[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 158 (Thursday, October 12, 1995)]
[House]
[Pages H9923-H9953]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




           OMNIBUS CIVILIAN SCIENCE AUTHORIZATION ACT OF 1995

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to House Resolution 234 and rule 
XXIII, the Chair declares the House in the Committee of the Whole House 
on the State of the Union for the further consideration of the bill, 
H.R. 2405.

                              {time}  1230


                     in the committee of the whole

  Accordingly the House resolved itself into the Committee of the Whole 
House on the State of the Union for the further consideration of the 
bill (H.R. 2405) to authorize appropriations for fiscal years 1996 and 
1997 for civilian science activities of the Federal Government, and for 
other purposes, with Mr. Kingston in the chair.
  The Clerk read the title of the bill.
  The CHAIRMAN. When in the Committee of the Whole House on Wednesday, 
October 11, 1995, title IV was open for amendment at any point.
  Are there any amendments to title IV?


                    amendment offered by mr. walker

  Mr. WALKER. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.
  The Clerk read as follows:

       Amendment offered by Mr. Walker.
       Page 109, line 10, strike ``$8,757,000'' and insert in lieu 
     thereof ``$86,757,000''.
       Page 116, lines 19 and 20, strike ``Committee on Science'' 
     and insert in lieu thereof ``Committee on Science and the 
     Committee on Resources''.
       Page 119, lines 9 through 23, strike paragraphs (1) and (2) 
     and insert in lieu thereof the following:
       (1) Service contracts.--Notwithstanding any other provision 
     of law and subject to the availability of appropriations, the 
     Secretary shall enter into contracts, including multiyear 
     contracts, subject to paragraph (3), for the use of vessels 
     to conduct oceanographic research and fisheries research, 
     monitoring, enforcement, and management, and to acquire other 
     data necessary to carry out the missions of the National 
     Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The Secretary shall 
     enter into these contracts unless--
       (A) the cost of the contract is more than the cost 
     (including the cost of vessel operation, maintenance, and all 
     personnel) to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric 
     Administration of obtaining those services on vessels of the 
     National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration;
       (B) the contract is for more than 7 years; or
       (C) the data is acquired through a vessel agreement 
     pursuant to paragraph (4).
       (2) Vessels.--The Secretary may not enter into any contract 
     for the construction, lease-purchase, upgrade, or service 
     life extension of any vessel.
       (3) Multiyear contracts.--
       (A) In general.--Subject to subparagraphs (B) and (C), and 
     notwithstanding section 1341 of title 31, United States Code, 
     and section 11 of title 41, United States Code, the Secretary 
     may acquire data under multiyear contracts.
       (B) Required findings.--The Secretary may not enter into a 
     contract pursuant to this paragraph unless the Secretary 
     finds with respect to that contract that there is a 
     reasonable expectation that throughout the contemplated 
     contract period the Secretary will request from Congress 
     funding for the contract at the level required to avoid 
     contract termination.
       (C) Required provisions.--The Secretary may not enter into 
     a contract pursuant to this paragraph unless the contract 
     includes--
       (i) a provision under which the obligation of the United 
     States to make payments under the contract for any fiscal 
     year is subject to the availability of appropriations 
     provided in advance for those payments;
       (ii) a provision that specifies the term of effectiveness 
     of the contract; and
       (iii) appropriate provisions under which, in case of any 
     termination of the contract before the end of the term 
     specified pursuant to clause (ii), the United States shall 
     only be liable for the lesser of--

       (I) an amount specified in the contract for such a 
     termination; or
       (II) amounts that were appropriated before the date of the 
     termination for the performance of the contract or for 
     procurement of the type of acquisition covered by the 
     contract and are unobligated on the date of the termination.

       (4) Vessel agreements.--The Secretary shall use excess 
     capacity of University National Oceanographic Laboratory 
     System 

[[Page H 9924]]
     vessels where appropriate and may enter into memoranda of agreement 
     with the operators of these vessels to carry out this 
     requirement.
       Page 119, line 24, strike ``(3)'' and insert in lieu 
     thereof ``(5)''.
       Page 120, lines 3 and 4, strike ``, including activities 
     described in paragraphs (1) and (2),''.
       Page 121, line 3, insert ``(as of September 30, 1996)'' 
     after ``Observation Buoys''.
       Page 121, lines 6 through 8, strike paragraph (7).
       Page 121, lines 9, 11, 12, 13, and 15, redesignate 
     paragraphs (8), (9), (10), (11), and (12) as paragraphs (7), 
     (8), (9), (10), and (11), respectively.
       Page 121, lines 16 through 18, strike paragraphs (13) and 
     (14).
       Page 121, lines 19, 20, 22, and 24, and page 122, line 1, 
     redesignate paragraphs (15), (16), (17), (18), and (19) as 
     paragraphs (12), (13), (14), (15), and (16), respectively.
       Page 123, line 19, through page 124, line 6, amend section 
     443 to read as follows:

     SEC. 443. TERMINATION OF THE CORPS OF COMMISSIONED OFFICERS.

       (a) Number of Officers.--Notwithstanding section 8 of the 
     Act of June 3, 1948 (33 U.S.C. 853g), the total number of 
     commissioned officers on the active list of the National 
     Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration shall not exceed 358 
     for fiscal year 1996. No commissioned officers are authorized 
     for any fiscal year after fiscal year 1996.
       (b) Severance Pay.--Commissioned officers may be separated 
     from the active list of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric 
     Administration. In lieu of separation pay, officers so 
     separated shall be eligible only for severance pay in 
     accordance with the terms and conditions of section 5595 of 
     title 5, United States Code, and only to the extent provided 
     in advance in appropriations Acts.
       (c) Transfer.--(1) Subject to the approval of the Secretary 
     of Defense and under terms and conditions specified by the 
     Secretary, commissioned officers subject to subsection (a) 
     may transfer to the armed services under section 716 of title 
     10, United States Code.
       (2) Subject to the approval of the Secretary of 
     Transportation and under terms and conditions specified by 
     the Secretary, commissioned officers subject to subsection 
     (a) may transfer to the United States Coast Guard under 
     section 716 of title 10, United States Code.
       (3) Subject to the approval of the Administrator of the 
     National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and under 
     terms and conditions specified by that Administrator, 
     commissioned officers subject to subsection (a) may be 
     employed by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric 
     Administration as members of the civil service.
       (d) Repeals.--(1) The following provisions of law are 
     repealed:
       (A) The Coast and Geodetic Survey Commissioned Officers' 
     Act of 1948 (33 U.S.C. 853a-853o, 853p-853u).
       (B) The Act of February 16, 1929 (Chapter 221, section 5; 
     45 Stat. 1187; 33 U.S.C. 852a).
       (C) The Act of January 19, 1942 (Chapter 6; 56 Stat. 6).
       (D) Section 9 of Public Law 87-649 (76 Stat. 495).
       (E) The Act of May 22, 1917 (Chapter 20, section 16; 40 
     Stat. 87; 33 U.S.C. 854 et seq.).
       (F) The Act of December 3, 1942 (Chapter 670; 56 Stat. 
     1038.
       (G) Sections 1 through 5 of Public Law 91-621 (84 Stat. 
     1863; 33 U.S.C. 857-1 et seq.).
       (H) The Act of August 10, 1956 (Chapter 1041, section 3; 
     70A Stat. 619; 33 U.S.C. 857a).
       (I) The Act of May 18, 1920 (Chapter 190, section 11; 41 
     Stat. 603; 33 U.S.C. 864).
       (J) The Act of July 22, 1947 (Chapter 286; 61 Stat. 400; 33 
     U.S.C. 873, 874).
       (K) The Act of August 3, 1956 (Chapter 932; 70 Stat. 988; 
     33 U.S.C. 875, 876).
       (L) All other Acts inconsistent with this subsection.

     Following the repeal of provisions under this paragraph, all 
     retirement benefits for the NOAA Corps which are in existence 
     on September 30, 1996, shall continue to apply to eligible 
     NOAA Corps officers and retirees.
       (2) The effective date of the repeals under paragraph (1) 
     shall be October 1, 1996.
       (e) Abolition.--The Office of the National Oceanic and 
     Atmospheric Administration Corps of Operations and the 
     Commissioned Personnel Center are abolished effective 
     September 30, 1996.
       Page 4, amend the item in the table of contents relating to 
     section 443 to read as follows:

Sec. 443. Termination of the corps of commissioned officers.

       Page 126, line 14, through page 127, line 9, strike section 
     453.
       Page 127, line 10, and page 128, lines 1 and 11, 
     redesignate sections 454, 455, and 456 as sections 453, 454, 
     and 455, respectively.
       Page 129, after line 9, insert the following new sections:

     SEC. 456. CONVEYANCE OF NATIONAL MARINE FISHERIES SERVICE 
                   LABORATORY AT GLOUCESTER, MASSACHUSETTS.

       (a) Conveyance Required.--
       (1) In general.--The Secretary shall convey to the 
     Commonwealth of Massachusetts all right, title, and interest 
     of the United States in and to the property comprising the 
     National Marine Fisheries Service laboratory located on 
     Emerson Avenue in Gloucester, Massachusetts.
       (2) Terms.--A conveyance of property under paragraph (1) 
     shall be made--
       (A) without payment of consideration; and
       (B) subject to the terms and conditions specified under 
     subsections (b) and (c).
       (b) Conditions for Transfer.--
       (1) In general.--As a condition of any conveyance of 
     property under this section, the Commonwealth of 
     Massachusetts shall assume full responsibility for 
     maintenance of the property for as long as the Commonwealth 
     retains the right and title to that property.
       (2) Continued use of property by nmfs.--The Secretary may 
     enter into a memorandum of understanding with the 
     Commonwealth of Massachusetts under which the National Marine 
     Fisheries Service is authorized to occupy existing laboratory 
     space on the property conveyed under this section, if--
       (A) the term of the memorandum of understanding is for a 
     period of not longer than 5 years beginning on the date of 
     enactment of this Act; and
       (B) the square footage of the space to be occupied by the 
     National Marine Fisheries Service does not conflict with the 
     needs of, and is agreeable to, the Commonwealth of 
     Massachusetts.
       (c) Reversionary Interest.--All right, title, and interest 
     in and to all property conveyed under this section shall 
     revert to the United States on the date on which the 
     Commonwealth of Massachusetts uses any of the property for 
     any purpose other than the Commonwealth of Massachusetts 
     Division of Marine Fisheries resource management program.

     SEC. 457. CLEANUP OF NOAA FACILITIES.

       (a) In General.--The Secretary shall cleanup landfills, 
     wastes, dumps, debris, storage tanks, property, hazardous or 
     unsafe conditions, and contaminants (including, without 
     limitation, petroleum products and their derivatives), on 
     lands which the National Oceanic and Atmospheric 
     Administration and its predecessor agencies abandoned, 
     quitclaimed, or otherwise transferred, or is obligated to 
     transfer, to local entities or landowners on the Pribilof 
     Islands, Alaska, pursuant to the Fur Seal Act of 1966 (16 
     U.S.C. 1161 et seq.).
       (b) Specific Requirements.--To carry out subsection (a), 
     the Secretary shall--
       (1) by December 31, 1995, execute agreements with the State 
     of Alaska, affected local entities and landowners, and in the 
     case of new landfills, the Indian Health Service;
       (2) manage the cleanup required in subsection (a) with the 
     minimum possible Federal overhead, delay, and duplication of 
     State and local planning and design work;
       (3) receive approval of the State of Alaska for the cleanup 
     plans prepared as a result of the agreements described in 
     subsection (b)(1) where said cleanup is required by State 
     law;
       (4) receive approval of affected local entities and 
     landowners before conducting cleanup work on their property, 
     if such approval is not obtained by agreement in accordance 
     with paragraph (5);
       (5) to the maximum extent possible, and notwithstanding any 
     other law, carry out duties under this Act and under other 
     Federal laws on the Pribilof Islands through contracts, 
     grants, or cooperative agreements, including agreements on a 
     reimbursable basis, with the local entities and landowners 
     and with residents of the Pribilof Islands; and
       (6) not require financial contributions by or from local 
     entities or landowners.
       (c) Contents of Agreements.--The agreements described in 
     subsection (b)(1) shall--
       (1) require the Secretary to clean up all sites referred to 
     in subsection (a), as soon as possible;
       (2) specify the Secretary's responsibility to--
       (A) contribute to the planning and construction of new or 
     redeveloped landfills;
       (B) provide technical and financial assistance and training 
     to the local entities and landowners and residents of the 
     Pribilof Islands; and
       (C) to the greatest extent possible, secure their 
     participation in carrying out this section.
       (d) Definitions.--For purposes of this section--
       (1) the term ``cleanup'' means, without limitation, 
     planning and execution of remediation actions for lands 
     described in subsection (a) and redevelopment of landfills to 
     meet regulatory requirements; and
       (2) the term ``local entities and landowners'' means those 
     local political subdivisions and entities that have received 
     or are eligible to receive lands under the Fur Seal Act of 
     1966 (16 U.S.C. 1161 et seq.).
       Page 4, strike the items in the table of contents relating 
     to sections 453 through 456 and insert in lieu thereof the 
     following:

Sec. 453. Eligibility for awards.
Sec. 454. Prohibition of lobbying activities.
Sec. 455. Report on laboratories.
Sec. 456. Conveyance of National Marine Fisheries Service laboratory at 
              Gloucester, Massachusetts.
Sec. 457. Cleanup of NOAA facilities.

  Mr. WALKER (during the reading). Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous 
consent that the amendment be considered as read and printed in the 
Record.
  The CHAIRMAN. Is there objection to the request of the gentleman from 
Pennsylvania?
  There was no objection.
  Mr. WALKER. Mr. Chairman, I offer this amendment on behalf of the 
managers of the bill at the request of the Committee on Resources to 
make the following changes in the bill.

[[Page H 9925]]

  What it does is it modifies the NOAA fleet modernization termination 
language to allow NOAA to use their existing vessels if the Secretary 
of Commerce determines that using the existing vessels is the most 
cost-effective option. The language precludes NOAA from engaging in 
significant repairs to extend the life or upgrade the existing vessels.
  It modifies the NOAA Corps elimination language to more closely 
parallel the Committee on Resources's language. The amendment will 
terminate the uniformed NOAA Corps at the end of the fiscal year 1996 
while also providing corps members with the ability to transfer to the 
Coast Guard or to the Department of Defense or to NOAA as civilian 
employees if these agencies determine that their services are required.
  I will give an example of that. I think all of us recognize that one 
of the things that we want to do is keep the hurricane planes flying 
and this will allow NOAA to transfer the pilots of those airplanes to 
the agency itself to fly those planes in the future.
  It makes some modifications to the termination list. Specifically, 
the bill will now be silent on the following issues: The National 
Coastal Research and Development Institute, the Southeast United States 
Caribbean Fisheries Oceanographic Coordinated Investigations Program, 
the Sea Grant Oyster Disease Account, and the termination of the 
Chesapeake Bay buoys, which will be delayed until September 30, 1996.
  The amendment also adds language to transfer a fisheries lab from the 
National Marine Fisheries Service to the State of Massachusetts. This 
language is identical to the language reported by the Committee on 
Resources.
  The amendment also adds language to strengthen the cleanup 
requirements for the Pribilof Islands in Alaska. Once again, this 
language is taken from the resources bill.
  The amendment also makes a technical correction to fix a number of 
numerical errors in the bill, and strikes language that has been 
identified by the Congressional Budget Office as resulting in direct 
spending.
  The CHAIRMAN. The question is on the amendment offered by the 
gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Walker].
  The amendment was agreed to.
  The CHAIRMAN. Are there further amendments to title IV?


                     amendment offered by mr. farr

  Mr. FARR. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.
  The Clerk read as follows:

       Amendment offered by Mr. Farr: At the appropriate place in 
     Title IV insert the following:

     SEC.   . OCEAN APPLICATIONS BRANCH.

