thousands that we do not find out 
about.
  I had a visitor in my office yesterday who is the administrator of 
the endangered species here and a very nice lady, and we visited about 
it. She said, ``Well, I can count on both hands the number of 
prosecutions we have had. It is fictitious to say that we are being 
abusive in the Endangered Species Act.'' I said, ``You miss the point 
altogether.'' For each one that is ultimately a conviction or a 
prosecution, you have 100,000 of them out there that are threats, that 
are threatening those people who are working hard, making money to pay 
taxes for all this fun that we are having up here.
  I have a guy that I met 4 days before Christmas. His name is Keith 
Carter. Keith Carter lives in a little town in Oklahoma--Skiatook, OK--
just north of Tulsa, OK. It is a very small community. Keith Carter 
developed a spray that he puts on horses. I do not know what it does, 
but apparently there is a market for it. Keith Carter called me 4 days 
before Christmas and Keith Carter said, ``Congressman, EPA has just put 
me out of business and I have to fire my only four employees 4 days 
before Christmas.''
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator's time has expired.
  Mr. INHOFE. I ask unanimous consent for 2 additional minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. INHOFE. I thank the Chair. I do want to finish this story.
  What had happened in the case of Keith Carter is that Keith Carter 
had moved his location from his basement up the street three houses for 
a larger place. He told the EPA regional office in Texas about it, but 
he did not tell the office in Washington, and so they took away his 
number. So we got his number back. It took 3 weeks to do it. Finally, 
we got his number back.
  He called me back. He said, ``Congressman, I have another problem; 
now I can't use my inventory, 25,000 dollars' worth of silkscreen 
bottles, because they have the old number on them.''
 Well, this is the type of harassment that has taken place.

  Lastly, since the Senator from Tennessee brought this up, there is a 
brilliant guy, a Dr. Bruce Yandle from Clemson University, that made a 
discovery that everyone should focus on at this time. We are all 
concerned about deficits. What he discovered was--and he skewed this 
draft out for us--that there is a direct relationship between the 
number of pages in the Federal Register, which indicates the number of 
regulations, and the deficit. These yellow bars down here signify and 
represent the deficits during these years starting all the way back in 
1950 going up to the current year. And if you look at this, it follows 
exactly along the line of the pages in the Federal Register. So, I 
would say to those individuals, if you are looking for another excuse, 
if you do not believe that we have an obtrusive, abusive Government, 
then look at it from a fiscal standpoint. If you really want to balance 
the budget, to eliminate the deficit, there is no single greater thing 
we can do than stop the excessive regulations in our society. And this 
is our opportunity to do it.
  Thank you, Mr. President.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Kansas is recognized under 
the previous order to speak for up to 10 minutes.
  Mrs. KASSEBAUM. I thank the Chair.
  (The remarks of Mrs. Kassebaum and Mr. Kennedy pertaining to the 
introduction of S. 1028 are located in today's Record under 
``Statements on Introduced Bills and Joint Resolutions.'')
  Mr. DORGAN addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the Senator from 
North Dakota is recognized to speak for up to 15 minutes.

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