[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 118 (Thursday, July 20, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S10400-S10401]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                  COMPREHENSIVE REGULATORY REFORM ACT

  The Senate continued with the consideration of the bill.
  Mr. DOLE addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader is recognized.
  Mr. DOLE. Mr. President, I want to thank my Republican colleagues and 
four of our colleagues on the other side who voted for regulatory 
reform and congratulate those who stuck together to bury it. It seems 
to me they have been successful.
  I will just say, we thought we made a good effort. There is always 
more and more and more, and maybe this is all a way to keep the bill 
from going to the White House where the President indicates he would 
veto it.
  We have had months of negotiation, hundreds of changes, 10 days of 
consideration, and then we are told, ``Oh, we just need more time.'' 
Either we are for regulatory reform or we are not. We cannot satisfy 
everybody in the Chamber, and those people made their choices.
  After the vote, people said, ``Oh, we just need to negotiate more. 
Let's just have some more negotiations.''
  The truth is that our bill largely tracks President Clinton's 
Executive order but has one important difference. This bill will ensure 
the requirements are actually carried out.
  I particularly want to commend Senator Johnston for his work, and his 
tireless efforts. He came to me--it seems like months ago now, but I 
guess it was just weeks--and he said, ``We are not going to get 
anywhere unless we make some changes in this bill.'' So we set about to 
make changes. Today, all across America--I do not have a copy--we are 
being flooded with statements by the Democratic National Committee on 
this vote about how Senator Domenici is for dirty meat, and Senator 
Warner and somebody else is for dirty meat. They mixed it up a little, 
depending on where you live. It has a little cartoon there with our 
pictures in the middle. Very nicely done.
  I think that has been the purpose right along--to try to get a 
campaign issue. Forget about the farmers and ranchers in Montana, or 
Kansas, or Virginia, or somewhere else. Forget about the small 
businessmen and women all across America. We have to protect the 
bureaucracy. We cannot have the bureaucracy overworked in Washington, 
DC. That is what we have heard for the last 3 days.
  Not many people in Russell, Kansas, are worried too much about the 
bureaucracy in Washington, DC. They have never seen it, most of them. 
They have felt it in their wallets, and they feel it when they open up 
their little business, and they feel it when they go out of business, 
and they feel it on the farm, and they feel it on the ranch, and they 
feel it all across America. But they cannot have regulatory reform 
because we cannot get the cooperation. Everything in this Senate needs 
60 votes. To get 60 votes, you end up with nothing. I do not believe 
that is what the American people expect us to do.
  We can hold our heads high, those of us who voted for cloture. We can 
look the small businessman in the eye, and we can look the rancher in 
Montana in the eye, or wherever he may live, and say we did our best, 
we tried once, twice, three times. We were told, oh, nobody is delaying 
this bill; we do not want to delay this bill, and we are all for 
regulatory reform--until a vote came.
  Mr. President, I do not know--I think I know what the final outcome 
is. I do not want to cause any anxiety for my friends on the other 
side, but I thank Senator Breaux and Senator Heflin and Senator Nunn 
for their votes, because I know the pressure was great, intense, and 
steady.
  I assume we could have put together a package that would have gotten 
100 votes. It would not have been worth anything, but we could have 
said we all voted for regulatory reform. Particularly, Senator Roth and 
Senator Hatch, and others on this side, have worked so hard to try to 
bring it together. But I think there is a little bit of principle left 
in this argument. We would like to think that we have at least 58 
votes. That is 58 percent of the Senate that would like to have 
regulatory reform. Eighty-eight percent of the American people would 
like to have it. But we cannot get it because we are short 2 percent. 
Two percent of the Senate is denying about 85 or 90 percent of the 
American people regulatory reform.
  That is a right we all have. We have all been through it. Some of us 
have been on the other side. I do not know of any more important bill 
than this one. But I think the dye has been cast. I am willing to 
entertain any legitimate concerns, but no more of these four or five 
pages that say at the end, ``we are not able to accept proceeding with 
any of these individual amendments without addressing the package as a 
whole.'' Then I assume that if this were addressed, there would be 
another one ready. They are endless.
  So I regret that we have failed the American people--again. But there 
will be other opportunities. I, again, thank my colleagues on this side 
of the aisle 