       (a) Establishment.--The Secretary of Commerce shall 
     establish and maintain within the Administration a program to 
     be known as the Ocean Applications Branch (in this section 
     referred to as the ``Branch'').
       (b) Purpose.--The purpose of the Branch shall be to make 
     oceanographic and other information developed by the 
     Department of Defense Fleet Numerical Meteorology and 
     Oceanography Center available for private, educational, and 
     government use pursuant to agreement between the Secretary of 
     Defense and the Secretary of Commerce. It shall be the goal 
     of the Secretary of Commerce to support the activities of the 
     Ocean Applications Branch through user fees.
       (c) Limitation on Closure.--The Secretary of Commerce shall 
     not terminate operation of the Branch, before the Branch 
     fully funds its operations through private sources, including 
     user fees, or fiscal year 1996, whichever comes first.

  Mr. FARR (during the reading). Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent 
that the amendment be considered as read and printed in the Record.
  The CHAIRMAN. Is there objection to the request of the gentleman from 
California?
  There was no objection.
  Mr. FARR. Mr. Chairman, I have an amendment here that was adopted 
unanimously in the Committee on Resources and I ask that it be inserted 
into this bill.
  Mr. Chairman, the amendment essentially requires NOAA to keep open 
the Ocean Applications Branch, which is a small office that is moving 
toward privatization to fully develop its own privatized funding. The 
Navy's Fleet Numerical Meteorological and Oceanographic Center in 
Monterey is the leading global marine forecasting center and provides 
all the military's ocean forecasting data.
  The center provides real time oceanographic data from a variety of 
satellite and terrestrial observation posts. This information is used 
to generate up-to-the-minute marine analysis and weather forecasting 
for over 1,000 private and public center users, and I ask that this 
amendment be adopted.
  Mr. Chairman, I think there is no controversy on it. It has been 
unanimously agreed to in the policy committee.
  Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. FARR. I yield to the gentleman from California.
  Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Chairman, I would ask the gentleman, is there 
any authorization that deals with this amendment?
  Mr. FARR. Mr. Chairman, I would reply to the gentleman from 
California, no, as the amendment deleted the authorization. It is in 
the appropriations bill. It is under the ocean analysis. It does not 
increase that.
  Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Chairman, if the gentleman will yield further, 
is there a 1-year exemption on closure in this amendment?
  Mr. FARR. Yes, there is. The bill is only good for a year, and so as 
the last sentence in the amendment states, it says that the Department 
of Commerce shall not terminate it for the fiscal year 1996 or whenever 
the user fees become successful, whichever comes first.
  Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Chairman, we are willing to accept this 
amendment.
  Mr. FARR. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for accepting the 
amendment.
  The CHAIRMAN. The question is on the amendment offered by the 
gentleman from California [Mr. Farr].
  The amendment was agreed to.
  The CHAIRMAN. Are there further amendments to title IV?


                    Amendment Offered by Mr. Saxton

  Mr. SAXTON. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.
  The CHAIRMAN. The Clerk will designate the amendment.
  The text of the amendment is as follows:

       Amendment offered by Mr. Saxton: Page 114, line 19, strike 
     ``(a) Marine Prediction Research.--''.
       Page 115, strike lines 1 through 17.
       Page 122, strike lines 10 through 21 (and redesignate the 
     subsequent subsection accordingly).

  Mr. SAXTON. Mr. Chairman, I understand that the gentleman from 
Pennsylvania [Mr. Walker], chairman of the committee, has agreed to 
accept this amendment. It merely adds the Committee on Resources, which 
shares jurisdiction over the National Oceanic and Atmospheric 
Administration to the distribution list of a report on NOAA Program 
terminations authorized by H.R. 2405. On this list there are several 
programs with resources jurisdictions.
  Mr. BROWN of California. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last 
word. The gentleman from New Jersey made the, what I considered 
unfortunate juxtaposition of the term noncontroversial with the fact 
that the chairman of the Committee on Science agreed with it. Does that 
mean that he thinks that whatever the chairman agrees to is 
noncontroversial?
  Mr. SAXTON. Mr. Chairman, if the gentleman will yield, I apologize 
for that unfortunate use of the word uncontroversial. I certainly did 
not mean to represent the position of the minority in this matter.
  Mr. BROWN of California. I appreciate that consideration. As far as I 
know, it is noncontroversial.
  Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number 
of words. This amendment is acceptable.
  Mr. LONGLEY. Mr. Chairman, I rise in strong support of the Saxton 
amendment to H.R. 2405. I am a member of the Resources Committee, which 
is the principal authorizing committee for sea grant, as well as a 
cosponsor of H.R. 1175, the authorizing legislation for this valuable 
program.
  The National Sea Grant College Program is a network of over 300 
colleges, universities, secondary and elementary schools, and research 
institutions throughout the country focused on the wise use of marine 
resources. Sea grant has proven to be a highly effective Federal-State 
partnership that responds to local as well as national needs.
  Sea grant is the ocean-based corollary to the Land Grant College 
Program. Sea grant uses high quality, competitive, merit-reviewed 
science to address critical marine resources 

[[Page H 9926]]
issues, and disseminates the results of that work through its education 
and marine advisory services.
  More than half the funding for sea grant comes from non-Federal 
sources--every dollar we invest in sea grant is matched by its 
participants. Sea grant is often the seed money for State, local, and 
private funds to come together to help our Nation utilize more fully 
its vast publicly owned marine resources.
  For example, in my home State of Maine, sea grant technology, 
products and data have helped create jobs. In particular, as a result 
of Maine sea grant research on lobster reproduction and growth, the 
following companies were established:
  Dodge Cove Marine Farms, Inc., Newcastle, ME; Great Eastern Mussel 
Farms, Inc., Tenants Harbor, ME; Island Maid, Beals Island, ME; Lobster 
Products, Hancock, ME; Maine Lobster Technology, Lamoine, ME; Mook Sea 
Farms, Damariscotta, ME; Northeast Labs, Winslow, ME.
  In short, Mr. Chairman, sea grant deserves our support. The Resources 
Committee has reported out a comprehensive, responsible sea grant 
reauthorization measure which has the support of the 30 sea grant 
colleges and the Sea Grant Association. Certainly, sea grant deserves 
more than 29 lines in a 152-page bill. Support the Saxton amendment and 
pave the way for H.R. 1175 to come to the floor.
  The CHAIRMAN. The question is on the amendment offered by the 
gentleman from New Jersey [Mr. Saxton].
  The amendment was agreed to.


                    amendment offered by mr. saxton

  Mr. SAXTON. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.
  The CHAIRMAN. The Clerk will designate the amendment.
  The text of the amendment is as follows:

       Amendment offered by Mr. Saxton: On page 122, line 5, 
     strike ``Science'' and insert instead ``Resources and the 
     Committee on Science''.

  Mr. SAXTON. Mr. Chairman, I understand that Chairman Walker has also 
agreed to this amendment. Like the first amendment, this amendment adds 
the Committee on Resources to the distribution list for a report, this 
time on NOAA laboratories. NOAA's labs are used for the support of its 
resource management activities, including fisheries research, and the 
Committee on Resources would benefit very much from this information.
  Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Chairman, the majority side accepts this 
amendment.
  Mr. BROWN of California. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last 
word. Our side has reviewed the amendment and finds no problems with it 
and are glad to accept it.
  The CHAIRMAN. The question is on the amendment offered by the 
gentleman from New Jersey [Mr. Saxton].
  The amendment was agreed to.


                    amendment offered by mr. saxton

  Mr. SAXTON. Mr. Chairman, I offer one additional amendment.
  The CHAIRMAN. The Clerk will designate the amendment.
  The text of the amendment is as follows:

       Amendment offered by Mr. Saxton: On page 128, line 16, 
     strike ``Science'' and insert instead ``Resources and the 
     Committee on Science''.

  Mr. SAXTON. Mr. Chairman, earlier this year Chairman Don Young of the 
Committee on Resources introduced legislation to reauthorize the sea-
grant program. The Committee on Resources is the primary committee of 
jurisdiction for the program and has reported the bill to the House. 
The Committee on Science received a secondary referral on the bill and 
has also reported the measure. The Committee on Resources agreed in 
good faith to let the bill we are now considering come to the floor 
before having worked out a compromise with the Committee on Science on 
the NOAA provisions over which we share jurisdiction. Unfortunately, 
the Committee on Science has refused to negotiate on sea grant.
  Mr. Chairman, as I said, unfortunately the Committee on Science has 
not negotiated on sea grant. This bill includes the Committee on 
Science's version of sea grant, not the version reported by the 
committee with primary jurisdiction. Therefore, I am offering an 
amendment to strike the sea-grant provisions from the bill. This will 
allow H.R. 1175, the bill Chairman Young introduced earlier this year, 
which has been acted on by both committees of jurisdiction and is now 
in a position to come to the floor.
  The national sea-grant college program is a network of over 300 
colleges, universities, secondary, and elementary schools and research 
institutions throughout the country focused on the wise use of marine 
resources. For nearly 30 years, the sea-grant program has played an 
essential role in helping our Nation to utilize more fully its vast 
publicly owned marine coastal and Great Lakes resources which are vital 
to the lives of Americans living in the rapidly growing population 
areas along the coastal areas.
  This bill is modeled after the land-grant college concept. Sea grant 
uses high-quality, competitive merit-reviewed science to address 
critical marine resources issues and dismantles the results of that 
work through its education and advisory service activities. Federal 
funding for sea grant is highly leveraged. Nearly half of the total 
program cost is derived from non-Federal sources.
  H.R. 2405 guts sea grant. H.R. 1175, the bill reported by the Natural 
Resources Committee, which has primary jurisdiction over sea grant, 
does not gut the program. Quite to the contrary, it improves it. H.R. 
1175 makes significant improvements in sea grant by streamlining the 
proposal review process, reducing administrative costs, capping the 
total program costs below services level, and clarifying Federal and 
university roles in the program. H.R. 1175 is also consistent with the 
House-passed Commerce appropriations bill which we might add makes 
appropriations consistent with our bill, H.R. 1175 should be the bill 
that the House considers. If Members believe, as I do, that the long-
term viability of our Nation's marine resources should be maintained 
for future generations, then I urge they will vote for this amendment.


       Perfecting Amendment Offered by Mr. Weldon of Pennsylvania

  Mr. WELDON of Pennsylvania. Mr. Chairman, I offer a perfecting 
amendment.
  The Clerk read as follows:

       Perfecting amendment offered by Mr. Weldon of Pennsylvania: 
     Page 115, line 7, strike ``$34,500,000'' and insert in lieu 
     thereof ``$51,000,000''.
       Page 115, line 12, strike ``$1,500,000'' and insert in lieu 
     thereof ``$2,000,000''.

                              {time}  1245

  Mr. WELDON of Pennsylvania. Mr. Chairman, the amendment I offer today 
is in support of the sea-grant program. As the former ranking member of 
the Oceanography Subcommittee and the Committee on Merchant Marine and 
Fisheries, and now a member of the Committee on Science, I support the 
program in its entirety.
  I am here today to offer an amendment which I understand Chairman 
Walker has agreed to accept, which would in fact raise the 
authorization level up to the amount that is being offered by my friend 
the gentleman from New Jersey [Mr. Saxton]. This removes the dispute in 
terms of the dollar amount, and also I think takes away what is I think 
the most egregious item in the Saxton amendment, which is the 
deauthorization of the whole program.
  If the Saxton amendment were to pass today as a part of our science 
bill, in effect the entire authorization for sea grant would be 
removed. They are telling us that it would be restored at some future 
time. That may or may not happen.
  What I am proposing is to raise the authorization level up to the 
exact same amount that my friend from New Jersey is offering today, 
because I support the program. The chairman has agreed to accept that 
funding level and to continue the program, and even to work with the 
Members and the committee individuals who have other changes they would 
like to make and perhaps would like to see come on a future 
authorization, which I am prepared to also support as the author of 
this amendment.

  The key thing I am concerned about, Mr. Chairman, and all of our 
colleagues should be concerned about here today is if the Saxton 
amendment passes today, the entire program is deauthorized. It is 
removed from the bill and there is in fact no sea-grant program in the 
science legislation. That I think would be a mistake.
  We have the commitment from Chairman Walker to work with us. We have 
the commitment from me, as the author of this perfecting amendment, to 
work with the members of the Committee on Resources on other concerns 

[[Page H 9927]]
in two areas that they feel are important.
  I am committing to work with them publicly and to help them bring an 
authorization bill to the floor to deal with those other concerns. I 
would hope that our colleagues on the other side would support this 
effort, because it also allows us in this bill, where we consider the 
issue in the Committee on Science, to allow this program to be kept 
intact and increase the dollar amount.
  I would have offered this amendment to increase the dollar amount in 
committee, but the chairman wanted to keep the dollar amount in line 
with the budgetary number that was given to him, and therefore I did 
not offer that amendment. I am offering it today, and the chairman has 
graciously agreed to work with us.
  I think for the benefit of this program we ought to put aside the 
petty politics of the staff members who cannot agree on a common 
solution, and Members ought to come together and realize that those 
Members who support the program have a chance to keep the program 
intact, raise the dollar amount up and to work with the Committee on 
Resources on the concerns they have raised relative to two other 
specific parts of the program that they feel are not included in this 
bill. I would hope our colleagues would support it.
  Mr. SAXTON. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. WELDON of Pennsylvania. I yield to the gentleman from New Jersey.
  Mr. SAXTON. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding.
  Mr. Chairman, first let me express my appreciation for the movement 
that the gentleman has shown relative to the level of funding. I do 
appreciate that. However, I must also say that it is somewhat 
disingenuous to characterize this amendment as a deauthorizing 
amendment.
  The gentleman knows full well that this program ran out of its 
authorization time at the beginning of this year and, just like the 
Endangered Species Act and many other laws which are currently ongoing 
without an authorization bill, this one is as well. So I think it is a 
mischaracterization of this process to say that this amendment 
deauthorizes the act.
  What we are trying to do is to put in place a policy statement, 
through the process that we have been engaged in on a bipartisan basis 
together, to bring an appropriate bill to the floor. So, once again, I 
appreciate what the gentleman has done but I strongly disagree with his 
position.
  Mr. WELDON of Pennsylvania. Reclaiming my time, I appreciate the 
gentleman's comments, but the facts are that when we take the sea-grant 
program out of this bill, there is no authorization in the science bill 
for the national sea-grant program. What I am attempting to do is to 
raise the dollar amount, as well as to work with the Committee on 
Resources to address those other concerns that they have.
  Let me say, Mr. Chairman, and I think we ought to ask for the ruling 
on this, my understanding is that the Parliamentarian has ruled that 
this program has exact joint oversight by both committees, both the 
Committee on Science and the Committee on Resources. What it appears to 
me is that perhaps staff, not Members but staff is really behind this 
effort to exert who has the control over it.
  That is the worst part of what we are talking about here, because in 
the end we all agree the sea-grant program is a good program. It 
deserves to be funded. The chairman of the Committee on Science is 
accepting the funding level. The chairman of the Committee on Resources 
has agreed to work with us on the changes that the gentleman from New 
Jersey [Mr. Saxton] wants to make. I have agreed to support them and to 
work with them.
  So there really is no issue unless we allow the staff to dominate 
this debate and have their petty feuding over which staff is going to 
control the final product to come before this body. I ask my colleagues 
to support the perfecting amendment.


                         parliamentary inquiry

  Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Chairman, I have a parliamentary inquiry.
  The CHAIRMAN. The gentleman will state it.
  Mr. PALLONE. My understanding was that the gentleman from New Jersey 
[Mr. Saxton] made a motion to strike and now the gentleman from 
Pennsylvania's motion relates to the funding level. Is that in order?
  The CHAIRMAN. There are two amendments pending. One is a perfecting 
amendment offered to the bill by the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. 
Weldon], and then the gentleman from New Jersey [Mr. Saxton] has an 
amendment to strike. The Weldon amendment will be voted on first.
  Mr. PALLONE. If the Weldon amendment passes, if I could inquire, then 
is the Saxton amendment still in order?
  The CHAIRMAN. The committee would still vote on the Saxton amendment 
because it would strike that amended language as well as other language 
of the bill.
  Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word to speak on 
the Saxton amendment.
  Mr. Chairman, again I have no problem with raising the funding level, 
I certainly would support that, but my concern is that this not impact 
the motion to strike offered by the gentleman from New Jersey [Mr. 
Saxton], because I think that that is certainly equally if not more 
important in the context of the underlying bill. My concern is that the 
underlying bill not only provides less funding, which now presumably 
would be corrected with the Weldon amendment, but also has some 
significant changes in the authorization of what the Sea Grant program 
would be all about.
  I much prefer the Committee on Resources version, which is why I 
support the Saxton amendment, because the Committee on Resources 
version essentially is well thought out and continues much of the 
outreach in education that currently exists in the Sea Grant program. 
In other words, Sea Grant is not just research. Sea Grant is not just 
grants that are given to academia or to institutions in order to do 
research. It is very much an outreach program that provides education 
and takes that research and translates it into the field.
  Let me just give an example. I myself am a former Sea Grant 
specialist. I worked as part of what we called the Sea Grant Advisory 
Service. The Sea Grant Advisory Service exists in most if not all the 
coastal States, and basically what they do is, they go out into the 
community and they help marine owners and they help fishermen and they 
help coastal users with various problems that they have on a daily 
basis.
  Sea Grant also is involved in actual educational functions. Some of 
the people actually teach in the universities. There is a lot of public 
outreach, which is the reason the Sea Grant has received so much public 
support. It is a very unique program because the public supports it, 
because they see the direct results of the research and what is done in 
the universities transferred into the field.
  The problem with the Committee on Science version of this bill is it 
essentially eliminates marine advisory services, it essentially 
eliminates the Sea Grant Fellows Program, it eliminates a lot of the 
education and outreach programs that are an integral part of Sea Grant. 
For that reason, I support very much the Saxton amendment because the 
Committee on Resources continues these outreach and educational 
activities. I have no problem with increasing the funding, but that 
does not take away in any way from what the Saxton amendment would 
accomplish.
  Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. PALLONE. I yield to the gentleman from California.
  Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Chairman, I would ask the gentleman, are the 
educational aspects that he was just mentioning not peripheral to the 
central point of Sea Grant? Are we really not supposed to be talking 
about research and development?
  Mr. PALLONE. Reclaiming my time, Mr. Chairman, absolutely not. Let me 
give an example, if I could.
  When I worked at Rutgers University as a Sea Grant extension 
specialist, many of the people that were there actually had 3 
functions. One was what we called research, one was teaching, and one 
was outreach. I was totally outreach. I used to just go out in the 
field with the marine owners, the fishermen, whatever, and work with 
them.
  But basically what would happen, there would be people at Rutgers 
doing research, often that had direct applicability to what was going 
on in the field. 

[[Page H 9928]]
For example, research would be done on how to improve, for example, 
certain types of fish species or prevent pollution, and then we as 
extension specialists would go out and apply that research actually 
with the fishermen. Of course there was also the teaching element, 
those who would teach at the university.
  The unique relationship between those 3 things, extension, research, 
and academia, was very important. I think if we eliminate the 
extension, which is one of the things that is in this bill essentially, 
we are going to really eliminate a lot of the public support as well as 
why Sea Grant makes sense.
  Mr. ROHRABACHER. So the gentleman believes at this time when we are 
trying to find things in the budget and set our priorities, that 
helping these fishermen that he is talking about is really an important 
enough use of the taxpayer's money that we should cut other programs to 
support this?
  Mr. PALLONE. It is not just fishermen Mr. Chairman. It was anyone 
basically who are coastal users, people who lived at the shore, people 
involved in commercial cargo activities. I really do not think we 
should eliminate one aspect of it but perhaps by try to see how money 
can be used, reduced perhaps but used for all 3 functions rather than 
eliminate one aspect.
  Mr. ROHRABACHER. If the gentleman would yield further, it just seems 
to me that what he is describing is a program that is very nice. We 
tried to save the really solid research end of this Sea Grant program. 
We tried to trim from it those things that were not essential. From 
what the gentleman has described today, and I know the people listening 
have to make their own determination, those are really nonessential 
items for the Federal Government to be involved in.
  Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Chairman, I would disagree with the gentleman 
completely. I think maybe that is one difference between the Committee 
on Resources and the Committee on Science. They put the emphasis on the 
research and the academia. We on the other hand are looking at the 
practical application of those skills in the field. I would argue just 
the opposite that those are just as important if not more.
  Mr. WALKER. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word.
  Mr. Chairman, we have been attempting to work out the situation here 
with regard to the bill. Obviously there are some differences in the 
scope of the program between what the Committee on Science action was 
and what the Committee on Resources action was. I think we are agreed 
that we need to have a way of deliberating both areas.
  I happen to agree with the approach that the gentleman from 
Pennsylvania [Mr. Weldon] has taken in raising the money up to the 
appropriation level at this point. That probably is the right course to 
take at the present time. However, the Committee on Resources feels as 
though it has some areas that they would like to address, and so what 
we have agreed to here is to take, as I understand it, the Weldon 
amendment to the Saxton amendment, pass that as a substitute, and that 
would raise the money in the bill. Then at a later date the Committee 
on Resources will bring their own bill affecting this program to the 
floor that would deal with further authorizations, and it is my 
understanding, if the gentleman from New Jersey can speak for the 
chairman of the committee, that we would have an exchange of letters 
asserting that by us allowing you to bring your bill to the floor 
independent of a referral to us, that that would not in any way 
jeopardize any kind of co-equal jurisdiction we have over the program; 
is that correct?
  Mr. SAXTON. If the gentleman will yield, that is essentially correct. 
I think it is important that we make this move today. I once again 
appreciate the fact that you are willing to meet us at the appropriate 
target with regard to funding. I would just point out that during the 
debate under an open rule as I understand it when H.R. 1175 comes to 
the floor, that will give us the opportunity to debate the issues that 
the gentleman from New Jersey [Mr. Pallone] just spoke about and that 
are also of concern to me, namely, the Sea Grant Fellows Program, the 
Marine Advisory Service Program, as well as provisions that are in H.R. 
1175 that relate recommendations made by the National Academy of 
Sciences which help to streamline the program. There may be some other 
issues involved under that open rule as well.
  With that having been said, we agree to accept the Weldon amendment 
today.

                              {time}  1300

  Mr. WALKER. Reclaiming my time, obviously the Committee on Resources 
at that time can bring anything they want to the floor for further 
authorization of the Sea Grant Program. What this action would do today 
is assure the program is authorized at the level of funding that the 
Weldon amendment anticipates and then we would move toward further 
potential authorization at a later date.
  Mr. SAXTON. That is correct.
  Mr. WALKER. As I say, it is my understanding then we would have an 
exchange of letters to this effect.
  Mr. SAXTON. If the gentleman will yield, it is implicit in this the 
chairman of the Committee on Science, the gentleman from Pennsylvania, 
will support our effort to bring H.R. 1175 to the floor.
  Mr. WALKER. What the gentleman has agreed to is not to hinder your 
efforts in any way to bring the bill to the floor. The gentleman may 
have some questions about the provisions of your bill.
  Mr. SAXTON. That is OK.
  Mr. WALKER. I am certainly not going to hinder you bringing your bill 
to the floor.
  Mr. SAXTON. Just so we have your assurance that you will support our 
effort to get the bill to the floor.
  Mr. WALKER. Sure. That is what we have agreed to.
  Mr. BROWN of California. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite 
number of words.
  Mr. Chairman, it has been my intention to support the gentleman from 
New Jersey [Mr. Saxton] with regard to this matter and for reasons 
which I will elaborate on.
  Actually, I think all of the people who have spoken here have agreed 
that the Sea Grant Program is a valuable program and one that should be 
continued. Unfortunately, the authorization for that program expired at 
the end of fiscal year 1995, and we are now seeking to reinstitute the 
reauthorization and determine the level of authorized funding.
  Again, we all agree that the two committees, Science and Resources, 
have joint jurisdiction over this program, and in the past we have 
worked closely in order to resolve any differences that might have 
occurred as a result of differing attitudes toward the program.
  There are some rather sensitive issues involved here which I hesitate 
to bring up again, but as I indicated at the beginning of the debate on 
this bill, it does not really matter too much what we do on this bill, 
since it is not going anywhere. But it does offer an opportunity for 
some discussion of policy issues which I think are important.

  Policy issue No. 1 illustrated here is that two committees now both 
headed by distinguished Republican Members of this body have some 
serious differences with regard to what constitutes real research and 
what constitutes an appropriate role for the Federal Government.
  The Committee on Science, under the leadership of the distinguished 
gentleman from Pennsylvania, takes a dim view of programs which are not 
real research, not basic research, but which are applied research or 
technology development.
  The Committee on Resources seems to be oriented more toward support 
for programs which do apply research to the needs of the people of this 
country, and in this case, the maritime industry, and is quite willing 
to support these appropriately selected applied research and technology 
development programs which have obvious economic payoffs to the people 
of this country.
  The distinguished gentleman from California [Mr. Rohrabacher], has 
already indicated that he feels that this is not an appropriate role 
for the Federal Government, and he very eloquently defends that 
position.
  Mr. Chairman, I am happy to yield to the gentleman from California to 
defend it some more, if he wishes.
  Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Chairman, I think, at a time when we are having 

[[Page H 9929]]
  to make major budget cuts in so many programs, that we do have to make 
choices and that when we make choices in a situation just like today, 
and I think this does demonstrate a difference in philosophy, not in 
morality, not in values, but a difference in philosophy as to what 
Government should do, but when the Government is involved in helping 
fishermen or helping people who do coastal work, coastal shipping, or 
live near the coast, that perhaps other programs are more important 
than those programs, and perhaps when people are making money in the 
fishing industry or in the shipping industry, they could pay for those 
type of activities, especially at a time when our budget is too tight.
  Mr. BROWN of California. We do not have a basic disagreement there. I 
would personally like to see the private beneficiaries of Government 
research or development pay for as much of it as possible, and if we 
can just work out a common scheme for doing that, you and I can support 
that.
  The gentleman and I do not want to be overly critical, but he also 
seems to imply, and this is another one of those delicate issues, that 
anytime we do not support the language and the numbers in this 
authorization bill, that we are not really interested in balancing the 
budget. Now, the gentleman knows that it does not make much difference 
what we think on this side, but he is raising an argument which the 
Republican chairmen of the Committee on Appropriations are going to 
find disturbing because they have already raised the numbers above what 
is in this bill as any members of the Committee on Appropriations will 
tell you, and that is all that the amendment offered by the gentleman 
from New Jersey really seeks to do, is to raise those numbers up, plus 
eliminating some language that would put restrictions on what could be 
done under the Sea Grant Program.

  Mr. ROHRABACHER. If the gentleman will yield further, some of us on 
this side of the aisle are even more committed budget cutters than 
others on this side of the aisle.
  Mr. BROWN of California. I understand that. I understand that, and in 
fact I am trying to accentuate that difference so that since you know 
it, what I am trying to do, you should seek to resolve that before it 
becomes something that I will raise on the floor and try and confound 
you with.
  But the real point is, and I have said this over and over again, we 
are not, in the authorizing committee, bound by the budget resolution. 
It does not matter what we put in there. I can be 50 percent above what 
is in the budget resolution, because it is only binding on the 
Committee on Appropriations, and these numbers are the way the 
authorizers indicate priorities. We are not spending money. We are 
indicating priorities.
  The interesting think here is you have not been consistent on your 
side with regard to your approval of raising our numbers in this bill 
up to the appropriators' level. In this case, the chairman has agreed 
to do it, and in another case the chairman agreed to do it. There have 
been four cases.
  The CHAIRMAN. The time of the gentleman from California [Mr. Brown] 
has expired.
  (By unanimous consent, Mr. Brown of California was allowed to proceed 
for 2 additional minutes.)
  Mr. BROWN of California. Mr. Chairman, in order to entertain this 
vast audience I have here, in two out of the four cases in which we had 
amendments to raise the numbers up to the Committee on Appropriations 
level already approved in both the House and Senate, on your side you 
agreed to go along with two, on the other two you said, ``No, that is a 
budget buster. It shows we do not care about balancing the budget.'' I 
resent those arguments, very frankly. You know they are not true, and I 
know they are not true. Let us use a little common sense and work out 
an agreement that represents the best thinking of both sides and see if 
we cannot get behind it and support it and avoid these fictitious 
arguments about who is the biggest budget cutter both on your side 
within your party and between the two of us.
  Mr. CALLAHAN. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of 
words.
  Mr. Chairman, I feel like I am in the middle of a jurisdictional 
dispute, which I am. We are not talking about whether or not the 
programs are good programs or bad programs. We are talking about a 
concept of whether or not we ought to bust the budget with this 
miniscule amount of money that is doing a great deal of good for a 
great many people in this great country.
  Yes, we can talk about budget busters. Yes, we can talk about 
conservatism. But we have a program that is working, a government 
program that combines the resources and the capabilities and the 
talents of the State of Alabama, for example. Under our Sea Grant 
Program, the universities, the private industry and the Government are 
working together to make this a better world, to help provide for the 
future feeding of people in this country and other countries, and to 
eliminate diseases such as salmonella that are taking place in some 
seafood problems throughout the world now.
  So while we are caught in this jurisdictional problem of who is going 
to get credit or who is going to have control, let us not lose sight of 
the fact that we are talking about a very vital program to the people 
of this country which costs a very small amount of money, and I think 
at this point we have reached the stage, if I am not mistaken, I say to 
the gentleman from New Jersey [Mr. Saxton], I came to speak in favor of 
your amendment that now the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Weldon] is 
introducing a substitute or an amendment to your amendment saying that 
they are going to fully fund under his authorization bill, and yet 
fully support you when you come to the floor for the reauthorization 
level.
  I think it is imperative that we do support the Committee on 
Resources on the full authorization level because we are talking about 
a 4-year program instead of a 1-year program. So at this point I 
suppose we are at the stage where we are all going to support you, I 
say to the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Weldon], and applaud your 
efforts to bring the funding levels back up and then get behind the 
gentleman from New Jersey [Mr. Saxton] and the Committee on Resources 
to ensure that this vital program continues.
  Mr. WELDON of Pennsylvania. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. CALLAHAN. I yield to the gentleman from Pennsylvania.
  Mr. WELDON of Pennsylvania. Mr. Chairman, that is exactly the point 
here, and I would just want to add again that the Committee on the 
Budget, in their deliberations, zeroed out the Sea Grant Program, and 
those of us on the Committee on Science who went to the gentleman from 
Pennsylvania [Mr. Walker] worked with him to raise up an authorization 
level to put funding back in. It was not what we wanted. It was around 
$34 million, but it was, in fact, increased funding.
  What we have now done is we have increased it to a much higher level, 
which is a level that the Committee on Resources had in their mark, and 
I think, as I have said publicly, I am very happy and pleased to work 
with the gentleman from New Jersey [Mr. Saxton] and to support the 
other priorities and concerns he has. So we move ahead, get the 
program, keep it intact and work with the natural resources bill to 
support that when it comes to the floor as well.
  Mr. BROWN of California. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. CALLAHAN. I yield to the gentleman from California.
  Mr. BROWN of California. Mr. Chairman, the gentleman, in his eloquent 
remarks, presented almost precisely the position that I am taking here, 
but I think you recognize that we do have a collision basically within 
your own party as to what the appropriate role of the Federal 
Government is in supporting the kind of research that is involved in 
the Sea Grant Program, and that needs to be resolved. I thought it had 
been resolved under the Reagan and Bush administrations, but now that 
understanding is no longer holding. We are told that that is not 
respectable research to cooperate with industry and users and trying to 
develop programs that benefit the American people, that that should be 
done by the private sector and that there should be no Federal 
Government involvement in it.
  We need to come to closure on that point. What is the role of the 
Federal Government? I am not trying to dictate it. But I do not like to 
be going 