[[Page S10401]]
for being 100 percent for regulatory reform. One hundred percent. You 
cannot get any better than that.
  Mr. DASCHLE addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The minority leader is recognized.
  Mr. DASCHLE. Mr. President, I listened with great care to the 
comments made by the distinguished majority leader. I hope that he will 
not be discouraged. I hope that, given all the progress we have made so 
far, we go right back and make some more. I do not think there is a 
Senator here who would deny that we need regulatory reform. But I also 
think that virtually every Senator who has examined this issue has 
concluded that indeed it was one of the most far-reaching, most complex 
issues we are going to address this year.
  We have all been around this place. We all know that when it comes to 
issues with the magnitude we are talking about now, it is not something 
you pass on a Tuesday afternoon. I can recall having come here several 
years ago and spending more than a month on the Clean Air Act. We spent 
a month. We negotiated and we said we do not know that there is ever 
going to be a chance to make anymore progress. Lo and behold, we stuck 
to it because the leaders on both sides said we had to, and what do you 
know, we did it.
  I remember Senators on the other side last year talking about how we 
really want health care, but it is just not yet exactly what we want, 
so let us keep negotiating. We talked until we never got health care, 
unfortunately. I remember talking about the need for campaign finance 
reform, and vote after vote on cloture, and people on the other side 
said we have to have campaign finance reform, but this is not the bill. 
I do not know what their motivation was in voting against cloture on 
those occasions. I know a lot on that side did not want health care 
reform, and that is a legitimate position. A lot did not want campaign 
finance reform, and that is a legitimate position. But a lot of people 
on this side want regulatory reform. We are continuing to work on this 
bill because we are not in agreement yet.
  I believe that we can reach agreement. I believe that there is a 
legitimate desire on the part of more and more people to try to resolve 
these outstanding differences, to get a bill very soon. I just remind 
all of our colleagues, the bill that was defeated 48 to 52 passed 
unanimously; Republicans and Democrats voted unanimously for the bill 
in the Governmental Affairs Committee. If it was so bad then, why did 
every single Republican vote for it?
  I also remind my colleagues, of the 41 votes cast so far, 27 of them 
have been offered by Senators on the other side. Only 14 amendments 
have been offered on our side. So I do not want to delay this thing. I 
do not want to find anymore reasons to delay final passage. Senators on 
our side are as frustrated as those on the other side. But it is 
through that frustration that we must work to accomplish what I believe 
we all truly want--a good bill, a bill that can bring us an ultimate 
resolution on something that we all recognize we need.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. DOLE. Mr. President, of the 27 amendments on this side, many of 
them were offered to accommodate requests on the other side, to make 
the bill ``better.''
  I do not believe the vote on the Glenn amendment reflected the vote 
that came out of the committee unanimously. As I recall listening to 
the Senator from Delaware, that is not the case. It is a different bill 
entirely. I ask the Senator from Delaware, am I accurate, or have I 
misstated the problem?
  Mr. ROTH. I say to the distinguished majority leader that what we 
voted for in Committee was entirely different from what was voted for 
on the floor in the Glenn substitute. The Glenn substitute was 
toothless. Take, for example, the lookback. The lookback was purely 
discretionary on the part of the agency head. In our legislation, every 
rule had to be reviewed in 10 years, or it expired, terminated.
  So it is totally false to say that it was the same legislation.
  Mr. GLENN. Mr. President, what I just heard here just does not happen 
to be the truth. It does not square with the facts.
  What we brought to the floor was basically the Roth-Glenn bill. It is 
the same bill with three major changes--A strict definition of a major 
rule, $100 million a year, no automatic sunset review, and simplified 
risk assessment, which was what the National Academy of Science 
recommended. Outside of those three things, I think--and I can be 
corrected--I believe it is largely word for word the same thing we 
brought out of committee unanimously.
  Only those three major items were added to the bill that came out of 
committee. If anyone can show me different, get up on this floor and 
say that. To say that I misstated and that I misrepresented the Glenn-
Chafee bill is just flat not right. It is basically word for word the 
same as the Roth-Glenn bill that came out of committee, with those 
three changes I just mentioned.
  I want to correct that so we make sure all Members know that.
  Mr. ROTH. Mr. President, I do not want to extend the debate on this, 
but I do want to make it perfectly clear that there were significant 
differences between the Glenn substitute offered on this floor and what 
passed out of the Governmental Affairs Committee.
  It is a fact that, as far as cost-benefit analysis was concerned, the 
use of it was totally discretionary in the bill proposed by Senator 
Glenn; whereas, in the Governmental Affairs Committee, it had to be 
reviewed and included as part of the review.
  When it came to the lookback of rules, it was discretionary, totally 
discretionary on the part of the agency head as to whether there would 
be any rule on the schedule. Whereas, in contrast, in the Governmental 
Affairs Committee bill, every rule had to be reviewed in a 10-year 
period or it was terminated.
  So, while a lot of the language was the same, the fact was the thrust 
was different, because in one case there were requirements that cost-
benefit be done, and the other there was not.
  Mr. GLENN. Mr. President, we will make an analysis and enter in the 
Record tomorrow what the exact changes were. I do not believe that is a 
fair representation of the bill. We will make the entry in the Record 
tomorrow after we have had a chance to analyze both bills, side by 
side.

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