[[Page H 9930]]
through these specious arguments all the time because of a difference 
which does not get fully explicated as to what the appropriate role of 
the Federal Government is and has been and should be in the future, and 
I am hoping that the gentleman, with keen insight and common sense, 
like yourself, will help us to resolve that problem in a constructive 
way, and I will go along with the gentleman's position.

  If the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Weldon] has worked out 
something with the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Walker], I am not 
going to object to that as long as it does not obscure the larger 
debate which is taking place here, which is my purpose in taking up the 
time.
  Mr. CALLAHAN. Reclaiming my time, I will say, that as a member of the 
Committee on Appropriations, I recognize sometimes the amount of 
control that the Committee on the Budget would like to impose upon the 
Committee on Appropriations.
  Mr. BROWN of California. If the gentleman will yield on that point 
very briefly, the gentleman stated the Committee on the Budget had 
eliminated the Sea Grant Program. What the gentleman means is that in 
the report of the Committee on the Budget, there was language which 
assured that the program would be discontinued. The report language is 
guidance, no more, and the first budget resolution is not binding until 
it is confirmed by the reconciliation bill in the final action, and the 
appropriators know that. There has always been tension between 
appropriators and members of the Committee on the Budget.
  The CHAIRMAN. The time of the gentleman from Alabama [Mr. Callahan] 
has expired.
  (At the request of Mr. Brown of California and by unanimous consent, 
Mr. Callahan was allowed to proceed for 5 additional minutes.)
  Mr. BROWN of California. If the gentleman will yield further, I am 
enjoying this discourse so much. This is a point that all new Members 
need to understand particularly, this tension between the Committee on 
the Budget and the appropriators, to say nothing of the authorizers, is 
a constant factor here, and the tension over who has the predominant 
role will always continue in a Congress made up of prima donnas like we 
have. So to state that the first budget resolution abolished the Sea 
Grant Program is a slight exaggeration. The final action will depend on 
what your committee does in terms of funding the program and ultimately 
what the House as a whole does in terms of confirming the authorization 
for the program.
  Mr. CALLAHAN. Reclaiming my time, as you know, we did not have this 
particular problem when it was all under the jurisdiction of the 
Committee on Merchant Marine, which, as we all know, has been 
abolished, and now you have two sort of separate jurisdictions. But the 
good theme of what I am hearing here today is that we have almost 
unanimous agreement that we want to continue to Sea Grant Program. We 
want to continue it with adequate funding level, without busting the 
budget, as some might say, because we recognize how valuable these 
types of programs are and what a contribution they make, what a 
contribution they make to the betterment of life here in this country.
  Mr. MANTON. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of 
words.
  Mr. Chairman, I rise today in strong support of the Saxton amendment 
and the National Sea Grant College Program. For well over 25 years, the 
Sea Grant Program has worked toward making the United States the world 
leader in marine research and the sustainable development of marine 
resources. The cuts proposed by H.R. 2405 would be devastating and make 
it nearly impossible for this program to continue providing its 
valuable services.
  Despite being a relatively small program, Sea Grant provides 
significant benefits to the Nation by providing a high return on 
federal investment through its promotion of economic growth, helping to 
create private sector jobs, and by educating a skilled work force able 
to compete in the international workplace.
  Mr. Chairman, as a member from the great State of New York, the only 
State in the country bordering both the ocean and the Great Lakes, I 
have had the opportunity to see this program focus on protecting and 
enhancing our environment for ourselves and for future generations. Sea 
Grant is virtually the only source of funding devoted to marine policy 
studies and it is making major contributions to the advancement of 
fisheries management, pollution remediation, seafood safety and marine 
engineering.
  I currently have the privilege of employing a Dean John A. Knauss Sea 
Grant fellow, Cinnamon Rogers. Her background in marine and coastal 
policy has been an invaluable asset over the past year.
  Mr. Chairman, the United States has the largest jurisdiction over 
ocean resources in the world. The Sea Grant Program is essential to 
ensure that these resources are managed responsibly and effectively and 
to solve national marine resource problems without the need for costly 
regulation or intrusive government involvement. The cuts proposed by 
H.R. 2405 would dramatically affect our Nation's ability to maintain 
the economy of coastal regions, address long-term national needs, 
ensure survival of threatened habitat and species, and train future 
marine resource scientists and managers.
  I urge my colleagues to support the National Sea Grant College 
Program by voting in favor of the Saxton amendment.

                              {time}  1315

  The CHAIRMAN. The question is on the perfecting amendment offered by 
the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Weldon].
  The perfecting amendment was agreed to.


                         parliamentary inquiry

  Mr. SAXTON. Mr. Chairman, I would like to get a clarification in the 
from of a parliamentary inquiry here.
  My understanding of the situation before the last vote that was just 
taken was that I had an amendment pending to which the gentleman from 
Pennsylvania [Mr. Weldon] had an amendment.
  The CHAIRMAN. The amendment offered by the gentleman from 
Pennsylvania [Mr. Weldon] was a perfecting amendment, and it was to the 
bill, and it would take precedence of an amendment that strikes 
language from the bill. So the Weldon amendment gets voted on first.
  Mr. SAXTON. That is correct, inasmuch as his amendment was an 
amendment to my amendment.
  The CHAIRMAN. His amendment was a perfecting amendment to the 
language in the bill.
  Mr. SAXTON. All right.
  So, Mr. Chairman, what I need to do at this point is to ask unanimous 
consent to withdraw my original amendment; is that correct?
  The CHAIRMAN. The gentleman is correct.
  Mr. SAXTON. Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent to withdraw my 
original amendment.
  The CHAIRMAN. Is there objection to the request of the gentleman from 
New Jersey?
  There was no objection.
  The CHAIRMAN. the amendment offered by the gentleman from New Jersey 
[Mr. Saxton] is withdrawn.
  Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word.
  (Mr. YOUNG of Florida asked and was given permission to revise and 
extend his remarks.)
  Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Chairman, I want to thank, first of all, 
the gentleman from Alabama [Mr. Cramer] for allowing me to do this 
ahead of his amendment, and I rise for the purpose of entering into a 
colloquy with the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Walker], and I would 
like to ask him about the NOAA aircraft, the 14 aircraft that NOAA 
flies as weather surveillance and hurricane surveillance, and I would 
ask the gentleman if these aircraft have been eliminated by H.R. 2405.
  Mr. WALKER. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. YOUNG of Florida. I yield to the gentleman from Pennsylvania.
  Mr. WALKER. Mr. Chairman, the answer to the gentleman's question is 
``no.''
  Mr. YOUNG of Florida. And, if the gentleman would answer, would these 
aircraft continue to be based where they are presently?

[[Page H 9931]]

  Mr. WALKER. The bill does not alter the bases of specific aircraft.
  Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Walker, H.R. 2405 terminates the NOAA 
Corps. Does the termination of the corps prevent NOAA from conducting 
important hurricane surveillance activities?
  Mr. WALKER. I say to the gentleman the answer to his question is 
``no,'' it is not the intention of the committee to terminate important 
hurricane surveillance activities. The committee simply does not 
believe it requires uniformed NOAA Corps members to fly these planes.
  Mr. YOUNG of Florida. One further question, if the gentleman would.
  The manager's amendment, which was adopted, includes language which 
allows members of the NOAA Corps to transfer to the Department of 
Defense, the Coast Guard or NOAA Civil Service if they are needed. Is 
this accurate?
  Mr. WALKER. That is correct.
  Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman very much, 
and I thank the members of the committee for their concern about this.


                    amendment offered by mr. cramer

  Mr. CRAMER. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.
  The CHAIRMAN. The Clerk will designate the amendment.
  The text of the amendment is as follows:

       Amendment offered by Mr. Cramer: Page 108, line 9, through 
     page 109, line 4, amend subsection (g) to read as follows:
       (g) Weather Service Modernization.--Title VII of the 
     National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Authorization 
     Act of 1992 is amended--
       (1) in section 706--
       (A) by amending subsection (b)(6) to read as follows:
       ``(6) any recommendations of the Committee submitted under 
     section 707(c) that evaluate the certification.'';
       (B) by striking ``60-day'' in subsection (c)(2) and 
     inserting in lieu thereof ``30-day'';
       (C) by amending subsection (d) to read as follows:
       ``(d) Final Decision.--If the Secretary decides to close, 
     consolidate, automate, or relocate any such field office, the 
     Secretary shall publish the certification in the Federal 
     Register and submit the certification to the Committee on 
     Commerce, Science, and Transportation of the Senate and the 
     Committee on Science of the House of Representatives.''; and
       (D) by amending subsection (f) to read as follows:
       ``(f) Transition Program.--The Secretary shall maintain for 
     a period of at least two years after the closure of any 
     weather office a program to--
       ``(1) provide timely information regarding the activities 
     of the National Weather Service which may affect service to 
     the community, including modernization and restructuring; and
       ``(2) work with area weather service users, including 
     persons associated with general aviation, civil defense, 
     emergency preparedness, and the news media, with respect to 
     the provision of timely weather warnings and forecasts.''; 
     and
       ``(2) by amending section 707(c) to read as follows:
       ``(c) Duties.--The Committee may review any certification 
     under section 706 for which the Secretary has provided a 
     notice of intent to certify in the plan, including any 
     certification for which there is a significant potential for 
     degradation of service within the affected area. Upon the 
     request of the Committee, the Secretary shall make available 
     to the Committee the supporting documents developed by the 
     Secretary in connection with the certification. The Committee 
     shall evaluate any certification reviewed on the basis of the 
     modernization criteria and with respect to the requirement 
     that there be no degradation of service, and advise the 
     Secretary accordingly.''.

  Mr. CRAMER. Mr. Chairman, I hope the Members, both present in the 
Chamber and listening in their offices, will pay close attention to my 
amendment today because it is indeed a public-safety amendment.
  The Weather Service Modernization Act, which was passed in 1992, 
established procedures for the modernization of the National Weather 
Service. A critical part of that law was the requirement that no 
weather office can be closed or automated without a certification that 
the closure would not result in degradation of service to the affected 
area.
  Now pursuant to that modernization act an implementation plan was 
passed by the Weather Service that would propose to close many Weather 
Service offices around this country including my Weather Service office 
there in north Alabama which also serves southeastern Tennessee as 
well. There are 300 existing Weather Service offices right now, and, 
according to the implementation plan, those numbers would be reduced to 
118.
  Now, under current law, Mr. Chairman, the certification requires a 
review of local weather characteristics, comparison of weather services 
within the affected area and, importantly, a review of the weather 
radar coverage. The process requires a publication in the Federal 
Register and a period of public comment before a closure takes place. I 
think the public participation in this process is critical.
  Now the bill before the Chamber here today eliminates any 
certification requirement before the Weather Service can close an 
office, and let me repeat that. This bill eliminates any certification 
requirement before the Weather Service can close an office. That means 
that a bureaucrat can determine by the stroke of a pen which of those 
Weather Service offices will be closed and when those Weather Service 
offices will be closed, and this is unacceptable.
  Mr. Chairman, that is why I say this is indeed a very critical 
public-safety argument here in my amendment today. Requiring a 
certification that there is no degradation of services is a matter of 
public trust. No Weather Service office should be closed without the 
guarantee that an area shall receive at least the same kind of Weather 
Service protection that it has received in the past. There must be some 
kind of accountability to the process of closing those offices, and a 
certification requirement provides an accountability.
  So what do we do because none of us want a government bureaucrat 
exercising that kind of authority? We have got to meet some middle 
ground here, and I think that is what my amendment in fact does. My 
amendment does not preserve the existing certification process. It is a 
compromise amendment.
  What we are doing with the amendment is currently there is a 
requirement that each closing certification be published in the Federal 
Register for 60 days. We reduce that requirement to 30 days. Currently 
there is a requirement that the modernization transition committee be 
consulted twice during the certification process. My amendment reduces 
that to one consultation. And in the third place, Mr. Chairman, 
currently there is a requirement that the Weather Service maintain a 
liaison officer in every closed office for 2 years. This is wasteful 
and not necessary. We eliminate that requirement by this amendment and 
simply require that the Weather Service maintain a program for 2 years, 
a program for 2 years that will provide timely information to Weather 
Service users in the community that is losing the Weather Service 
office.
  Now this amendment, by reaching that kind of compromise, will save 
$15 million over 5 years and will eliminate redundancies that are 
currently in the law, but at the same time we will maintain the 
essential requirement that there be a certification of no degradation 
of service when a weather office will be closed.

  Mr. ROEMER. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. CRAMER. I yield to the gentleman from Indiana.
  Mr. ROEMER. Mr. Chairman, I would just like to commend the gentleman 
from Alabama [Mr. Cramer] and his aide, I think who will be leaving his 
office shortly, Mr. John Hay, for their excellent work on this 
amendment.
  Mr. Chairman, we have the most unpredictable weather in the world in 
the United States. We appropriate money every year for disasters 
whether they be hurricanes, tornadoes, severe weather. Certainly for us 
to have in this bill a guarantee for public safety and public input to 
certify that a closure of an office warning people about severe weather 
conditions should not take place unless there is this needed public 
safety. In this bill we are spending several hundred million dollars on 
shuttle safety, and we should. We should protect our astronauts when 
they take off in that shuttle. Certainly we should have a certification 
process that allows all our citizens in this country the input as to 
how to make sure that they are adequately warned if they have a severe 
lake effect coming off Lake Michigan in my district in the State of 
Indiana that sweeps across the entire northern part of the State.
  Mr. Chairman, I think the gentleman's bill does that.

[[Page H 9932]]

  The CHAIRMAN. The time of the gentleman from Alabama [Mr. Cramer] has 
expired.
  (By unanimous consent, Mr. Cramer was allowed to proceed for 2 
additional minutes.)
  Mr. CRAMER. Again I think with this compromise process, as the 
gentleman and I know brutally well in our separate areas, we have 
raised concerns within the committee about the modernization process 
and the fact that we are likely left in gap areas that many studies 
have determined, and recently we have engaged in jumping through every 
hoop, crossing every ``t'' we can cross, in order to fairly preserve 
this modernization plan to make sure the citizens of our areas are in 
fact protected. I think this is an additional guarantee that those of 
us that are concerned about this modernization process are given some 
protection that before they can close our offices in my case, move the 
office 100 miles south of my area, and recently my Weather Service 
office went out because it was struck by lightning, and we were served 
from this 100-mile-away Weather Service office, and the coverage was 
disastrous. We were given 2 and 3 minutes notice of tornadoes.
  So, Mr. Chairman, I think the gentleman and I have worked very hard, 
and I congratulate him, as well, for bringing this issue to the floor.
  Mr. ROEMER. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman from Alabama [Mr. 
Cramer] and say this amendment is doing a real service not just to the 
people in Indiana and Alabama, but all over the country, insuring that 
they get adequate warning, insuring that there is public input, and 
that this streamlines the bureaucratic process and actually saves some 
money to the taxpayer in the long run as well.
  Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word.
  Mr. Chairman, in our bill we have eliminated the union-written 
certification requirements that have stymied efforts to consolidate 
Weather Service offices from 215 to 118. The Cramer amendment, while 
not going back to the old certification requirements, offers a new and 
streamlined version, yes, but a version that will still result in the 
maintaining of unnecessary Weather Service offices and maintaining a 
process that is unnecessary. What we are talking about is jeopardizing 
a $35 million savings over 5 years. The NOAA IG supports our position, 
and that maintaining the system, even if it is streamlined, is 
unnecessarily costly, and we are trying to come about and trying to 
solve a problem.
  Mr. Chairman, for years we have had a number of Weather Service 
offices that were just not necessary. There is legitimate concern which 
we will hear from several Members in a moment. I am sure that their 
areas may in some ways be affected detrimentally.

                              {time}  1330

  Let me say for the record that we have noted their concerns, and that 
there will be a hearing next week on this issue to ensure that each and 
every one of the people who Members will hear in one moment, supporting 
the Cramer amendment, that their concerns are dealt with, and that 
their concerns and their problems that might erupt from the situation, 
that it is corrected.
  There is no reason why we should pass a Cramer amendment in order to 
solve the problems we are going to hear about in the next couple of 
minutes. What we need instead is to have an honest approach to the 
issue, so that we can, if anybody is left out, if there are some gaps 
in the plan, that they be taken care of, rather than set in law a 
streamlined process, yes, from what the old process is, but a process 
that will still result in offices that are unnecessary being left open, 
and add to the cost of closing offices that are unnecessary, as the 
NOAA IG has already stipulated.
  This amendment was brought up and defeated in committee, and let me 
again state, the problem that are emerging, in that some areas are not 
being covered adequately, which we are going to hear in a moment, are 
being taken care of. There is no reason for us to pass the Cramer 
amendment. In fact, passing the Cramer amendment will be 
counterproductive and will cost the taxpayers unnecessary money, 
because the problems that will arise can be handled in a different way. 
We are already on the road to handling these problems.
  Mr. CRAMER. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. ROHRABACHER. I yield to the gentleman from Alabama.
  Mr. CRAMER. Mr. Chairman, I want to take this time and thank the 
chairman of the committee, and of the Subcommittee on Space and 
Aeronautics of the Committee on Science, both now and in years past. 
They have in fact bent over backwards to make sure those of us who were 
extremely nervous about this modernization plan were given 
opportunities to question, poke holes, because what we said then and 
what I say now is, ``Do not use our citizens as guinea pigs. Do not, 
just for the sake of balancing the budget,'' and this is a small amount 
of money, I might add, ``do not risk out citizens' lives.'' I have had 
people sitting in church who were blown away by tornadoes, and I cannot 
stand here and let the gentleman say this is simply a budget issue.
  I wish we had had the hearings the gentleman is talking about before 
we brought this bill to the floor today. I am glad we are having the 
hearings next week, but I must again say this is a public safety issue 
and not a budget issue.
  Mr. ROHRABACHER. Reclaiming my time, Mr. Chairman, we did schedule 
these hearings long before we knew when this bill would be coming to 
the floor, and as the chairman of the subcommittee, and with the full 
support of the chairman of the full committee, we are moving forward 
methodically to make sure that there are no gaps in our reform 
measures.

  The gentleman's proposal, the gentleman's amendment, does indeed come 
at the problem from a certain way. I am just saying that it is 
counterproductive and may in the end cost the taxpayers money, where we 
can solve the problem by looking at it independently and not setting 
down guidelines that, in the end, will cost the taxpayers money.
  I recognize the gentleman's point. He is very concerned about his 
constituents. Everyone who is going to be speaking here on this issue 
is concerned about the lives of their constituents and the lives of 
other citizens of the United States. I just think we can handle it in a 
better way, and modernization does put--even as we have said, the 
Doppler radar is going into effect. We have a whole new radar system 
that we have approved and authorized the money for, so we are very 
concerned about safety, enough to spend money on this new radar system.
  Mr. BROWN of California. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite 
number of words.
  Mr. Chairman, I am in support of the amendment offered by the 
distinguished gentleman from Alabama [Mr. Cramer], but again, I want to 
try and provide a little additional background here.
  First, of all, Mr. Chairman, the Committee on Science has not been 
divided on the issue of modernizing the Weather Service. We have felt 
that we could provide improved service and less expensive service 
through updating the equipment to the best in modern radars and so 
forth, and we have sought to do that.
  In any period in which we have a major technological transformation, 
there are people who are going to be upset, some for causes which are 
fantasy; that is, they just distrust new technology, maybe; and others 
for a legitimate reason, that the technology may not work as 
advertised, it may not be effective, and it may degrade, as has been 
pointed out here, the level of service for certain particular areas.
  However, the general principle is we should move ahead with 
modernization, we should do it reasonably well, but we should recognize 
the special problems of the transition. I want to say just a word about 
that. We wrestled for months and years over how to alleviate this 
concern for a degradation of service. The provisions that were finally 
adopted represented, again, a consensus as to how we could protect the 
interests of the public that was concerned, while we proceeded to go 
ahead as expeditiously as possible with upgrading the system.
  Some of the fears for degradation of service were real, some were 
imaginary. There were some even here in the Congress who felt that 
maybe a Republican President would have shut down a 

[[Page H 9933]]
weather station in a Democratic district just to maybe get even with 
somebody. Now that we have a Democratic President, there are 
Republicans who probably feel that they might be discriminated against 
by a Democratic President.
  We feel that these are more in the realm of fantasy than fact, but 
the concern about a degradation of service is real. The elimination of 
the opportunity for public hearings would be a tragedy to due process 
in this country. We believe that it is important that we move ahead 
expeditiously; that we, however, allow for a transition period, that we 
allow for a process of public hearing and review whenever there is a 
change that is proposed, and that we take into consideration all the 
factors that would be involved.
  It is for this reason, Mr. Chairman, the long history behind this 
process, which is being improved by the amendment suggested here, as a 
matter of fact, and saves money, this warrants the adoption of this 
amendment in the public interest, as well as in helping us to meet the 
goal of improved efficiency and less cost.
  Mr. WAMP. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of 
words.
  Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of the amendment offered by the 
gentleman from Alabama [Mr. Cramer], as I supported that amendment at 
the level of the Committee on Science, recognizing that for the folks 
back home, the Democrats and Republicans are working together on this 
issue. I commend the Chairman of the subcommittee, the chairman of the 
full committee, and those on the other side, because we have worked 
together for a number of years on this issue.
  When it comes to health and safety, we are working together to make 
sure that politics does not enter into this. I do not believe for a 
second that it has or is entering into this. However, with the 
potentiality of degradation in some areas of the Weather Service as we 
transition into a brand new national NEXRAD system, which is coming on-
line, it is important that we do not have soft spots. Let me give a 
recent example.
  In southeast Tennessee, which I represent, which has been identified 
as one of five vulnerable areas in the country by the National Research 
Council's findings, which they are now reporting on to the Department 
of Commerce, we are awaiting, I think, Department of Commerce 
clarification to make sure that these five areas are potentially 
degrading areas, so we can actually accommodate through some 
construction these areas to improve these areas.
  As Hurricane Opal last week worked its way up through the Gulf of 
Mexico right through, I suppose, the district of the gentleman from 
Alabama [Mr. Cramer] and my district, we have had our people who have 
relied on our local Weather Service office for years calling 
Morristown, TN, some 114 miles to the northeast. Storms do not come 
from the northeast to the southeast in the southeastern part of the 
United States, they come from the south. We have to have that service 
and those reportings coming from a closer area.
  The gentleman from Alabama [Mr. Cramer] very responsibly offered 
legislation at the committee level to accommodate these soft spots. I 
commend him for that. The transition, our local Weather Service Office 
is closing. The calls came from our local media representatives to the 
Morristown office. We did not have the responsiveness that we have had 
in recent years as this hurricane came through town. These are critical 
health and safety concerns that must continue to be addressed.
  I commend the gentleman from California [Mr. Rohrabacher] for the 
hearings, but again I do think this is a responsible approach. It does 
not matter where it comes from in this body, from that back corner or 
this back corner; when it is a responsible approach, we need to all 
embrace and recognize it. I urge all of our colleagues on both sides of 
the aisle to support the amendment offered by the gentleman from 
Alabama [Mr. Cramer].

                              {time}  1345

  This team worked, saved lives and mitigated millions of dollars in 
property damage. Furthermore, it enabled Federal officials to control 
releases from the Central Valley Project dams, thereby avoiding further 
destruction downstream significantly. During this emergency, the radar 
in Sacramento which provides primary coverage to the region north of 
Redding failed to adequately detect precipitation in the mountains 
where the flooding originated. Had it not been for the heroic efforts 
of experienced Weather Service personnel in Redding, the devastation 
would have increased dramatically.
  Mr. Chairman, despite the firefighting lessons we learned last 
spring, the Weather Service is still determined to eliminate the 
requirement that the service certify that the closures would not 
degrade services to the region, which could literally place the safety 
of thousands of people in jeopardy.
  Mr. Chairman, this would have ramifications that move far beyond even 
flood management. It would also severely impact the Weather Service 
provided to forest fire dispatchers from the Forest Service, BLM and 
California Department of Forestry, who are housed in the same facility 
as the Weather Service and who have relied on the forecasting for 
meteorologists and technicians in the Redding office for over 30 years. 
Furthermore, it would jeopardize the safety of travelers along the 
vulnerable Interstate 5 corridor who rely on the accurate storm and 
snow reports for safe passage between Oregon and California.
  Mr. Chairman, the situation in southern California is not unique. 
There are communities all over the country which are in jeopardy of 
losing adequate weather service under the present modernization plan. 
We must reinstate a mechanism to check a potentially dangerous 
bureaucratic fiat.
  Mr. Chairman, this amendment provides that mechanism. I urge my 
colleagues to vote ``yes'' on the Cramer amendment.
  Mr. DEUTSCH. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of 
words.
  Mr. Chairman, this is an issue where I think we really get to the 
heart of Government. We can talk as much as we want about reducing the 
size of government; government, over the last several years, getting 
involved in issues that it should not be involved in. The Government's 
branch and its breadth has taken too much of the private sector in this 
country.
  However, this is an issue that if there is anything that the Federal 
Government should be doing, is it should be providing a quality weather 
service for the hundreds of millions of people that live in this 
country. Every one of our districts are affected by quality weather 
service.
  The standard that presently exists is that through change of service, 
there has to be a finding that there is no degrading of service to the 
region. The language in the bill would take that out. It is real 
simple. What it would allow is that an area of the country, any area of 
the country, could have a degradation of service.
  Let us think about what that means on the practical level, what it 
means around the country. Let us also talk about Florida, first and 
then my district, second.

  Within the last several weeks, as unfortunately happens, and 
statistically it is going to continue to happen, we had a devastating, 
deadly hurricane that came on to the shores of Florida. This particular 
one landed in the north Florida region, the panhandle of the State. 
Florida is a large State. That is a less populated area than most of 
the State of Florida. Several million people evacuated their homes 
knowing up-to-the-minute reports of the change in that particular 
storm, again, although it happened the same day as the O.J. verdict, 
all of us knowing that, it changed very quickly. It changed to a 
category three storm very quickly. Without really cutting-edge ability, 
we would have seen probably thousands of lives lost. The Weather 
Service did its job in that instance.
  My district goes from Palm Beach County in Florida to Key West. The 
Florida Keys is a chain of islands 110 miles long. When you are sitting 
in Key West, which is a city of 40,000 people where there happens to be 
a Weather Service station, which provides into the Caribbean weather 
analysis in terms of potential hurricanes and potential storms that on 
a day-to-day basis are incredibly valuable to commerce in the keys in 
terms of fishermen. But really, the ultimate time comes in terms of a 
hurricane situation.

[[Page H 9934]]

  In the Florida Keys in terms of transmission issues, in terms of 
being able to acquire information, the Weather Service is actually 
going through the debate, or going through the analysis right now in 
terms of trying to close the station in Key West. It is in a very 
rigorous analysis that they are being forced to go through now, that 
there will not be a degradation of service, and there is a great deal 
of debate about that.
  Mr. Chairman, as a person who represents those people, 40,000 people 
in Key West and the 80,000 people who live in the Florida Keys, and the 
2.5 million people that live in south Florida, that if something is 
going to happen to that particular station, that it become an automated 
station, at least that at a very objective, critical, analytical level, 
that that station will be evaluated. To say well, we just do not have 
enough money to do that analysis, we just do not have enough money, 
that we have to close that station, is beyond me. I mean just 
absolutely beyond me, that as a society, as a government, as a country, 
we would be saying that.
  Mr. Chairman, we are talking about the most basic, literally the most 
basic governmental function. I ask my colleagues who are opposed to 
this amendment to speak up and say, government should not be involved 
in the Weather Service. Maybe what we ought to do is privatize the 
Weather Service. You know, have a 900 number that will privatize the 
Weather Service and maybe the private industry will get into this and 
they will be out there predicting hurricanes. If you think that there 
might be a hurricane, you will dial the 900 number or something and get 
a weather report from this new agency.
  I urge my colleagues, because this is critical, not just for Florida, 
but to every person that lives in this country, to adopt the Cramer 
amendment.
  Mr. TAYLOR of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I rise to strike the 
requisite number of words.
  Mr. Chairman, I rise to support the gentleman's amendment. I heard 
the gentleman from California [Mr. Herger] a moment ago, and everybody 
ought to listen to the folks that are speaking on this. Now, the 
gentleman is a good friend. He has tied his bark on a tree. I am no big 
spender. We are here supporting the gentleman's amendment, so this is 
clearly not a situation where we are talking about saving a lot of 
money. We are talking about public safety, we are talking about the 
need to pay attention to what the gentleman is saying. He is saying, 
keep the language, as has been repeated, calling for certification, but 
before any closure of any station we will determine whether or not 
there is a degradation of service.
  I serve the western part of North Carolina. A few days ago I was 
catching a plane, sitting on the runway, and we could not go out 
because of fog. Probably 200 yards down the road it was clear, but we 
had to sit on the runway because it was too foggy for us to take off. 
We sat a considerable period of time. I doubt if a station of some 
distance would have picked that up.
  I also know that many times we have squalls, small storms, things 
that occur in the mountains that the two stations that are going to be 
handling our area may or may not pick up. Now, I am perfectly willing 
to see the station close. I am perfectly willing to see the new 
stations take place. But I am not willing to see that happen until we 
have certified, until we have determined, whether or not the public 
safety is being met.
  Now, if you believe that the Federal bureaucracy is 100-percent 
perfect and you are willing to bet your lives and the friends and 
family on the fact of that perfection, then you do not need to pay any 
attention to this argument. If you believe as I do, though, and the 
people of western North Carolina, first of all, the Federal Government 
will mess up a 1-car funeral in most cases, and there was a recent ABC 
report just a few days ago that showed that millions of dollars of new 
technology that was being put into airports was failing a substantial 
portion of the time, then you will see that the gentleman's amendment 
is necessary until we see whether or not that new technology works, and 
whether or not we need to change it before we close the existing 
service.
  Mr. Chairman, that is why I support the gentleman's amendment, and I 
urge my colleagues to do likewise.
  Mr. McHALE. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of 
words.
  Mr. Chairman, I join with my colleagues who have previously taken the 
microphone, Republicans and Democrats alike, liberals, conservatives, 
and moderates in support of the Cramer amendment to H.R. 2405. 
Regrettably, the bill in its current form is nothing less than a breach 
of faith.
  The bill before us today repeals sections 706 and 707 of the Weather 
Service Modernization Act (Public Law 102-567). These sections, and in 
particular subsection (b) of section 706 requires, pursuant to the 
implementation of the Weather Service modernization plan ``The 
Secretary (of Commerce) shall not close, consolidate, automate, or 
relocate any field office unless the Secretary has certified that such 
action will not result in any degradation of service.'' For the past 3 
years, our constituents have been repeatedly assured that a local 
weather station would not be closed under any plan to modernize weather 
service operations, unless there were a certification, as required by 
law, that the closing of that station would not result in a degradation 
of service.
  Mr. Chairman, we made a promise, and the issue before this House with 
regard to the Cramer amendment is whether or not we will keep that 
promise. I have said to my constituents, other Members of this body 
have said to theirs, we will not close your local weather station 
unless we can assure you, after careful review, that there will not be 
a degradation in service and, consequently, no increased threat to 
public health and safety.
  The bill before us today deletes this promise, this requirement of 
certification of nondegradation prior to the closure of any National 
Weather Service office. During the Energy and Environment Subcommittee 
markup of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration 
Authorization Act of 1995, I offered an amendment to restore the 
current law language regarding certification, keeping the promise that 
we have been repeating to our constituents. I now support the Cramer 
amendment which preserves the core promise made to our constituents and 
provides a sensible streamlining of certification requirements above 
and beyond the merit of the legislation itself, beyond the 
certification contained in the Cramer amendment.
  The issue here is one of good faith. Can our constituents trust our 
promises once they are made? We have here a series of promulgations 
going back over 3 years based on statutory law that no station will be 
closed without a thorough review and a certification from the 
Secretary. The issue here is not about weather; the issue here is about 
integrity and whether we of this body will keep the promises we have 
made in prior law.
  Mr. Chairman, I urge an affirmative vote for the Cramer amendment.
  Mr. POMEROY. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of 
words.
  Mr. Chairman, we are in a period of reevaluating that which the 
Federal Government ought to do and that which it no longer should do. I 
do not think at a time when weekly we see reports of damage or even 
loss of life due to severe weather, the American people believe the 
United States ought to get out of the business of helping Americans 
understand what is coming at them in light of dangerous or threatening 
weather.
  We are in a period of moving toward greater cost efficiency in 
weather forecasting. As various communities leave their old systems and 
move to new systems, they are entitled to the assurance that the 
quality of weather forecasting in their area will not be jeopardized, 
will not be diminished, and that is what the certification is all 
about.
  Let me give you a for instance, because I represent an area that has 
this problem before it right today: Williston, ND. Williston, ND, is 
scheduled to have its forecasting station come out. Five employees and 
one meteorologist will be moved.

                              {time}  1400

  When this is accomplished, it will be the largest nonobstructed 
geographic area without radar coverage in the country, and in 
Williston, ND, let me 

[[Page H 9935]]
tell you we have very, very severe weather conditions to deal with.
  We have been told that an automatic surface observing system is going 
to take care of our needs. We have been told that a system with radar 
120 miles away in Glasgow, MT, and 130 miles away in Minot, ND, are 
going to cover the needs for the people living in the Williston area. 
We have been given this assurance notwithstanding the fact that 95 
percent of all tornadoes, perhaps the very most dangerous life 
threatening circumstance we have to face, will be grossly underdetected 
by a radar system 130 miles away.
  A consulting radar meteorologist for Williston has found that radars 
over 100 miles away would be grossly inadequate for detection of winter 
snowstorms, tornado vortex signatures, microbursts, and gust fronts, 
all of which we have and all of which threaten life.
  Good, reliable weather forecasting is critical to everyone. When you 
live in a rural area that has the types of weather swings and the 
severity of weather conditions that we experience in North Dakota, it 
can literally be a matter of life and death. Do you come in from the 
farm to the city? Do the school buses run? We need reliable weather 
systems.
  If you are going to take from areas like Williston their weather 
forecasting station, then, by golly, you better be prepared to certify 
that we are not going to have a degradation of service. That is why I 
rise in strong support of the amendment before us and urge its 
adoption.
  Mr. WALKER. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of 
words.
  Mr. Chairman, I suppose it does little good in the emotion of all of 
this to actually talk about what the experts have to say in these 
matters, but I am going to try anyhow because I am reminded a little 
bit of testimony we had today before the committee in which it was 
being talked about in educational context.
  The witness described a situation where back in the 19th century 
someone by accident designed a jet engine and realized that this jet 
engine could propel things at a very high speed. But the problem was 
that they mounted it on a stage coach, and because they had mounted it 
on a stage coach, it just destroyed the stage coach because they put it 
on outmoded technology, and so on.
  This debate reminds me of that. Here we are, we are in the process of 
devising and putting in place a modern weather service, a modern radar 
system that allows us to get good coverage across the country. In fact, 
it is working. We have had about 100 of these NEXRAD radars that have 
been installed. They have been commissioned and are operating 
successfully.
  What we have got is a series of people that have come to the floor 
and basically talked about the weather service that they now have. They 
say that the weather service they now have is not giving them the kind 
of forecasts they need and we have lives in danger. That is right. That 
is the reason we are trying to upgrade the weather service. We are 
trying to do a job of upgrading it and making safety better.
  But what does this amendment do? This amendment gets in the way of 
having that done. How does it do it? Well, the Department of Commerce, 
the inspector general says, and I am just quoting from his letter, one 
of the experts who has actually examined this thing in detail, he says, 
``We believe that the legislative requirement for certification imposes 
burdensome and costly restraints on the National Weather Service's 
ability to modernize and restructure its field offices.''
  In other words, what is happening here is, what we are about to pass 
if we pass this amendment will be a process that will undermine our 
ability to get the new radars that have some opportunity to do 
something about the degraded weather service that all these folks are 
talking about.
  He goes on and he says further in his letter, ``The legislative 
requirement for certification is an unnecessary and outmoded concept.''
  This is the stage coach, folks. We have got the jet engine and so on, 
we are trying to put it in place, in place in a jet airplane so it can 
actually be used, and what we are doing here is going with an outmoded 
concept.
  I know what the gentlemen coming here are concerned about, and 
legitimately so. The National Research Council had a recent report in 
which they talked about the NEXRAD coverage, and we have had a number 
of people come here and talk about the fact that they were in one of 
those locations that has a potential for degradation of service under 
that particular study.
  Well, the fact is that the report also provided a process for dealing 
with those locations. But what we are doing here is, we are trying to 
figure out a way to deal with what were essentially five locations 
across the country and keep in place hundreds of unnecessary weather 
offices.
  Let me quote again from the inspector general. He says, ``Therefore, 
any legislative proposal that seeks only to streamline but not to 
eliminate certification will maintain a process that is both 
unnecessary and costly.''
  This is my concern about the amendment. I agree with everybody here 
who wants to protect their citizens and so on. I certainly want to 
protect the people in Lancaster and Chester counties from having 
weather-related problems, but we want to make certain we have good 
forecasts. Every Member here wants to do that. That is what we are here 
to do. But the bottom line is, what you are doing is you are putting in 
place a very costly system that will maintain all of the old structures 
and prevent us from doing the new structures that actually work in a 
time-sensitive way.
  I guess maybe the old order is something that everybody just kind of 
clings to because it is what they know. But in all honesty, if we are 
really going to discuss the health and safety of our American citizens, 
we ought not do things that undermine the ability to provide those safe 
modern systems.
  The problem with this amendment is it takes an outmoded approach. It 
goes to a certification approach that the inspector general says is 
exactly the wrong thing to do. It preserves weather station offices 
whether or not they contribute anything. The fact is we are going to 
preserve a lot of outmoded offices that are not in areas that are 
degraded and we are going to preserve them for months, maybe years, 
under the certification process. That makes no sense really.
  Mr. CRAMER. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. WALKER. I yield to the gentleman from Alabama.
  Mr. CRAMER. I thank the gentleman for yielding.
  Mr. Chairman, I will try to be quick here because I know we are on 
limited time and the Members are probably weary of this, but I think it 
is unfair of the chairman to remind the Members that all we are about 
through this amendment is keeping offices open unnecessarily. In my 
area, I can accept that I may have to lose my weather service office, 
but do not let a bureaucrat by the stroke of a pen determine that my 
office is closed and that the services that I normally would get from 
that office would now be given to me from 100 miles south of there. I 
do not think it is fair to argue that that is what this amendment is 
all about.
  The CHAIRMAN. The time of the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. 
Walker] has expired.
  (By unanimous consent, Mr. Walker was allowed to proceed for 2 
additional minutes.)
  Mr. WALKER. Mr. Chairman, I would say to the gentleman I think what I 
did was argue what the inspector general argued. The inspector general 
of the Department of Commerce has made the arguments that I made here, 
and I quoted extensively from his letter. He is the one who is saying 
that the process the gentleman is proposing is an unnecessary, costly 
and outmoded process.
  Mr. CRAMER. If the gentleman would yield further, I am opposed to his 
opinion about this. I do not think he has been out there in the field 
in our districts experiencing the kind of weather impact that we have 
there and the dependence on those weather service offices, that we have 
a right to have a process created before they are closed.
  Mr. WALKER. I think he has done an extensive study. The point he 
would make is where there are situations of potential degrading of 
service, we are going to step in and try to do something about that. In 
fact, I just talked 

[[Page H 9936]]
to the head of NOAA here a few minutes ago, at the end of this month 
there is to be a meeting where they are going to examine all of the 
next generation NEXRAD's that they want to put in place, additional 
NEXRAD's to cover possible degraded areas. So the weather service is 
entirely sensitive to this but if we pass this amendment, what we are 
going to do is we are going to prevent a lot of those from getting on 
line because we are going to be spending the money keeping offices in 
place that are not now capable of providing the most modern services.
  I would tell the gentleman I think the safety argument is against 
doing that. Why in the world would we get in the way of doing the thing 
that is going to give us better weather information? That is what we 
are about to do. We are trying to preserve bureaucracy at the expense 
of getting better information.
  Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. WALKER. I yield to the gentleman from California.
  Mr. ROHRABACHER. Is it your position that the Cramer amendment, the 
end result in all of it would not be more safety but instead would be a 
waste of the taxpayers' dollars? I believe that is where we are coming 
from. Because we have already, as the chairman of the subcommittee and 
chairman of the committee, guaranteed and given our word that we would 
work and have reached out to work with those people who say they are 
affected in a detrimental way. But there seems to be a breakdown in 
communication here.
  A moment ago I asked my colleague from North Dakota to yield and what 
I wanted to ask him was he was saying that the weather stations are 
going to be this far away and the radar is going to be that far away. I 
wanted to ask him whether or not he had any technical experts that had 
told him whether or not that was inadequate.
  The fact is today technology permits us to do things in a cost-
effective way that used to cost the Government a lot more money, you 
had to have a lot more stations out there, a lot more people on payroll 
but now technologically we are capable of doing these things.
  Mr. WALKER. I want to thank the gentleman, because the Federal 
Government is still buying vacuum tubes for the FAA and they are 
calling this the way in which we maintain safety in the FAA. They are 
still using technology that relies upon vacuum tubes.
  Most young people in school today have never seen a vacuum tube 
because they understand that the way you do things efficiently is with 
computer chips. There are 3.3 million vacuum tubes on that computer 
chip.
  The CHAIRMAN. The time of the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. 
Walker] has again expired.
  (By unanimous consent, Mr. Walker was allowed to proceed for 2 
additional minutes.)
  Mr. WALKER. Mr. Chairman, the fact is that if we go to upgraded 
systems, we actually get better systems. I do not think there is 
anybody that doubts that maybe using this chip is a better way to 
provide safety in an air traffic control system than using a bunch of 
these vacuum tubes. But the Government has not gotten around to it. The 
same thing is happening in the weather service. Because of all the 
certification requirements, and let us face it, the certification 
requirement that was put in the 1992 law was designed specifically to 
make it as difficult as possible to close old weather service offices. 
As a matter of fact, it was done at the behest of the union that wanted 
to make certain that they preserved as many jobs as possible by keeping 
these offices from closing down.
  We would be in a process of preserving here today this outmoded 
concept and doing so I think in a way that degrades our ability to 
bring on new technology and therefore undermines our ability to provide 
safe weather forecasting for the American people. I just do not think 
it makes any sense to do it.
  Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. WALKER. I yield to the gentleman from Indiana.
  Mr. SOUDER. One of the questions, and I agree basically with the new 
technology. A number of us have problems which you have acknowledged. 
For example, in Fort Wayne, we have Indianapolis which is more than 100 
miles, which is where one of the questions comes on the new radar, from 
the Indianapolis station, half my district is coming down from Michigan 
at more than 100 miles. Just to the east in another Member from Ohio's 
district in a rural area, they are coming up from Cincinnati more than 
100 miles and another is coming down. Our EMS services are concerned 
about having to coordinate four different regions and we have not had a 
good answer to that. Our weather station is about to close. At the very 
least, these stations while we know that they are working on trying to 
upgrade the systems as you are talking about, we will not have 
protection in this period of coordination of the EMS services.
  We have a question in part of Indiana, whether or not Indianapolis, 
there is a blockage, whether the radar can even pick up some of the 
tornadoes and severe storms that are coming across. While it is not 
perfect in the existing system, it is better than being unprotected 
while NOAA is working through this process. Many of us if we could be 
assured that we were not going to have a degradation of services in 
this process would understand your points very much.
  The CHAIRMAN. The question is on the amendment offered by the 
gentleman from Alabama [Mr. Cramer].
  The amendment was agreed to.
  The CHAIRMAN. Are there other amendments to title IV?


               amendment no. 28 offered by mr. thornberry

  Mr. THORNBERRY. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.
  The CHAIRMAN. The Clerk will designate the amendment.
  The text of the amendment is as follows:

       Amendment No. 28 offered by Mr. Thornberry: Page 109, after 
     line 4, insert the following new subsection:
       (h) NEXRAD Operational Availability and Reliability.--(1) 
     The Secretary of Defense, in conjunction with the 
     administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric 
     Administration, shall take immediate steps to ensure the 
     NEXRAD's operated by the Department of Defense that provide 
     primary detection coverage over a portion of their range 
     function as fully committed, reliable elements of the 
     national weather radar network, operating with the same 
     standards, quality, and availability as the National Weather 
     Service-operated NEXRAD's.
       (2) NEXRAD's operated by the Department of Defense that 
     provide primary detection coverage over a portion of their 
     range are to be considered as integral parts of the National 
     Weather Radar Network.

  Mr. THORNBERRY. Mr. Chairman, following on the last discussion, my 
amendment attempts to deal with some of the specific problems that have 
been incurred around the country because of holes that have developed 
in the National Weather Service radars. I think everyone agrees that 
modernization is very important. We need to have our people protected 
by the best technology possible. But what has happened is that some of 
the radars that are protecting people are managed by the Department of 
Defense rather than the National Weather Service, and those Department 
of Defense radars do not necessarily have to meet the same standards 
that the National Weather Service radars have to meet. As a result of 
that, sometimes the Department of Defense radars are not doing the job.
  As so many of my colleagues who spoke on the previous amendment, we 
have an example in my district that shows just how serious this 
question is. On May 27, 1995, a tornado touched down in my district in 
Vernon, TX, and there was absolutely no warning because there was no 
radar operating at that time.

                              {time}  1415

  As a matter of fact, the backup radar was not operating at that time. 
All the radars that were covering that area were not operating. Ten 
minutes after the tornado passed through, as a result of eyewitness 
accounts, then there was a warning that was issued. Luckily that storm 
did not cause serious injuries, although it did cause some property 
damage. But the point is that some of these DOD radars are not 
operating the way they should.
  I want to take a second to thank the chairman of the full committee 
in particular because he has gone out of his way to work with us in 
resolving these particular problems, but what we have found in my 
district is that sometimes 

[[Page H 9937]]
the communications line taking the radar signal to the National Weather 
Service office goes down, sometimes lightning knocks the power out of 
the radar, and then it takes as much as an hour to get the radar back 
on line. Several of the previous speakers have mentioned GAO reports 
and the National Research Council reports which talked about these 
particular problems with the 15 DOD radars.
  The National Research Council recommended that immediate steps be 
taken to ensure that the 15 NEXRAD's under the control of the 
Department of Defense function as fully committed elements of the 
national weather radar network operating with the same standards, same 
quality and same availability as the National Weather Service NEXRAD's.
  Mr. Chairman, that is exactly what my amendment does. It simply says 
the DOD radars that are an essential part of the system, that are the 
only thing some people have to rely on, must meet the same standards as 
the National Weather Service radars. We should not have some people 
disadvantaged in this new system of new technology because they happen 
to be covered by a DOD radar rather than a National Weather Service 
radar. This seems to be the least we can do to take the additional 
steps, not just require the Secretary to sign a piece of paper that 
says people will be protected, but make the changes in the field that 
will make sure people are protected.
  I hope my colleagues will support the amendment.
  Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word.
  We will accept this amendment. It prods the DOD to increase the 
quality of its portion of the weather modernization system, and we 
would like to commend my colleague, the gentleman from Texas [Mr. 
Thornberry], for his diligence and hard work on this issue.
  The CHAIRMAN. The question is on the amendment offered by the 
gentleman from Texas [Mr. Thornberry].
  The amendment was agreed to.
  The CHAIRMAN. Are there further amendments to title IV?


                    Amendment Offered by Ms. Lofgren

  Ms. LOFGREN. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.
  The CHAIRMAN. The Clerk will designate the amendment.
  The text of the amendment is as follows:

       Amendment offered by Ms. Lofgren:
       On page 110, after line 5 insert the following new sub-
     section:
       ``(d) Nothing in this Act shall preclude or inhibit the 
     National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration from carrying 
     out studies of long term climate and global change.''

  Ms. LOFGREN. Mr. Chairman, I rise to offer an important amendment to 
H.R. 2405 to clarify the confusion that exists over NOAA's role in 
carrying out climate and global change research.
  The bill intended to provide $86.7 million for NOAA's overall Climate 
and Atmospheric Research Program, a reduction of over 27 percent from 
fiscal year 95 spending levels and 46 percent from the request. This 
cut is far beyond what other programs in this bill have absorbed.
  Within this authorization, the bill does two things that must be 
regarded as profoundly narrow minded and deserve our special attention. 
First, the bill singles out climate change for a reduction of $37 
million, over a 40 percent cut. Second, in the committee's report 
language, there is a directive that eliminates the very idea of 
studying long-term climate change. The intent of the bill, the report 
states is that climate and global change. . . has been rolled into the 
interannual and seasonal climate change research line to ensure 
research is relevant to near-term events. That is, NOAA is no longer 
permitted to study long term climate change. It is only authorized to 
have a program that studies season-to-season changes.
  What can be more short sighted than to first cut a program in half, 
then to dictate the scientific direction of the research such that it 
is prohibited from finding answers the Republican leadership may not 
want to know.
  We have seen time and again in this Congress the face of extremism. 
If we define ``ignorance'' as ``the act of ignoring'' we can honestly 
say we have a conspiracy of ignorance in this Congress. Every agency 
which has been charged by Congress to study and assess the potential 
for long term climate change has been savaged in this budget cycle. And 
in the case of NOAA, there has been this additional insult of 
micromanagement.
  I know that most of my colleagues on both sides of the aisle must 
know that problems do not simply go away if they are not studied. 
Global warming may or may not occur in the future--there is a 
legitimate margin of scientific uncertainty that must be narrowed 
through serious research.
  Recently, it was reported that the United Nations-sponsored 
intergovernmental panel on climate change has reached the conclusion 
that the weight of evidence now supports the finding that green house 
warming is occurring. We are told that the subtle changes in the global 
heat balance will result in a greater incidence of severe weather such 
as hurricanes, tornadoes and severe winter storms. Certainly this past 
year should give many pause to wonder.
  I do not think it is necessary for my colleagues to decide today 
whether they accept or do not accept the findings of the IPCC on global 
warming. What is necessary is that we continue to ask the right 
questions and make sure we know the answers in plenty of time to take 
action.
  The Reinsurance Association of America has estimated that natural 
disasters from climate related events have recently risen to losses of 
$1 billion a week in the United States alone. They have taken a strong 
position in support of the Federal Climate Change Research Program for 
a very simple reason--continued research is a wise insurance policy.
  More than a third of the GDP in the United States is directly linked 
to climate conditions in areas such as farming and forestry management, 
transportation, and public utilities, and real estate. If for no other 
reason than to provide for our future economic security, it is 
incumbent on this Congress to continue this vital research.
  The amendment I am offering today does not deal with funding levels, 
although I feel this bill is woefully inadequate. Over the long term, I 
am hopeful that the appropriations conferees will see the value of this 
research even in a fiscally restrained environment.
  My amendment would reestablish NOAA's mission to carry out long-term 
climate studies. It would recognize that a balanced research program 
must include both short-term studies of climate phenomena such as El 
Nino and long-term phenomena such as global warming. All of these 
studies, of course, are interrelated and contribute to our overall 
understanding of our planet. My amendment would remove the irrational 
directive in the committee's report that seeks to hinder this research 
by only allowing NOAA to solve half the problem.
  Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word.
  Mr. Chairman, this amendment is vaguely worded. It is a vaguely 
worded statement as to not inhibit NOAA from doing climate change 
research, and this issue was taken up in committee, and our bill 
received overwhelming bipartisan support.
  But let me, just for the record, state that we have not eliminated 
climate research but instead what we have done in our bill, which it 
seems, although it is rather vague in the amendment, it seems to be her 
purpose to change this focus. We have focused the research of NOAA on 
more important functions, more important phenomena, for example, El 
Nino, which is vital to the safety and to the prosperity of people on 
the west coast and actually farmers throughout the United States. We 
have not in any way, for example, eliminated long-term climate research 
and, in fact, the bill authorizes long-term climate research at $26 
million.
  However, in terms of what we believe that NOAA should focus on, if I 
can read from the report, the committee believes that this 
restructuring will ensure that climate and global change research will 
be focused on improving our understanding of near- and mid-term 
climatic events, and that is really what the crux of this issue is 
about, whether or not we should be looking and spending our limited 
resources at phenomena like El Nino that affect the lives of our 
people, or whether or not we will succumb to what I have called or at 
least what I believe to be, politically 

[[Page H 9938]]
inspired, politically inspired scientific exploration.
  I believe that global warming, which is basically what we are talking 
about hare, was generously funded by the administration over the last 
few years, and this basically is as a result of political rather than 
scientific pressures. We plan, by the way, to have hearings into the 
global warming issue, in which we will have scientists on both sides of 
the issue to discuss openly and try to have an honest dialog about the 
issue of global warming.
  Unfortunately, when we had our last hearing on the ozone problem, 
and, by the way, I think it was a good, a very substantial hearing, we 
had fine representatives on both sides, we were attacked by Vice 
President Gore and the administration because we had both sides of the 
argument at our hearing. Well, for far too long what we have gotten is 
basically PC scientists who basically want to steamroller us on issues 
like ozone and like global warming, but the fact is that we believe 
that these issues should be looked at in toto, and we have, as I said, 
$26 million authorized for long-term climate research. But we basically 
have combined it with interannual and seasonal climate change studies, 
which makes sense.
  Instead of having basically huge chunks of our budget dedicated to 
this trendy global warming issue, instead we are going to take a 
balanced approach, spend $26 million and put it in relationship with 
other long-term global climate change issues.
  So I think that first of all this amendment is vaguely worded. We 
should not inhibit NOAA from involving itself in this type of research. 
The fact is that we have tried to focus NOAA on things that are 
meaningful and things that will affect the lives and property and 
safety of our citizens and the economy of our farm population, 
especially on the west coast. So I would strongly oppose the Lofgren 
amendment.
  Ms. LOFGREN. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. ROHRABACHER. I yield to the gentlewoman from California.
  Ms. LOFGREN. I would note on page 94 of the committee report, next to 
the global category, there is a zero. We have zeroed the account out 
for global research. I am not suggesting that we add additional 
funding.
  Mr. ROHRABACHER. Reclaiming my time, that is because that money was 
folded into the interannual and seasonal climate change study.
  Ms. LOFGREN. That is my point.
  Mr. ROHRABACHER. So we have $26 million in there, and that is in the 
appropriations bill.
  Ms. LOFGREN. The point I am about to make, sir, on the preceding 
pages in the committee report, we say we are limiting study to near and 
mid-term climatic events. What I am suggesting is it would be 
inappropriate for us as Members of Congress, not scientists, to impose 
our judgment on the scientists in that nature.
  Mr. ROHRABACHER. Reclaiming my time, we did not limit it. We focused 
it, and there is a difference between focusing and limiting. So if you 
say none of the money in here shall be spent for this, that is 
something else. But by focusing the efforts away from what I consider 
to be trendy science and a lot of other people believe the global issue 
is nothing more than trendy science, trendy liberal science, we have 
permitted people to look into this area, but tried to focus it on the 
areas that we considered to be responsible and practical and have some 
effect on our citizens.
  Mr. BROWN of California. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite 
number of words.
  I rise in support of the Lofgren amendment. I would like to ask the 
distinguished gentleman from California if he sees anything in this 
bill that would inhibit NOAA from carrying out long-term studies of 
climate and global change.
  Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. BROWN of California. I yield to the gentleman from California.
  Mr. ROHRABACHER. Nothing in the bill prohibits NOAA from doing this. 
It just expresses that we would like it to focus on certain other 
areas.
  Mr. BROWN of California. Nothing in there prohibits it? Why does the 
gentleman object to an amendment that says nothing in this act shall 
prohibit it?
  Mr. ROHRABACHER. Basically, then, we believe that this amendment is 
vague and is nonproductive and could cause some confusion, which it 
already has on this floor.

                              {time}  1430

  Mr. BROWN of California. Mr. Chairman, I would argue that the 
gentleman's own report language is equally vague, and, in fact, it is 
kind of schizophrenic as a matter of fact, because while he gives on 
occasion lip-service to the importance of long-term research, he 
eliminates that category, merging it with short-term research, and 
makes it very clear in the language that the global change research 
will be focused on improving our understanding of near and midterm 
climatic events.
  Now, I do not think the gentleman really wants to eliminate the long-
term.
  Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Chairman, if the gentleman will yield further, 
this is because we believe that this is where the best use of the money 
would be, but we do not limit it and restrict it from being used 
elsewhere.
  Mr. BROWN of California. Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time, that is 
the point I am making. The gentleman's fuzzy language really does not 
limit long-term research, but he objects to saying it in the language 
of the bill. The reasons for that are quite simple. The gentleman has 
already revealed his feelings, which he has expressed many times, that 
this long-term global warming stuff is what he calls----
  Mr. ROHRABACHER. Liberal clap trap is the expression the gentleman is 
looking for.
  Mr. BROWN of California. Liberal clap trap is one of the things he 
said. Politically inspired scientific exploration is another. Trendy 
global warming. I mean, the gentleman makes no secret of the way he 
feels about this. As I say, I think the gentleman becomes a little 
schizophrenic here, because he makes no secret of his view that this is 
not real science or basic research, which the gentleman is thoroughly 
committed to, is he not?
  Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Chairman, if the gentleman will yield further, 
the gentleman is correct. If I could answer the gentleman's question, 
there are some times in legislation, as the gentleman is aware, that 
things are not totally defined because we, during the hearing process, 
expect to receive a better understanding of an issue.
  We have scheduled hearings on the issue of global warming. I expect 
that perhaps next year we might have a more definitive position. But at 
this point it has been more beneficial to have a little more open-
minded approach than to state it that my beliefs happen to be the law 
of the land.
  Mr. BROWN of California. Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time, I admire 
the gentleman's open-minded approach to this issue. His language, of 
course, indicates how open minded he is on this issue.
  There is another little thing I would like to have the gentleman 
remain open minded on. The gentleman in his discussion of the 
importance of mid and short-term research is enunciating a policy that 
this kind of research is very good, because it contributes immediate 
value. Now, this is how we define applied research. This is how we 
define cooperative research, with users and industry. This is short-
term applied research that helps the economy of this country.
  Now, that is blasphemy from the leadership of your committee. This is 
not something that we want to support. It is the long-term basic 
research that is real research and that we ought to be devoting our 
energy and resources to. The gentleman has completely turned that on 
its head. Does that strike the gentleman as being somewhat incongruous?
  Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Chairman, if the gentleman will yield further, 
this type of research has broad based benefit, rather than benefit that 
is aimed at one particular interest group. Usually the main thing we 
have complained about on this side of the aisle, I can just speak for 
myself, is that quite often when the government is spending money, that 
it ends up spending money in an area of research that benefits a 
specific special interest group, and, quite often, who could afford to 
spend that money on their own. In this case, this type of research has 
a broad base of benefit.

[[Page H 9939]]

  Mr. BROWN of California. Mr. Chairman, I have here a letter from the 
Reinsurance Association of America representing all the insurance 
companies of this great country in which they strongly urge that we 
continue to support this kind of long-term global warming research. 
Now, is it the gentleman's view that the combined insurance companies 
of this great country cannot afford a little money? Are they not a 
special interest that is benefiting from this sort of thing?
  Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Chairman, if the gentleman will continue to 
yield. I would say that if the gentleman is asking my opinion, it would 
be that yes, that is a special interest group, and it is benefiting 
from and believes it might be benefiting from global warming research.
  Mr. BROWN of California. They need to know that, because it 
influences their estimates of losses that they will have and so forth.
  The CHAIRMAN. The time of the gentleman from California [Mr. Brown] 
has expired.
  (By unanimous consent, Mr. Brown of California was allowed to proceed 
for 2 additional minutes.)
  Mr. BROWN of California. Mr. Chairman, perhaps we can elicit some 
further wisdom from the chairman of the subcommittee or the full 
committee. The point I am trying to make here in supporting this is 
very simple: The chairman has already indicated that he does not intend 
to preclude long-term research. He does not like it, and he said so 
vigorously, but he is not trying to preclude it. But he objects to an 
amendment that says he is not trying to preclude it. I consider that to 
be somewhat inconsistent.
  The gentleman prefers instead to support the view which previously he 
never supported, that short-term research is real research, because it 
creates value, which is applicable to a large constituency, and we 
should be doing that.
  The gentleman has not argued that way before. As I indicated very 
early in this debate, I enjoy pointing these little things out, and I 
will continue to needle the gentleman about them. I know the gentleman 
understands that I do it in good spirit.
  Mr. ROHRABACHER. I appreciate the role the former chairman is 
playing.
  Mr. WALKER. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of 
words.
  Mr. Chairman, we all appreciate the gentleman from California's 
needling on all of this and so on. At times I do not think he exactly 
understands the point, but maybe he chooses not to. The fact is that 
there is nothing inconsistent at all about what we are doing here. What 
we have said is when you are doing this kind of research, NOAA, you 
ought to do it with regard to your mission.
  I do not know at any time that we have not supported mission-oriented 
research. It is one of the things that we have said should be done. In 
fact, we are going to get an argument here in a little while on EPA 
that suggests that EPA ought to be out doing things for OSHA, and doing 
all kinds of things all over the Government and so on. We said no, they 
ought to stick to their mission. We said NOAA ought to stick to its 
mission.
  All the report language said is when you are prioritizing the use of 
this funding, maybe you ought to do things that really relate to the 
mission you are doing. That tends to be more near and midterm than long 
term. We do not preclude the long term. The gentlewoman is exactly 
correct in suggesting that the language would be fine if it said shall 
preclude NOAA, but the gentlewoman in her amendment puts a fascinating 
word in it. She says preclude or inhibit.
  Now, we went to look up the word ``inhibit.'' The word ``inhibit'' is 
a great little word, speaking of needling. It says inhibit is 
``consciously or unconsciously suppressing or restraining.''
  Now, can somebody tell me where in this act we have some unconscious 
action that is suppressing or restraining?
  Ms. LOFGREN. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. WALKER. I yield to the gentlewoman from California.
  Ms. LOFGREN. Mr. Chairman, I would suggest, based on the chairman of 
the subcommittee's earlier comments, that since there is no intention 
on the part of himself or apparently the committee to preclude or 
inhibit long-term research, based on the gentleman's comment, that the 
language on the bottom of page 32 and top of page 33 of the committee 
report that seems to indicate otherwise would have an inhibiting effect 
upon the agency, since apparently it is not what the gentleman 
intended.
  Mr. WALKER. Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time, there is no inhibiting 
factor on this. What in the world, where in the act is this? The 
gentlewoman keeps quoting from the report. The report is advisory. 
Reports are always advisory. Where in the act?
  The gentlewoman refers to the act. She says, ``Nothing in the act 
shall preclude or inhibit.'' She does not talk about the report. She 
talks about the act. Where in the act is there something that 
consciously or unconsciously suppresses or restraints? Can the 
gentlewoman cite me one line in the act?
  Ms. LOFGREN. Mr. Chairman, if the gentleman will yield further, the 
fact we have zeroed out this account, and, I would add, going back to 
the gentleman's earlier statement on mission-oriented science, I am 
also interested in whose mission it would be to pursue global warming 
research, since we have eliminated this active thing in EPA and NOAA 
and the Department of Energy.
  Mr. WALKER. Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time, the gentlewoman totally 
misrepresents the situation. NSF is still capable of doing global 
change. A lot of the university money coming into my area is 
independent researchers doing work there. The Department of Energy 
still has the capability of doing that and still does it. EPA will 
still have the capability of doing this kind of research. NASA has done 
considerable amounts of work. Most information quoted on global change 
has come from NASA.
  We are not taking away any of that money. In fact, in the bill, if we 
refer to the act, in the act there is an account for long-term climate 
and air quality research that is at $26 million. Big money. In fact, in 
this whole area we only spent $9 million in NOAA in 1989. Now we spend 
$96.5 million, something like that. We have had over a 1,000-percent 
increase in about 6 years from this account.
  What we said was maybe a 1,000-percent increase in the account is a 
little more than we can take, if we are going to balance the budget, 
and maybe what we ought to do is trim it down some. And the way to trim 
it down is not to take the money away from the researchers, but take 
the money away from the bureaucrats. So we consolidated some programs 
to take the money away from some of the bureaucracy, and we 
consolidated the programs, and we gave it $26 million in just long 
term.
  Now, how is that inhibiting? The gentlewoman seems to be suggesting 
to me that that is inhibiting. Where is that inhibiting?
  Ms. LOFGREN. Mr. Chairman, if the gentleman will yield further, it 
seems to me there is too much protestation for a group that says they 
are not opposed to long-term global research. I am not suggesting in my 
amendment the expenditure of a single penny more than is included in 
this bill. What I am suggesting, and what I am suggesting here, is that 
we not make the scientific judgment.
  Mr. WALKER. Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time, nobody is suggesting 
that the gentlewoman is suggesting more money. Nobody said that. What 
we suggested was that her amendment has some very confusing wording in 
it. The word ``inhibit,'' the gentlewoman still has not told me yet 
where in the bill there is anything that suggests that NOAA is being 
inhibited. Can the gentlewoman cite me a line, a page anywhere in the 
bill? Because the gentlewoman says, ``Nothing in this act shall 
inhibit.'' Where? Where in the act? Why is this amendment necessary? 
What in the world do we have? We can take the word ``preclude,'' 
because we do not think there is anything in there. But the word 
``inhibit,'' it is just a superflouous, almost ridiculous word. Why in 
the world is that in there? Is that to tie the hands of NOAA?
  The CHAIRMAN. The time of the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. 
Walker] has expired.

[[Page H 9940]]

  (By unanimous consent, Mr. Walker was allowed to proceed for 1 
additional minute.)
  Mr. WALKER. Mr. Chairman, again I ask, is there anyplace the 
gentlewoman can cite me in the act where any language in the act 
inhibits this kind of research?


            modification to amendment offered by ms. lofgren

  Ms. LOFGREN. Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent to remove the 
words ``or inhibit'' from the amendment.
  The CHAIRMAN. Is there objection to the request of the gentleman from 
California?
  There was no objection.
  The text of the amendment, as modified, is as follows:

       Amendment, as modified, offered by Ms. Lofgren: On page 
     110, after line 5 insert the following new sub-section:
       ``(d) Nothing in this Act shall preclude the National 
     Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration from carrying out 
     studies of long term climate and global change.''

  Mr. WALKER. Mr. Chairman, we accept the amendment.
  The CHAIRMAN. The question is on the amendment, as modified, offered 
by the gentlewoman from California [Ms. Lofgren].
  The amendment, as modified, was agreed to.
  The CHAIRMAN. Are there further amendments to title IV?


                     amendment offered by mr. gekas

  Mr. GEKAS. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.
  The Clerk read as follows:

       Amendment offered by Mr. Gekas: Page 109, after line 4, 
     insert the following new subsection:
       (h) Report.--Section 704 of the Weather Service 
     Modernization Act (15 U.S.C. 313 note) is amended by adding 
     at the end the following new subsection:
       ``(c) Report.--The Secretary shall contract with the 
     National Research Council for a review of the NEXRAD Network 
     radar coverage pattern as indicated in the 1996 National 
     Implementation Plan of the National Weather Service for a 
     determination of areas of inadequate radar coverage. In 
     conducting such a review, the National Research Council shall 
     prepare and submit to the Secretary, no later than 6 months 
     after the date of the enactment of this Act, a report which 
     assesses the feasibility of existing and future Federal 
     Aviation Administration Terminal Doppler Weather Radars to 
     provide reliable weather radar data, in a cost-efficient 
     manner, to nearby weather forecast offices.

     The Secretary shall report to the Committee on Science of the 
     House of Representatives and the Committee on Commerce, 
     Science, and Transportation of the Senate, not later than 60 
     days after receiving the report under this subsection, on 
     recommendations to implement the findings in such report.

  Mr. GEKAS (during the reading). Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent 
that the amendment be considered as read and printed in the Record.
  The CHAIRMAN. Is there objection to the request of the gentleman from 
Pennsylvania?
  There was no objection.
  Mr. GEKAS. Mr. Chairman, I promise not to inhibit this process any 
longer than is necessary. This is a very modest amendment that would 
cause the National Research Council, if the amendment should be passed, 
to look into the feasibility of using FAA existing implementation of 
radar for the purposes of filling in the gaps that NEXRAD may have and 
which has been documented across the country to exist in the various 
sections of our Nation.
  What this would do is simply allow the Research Council to see, 
without having to spend anymore money for new technology or new 
implementation, the technology that is now part of NEXRAD for these 
gaps, but rather to see whether or not existing outposts of FAA can be 
shifted, can do double duty, for the purpose of filling the gaps that 
now exist because of the NEXRAD overshoot that exist in many areas.
  I have talked this over with the chairman, my colleague, the 
gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Walker], and, under threat of personal 
punishment, he has agreed that the majority will accept the amendment. 
I hope that the minority feels the same.
  Mr. BROWN of California. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. GEKAS. I yield to the gentleman from California.
  Mr. BROWN of California. Mr. Chairman, the minority has been 
following a pretty reasonable rule in this connection, and we will do 
so again. But I would like to make this point, because I am eager to 
use every opportunity to make points that I think will expose the 
majority.
  Mr. GEKAS. Mr. Chairman, we will not inhibit the gentleman.
  Mr. BROWN of California. We have had a couple of issues for our 
committee, the committee of the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. 
Walker], in which we have sought National Research Council advice. One 
of these involves the importance of aeronautical engineering research, 
and another had to do with the validity of the earth observing system 
which is part of the global warming program on which we are spending 
quite a bit of money. In both cases the chairman of the committee did 
not like the results and went ahead and disregarded them. in fact, Mr. 
Chairman, whenever he does something like this, he has some derogatory 
things to say about these egg-headed scientists pretending to be able 
to advise us on important policy decisions.
  Now with the understanding that the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. 
Walker] would accept the NRC report when it is obtained, I will be glad 
to support the gentleman's amendment.
  Mr. GEKAS. Mr. Chairman, I will force the gentleman to accept it.
  Mr. BROWN of California. Will the gentleman force him to do that?
  Mr. GEKAS. I will do my best.
  Mr. BROWN of California. Then, Mr. Chairman, the gentleman has met 
all my requirements, and I support the amendment.
  Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. GEKAS. I yield to the gentleman from California.
  Mr. ROHRABACHER. Speaking for the majority, Mr. Chairman, the 
gentleman's amendment is accepted.
  Mr. GEKAS. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman from California.
  The CHAIRMAN. The question is on the amendment offered by the 
gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Gekas].
  The amendment was agreed to.
  The CHAIRMAN. Are there further amendments to title IV?
  The Clerk will designate title V.
  The text of title V is as follows:

                TITLE V--ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY

     SEC. 501. SHORT TITLE.

       This title may be cited as the ``Environmental Research, 
     Development, and Demonstration Authorization Act of 1995''.

     SEC. 502. DEFINITIONS.

       For the purposes of this title, the term--
       (1) ``Administrator'' means the Administrator of the 
     Environmental Protection Agency;
       (2) ``Agency'' means the Environmental Protection Agency; 
     and
       (3) ``Assistant Administrator'' means the Assistant 
     Administrator for Research and Development of the Agency.

     SEC. 503. AUTHORIZATION OF APPROPRIATIONS.

       (a) In General.--There are authorized to be appropriated to 
     the Administrator $490,000,000 for fiscal year 1996 for the 
     Office of Research and Development for environmental 
     research, development, and demonstration activities, 
     including program management and support, in the areas 
     specified in subsection (b), of which--
       (1) $321,694,800 shall be for Research and Development; and
       (2) $109,263,400 shall be for Program and Research 
     Operations.
       (b) Specific Programs and Activities.--Of the amount 
     authorized in subsection (a), there are authorized to be 
     appropriated the following:
       (1) For air related research, $93,915,200, of which--
       (A) $67,111,400 shall be for Research and Development; and
       (B) $26,803,800 shall be for Program and Research 
     Operations.
       (2) For global change research, $2,385,700, of which--
       (A) $2,125,400 shall be for Research and Development; and
       (B) $260,300 shall be for Program and Research Operations.
       (3) For water quality related research, $21,243,100, of 
     which--
       (A) $9,453,100 shall be for Research and Development; and
       (B) $11,790,000 shall be for Program and Research 
     Operations.
       (4) For drinking water related research, $20,652,400, of 
     which--
       (A) $10,376,500 shall be for Research and Development; and
       (B) $10,275,900 shall be for Program and Research 
     Operations.
       (5) For toxic chemical related research, $11,053,900, of 
     which--
       (A) $5,028,600 shall be for Research and Development; and
       (B) $6,025,300 shall be for Program and Research 
     Operations.
       (6) For lab and field expenses, $73,031,600, all of which 
     shall be for Research and Development.
       (7) For headquarters expenses of the Office of Research and 
     Development, $9,254,800, all of which shall be for Research 
     and Development.

[[Page H 9941]]

       (8) For multimedia related research expenses, $158,656,800, 
     of which--
       (A) $122,142,900 shall be for Research and Development;
       (B) $31,513,900 shall be for Program and Research 
     Operations; and
       (C) $5,000,000 shall be for graduate student fellowships.
       (9) For program management expenses, $6,399,300, all of 
     which shall be for Program and Research Operations.
       (10) For pesticide related research, $13,345,200, of 
     which--
       (A) $7,192,800 shall be for Research and Development; and
       (B) $6,152,400 shall be for Program and Research 
     Operations.
       (11) For oil pollution related research, $2,076,900.
       (12) For research related to leaking underground storage 
     tanks, $769,400.
       (13) For research related to cleanup of contaminated sites, 
     $56,195,500.
       (14) For research related to hazardous waste, $21,020,200, 
     of which--
       (A) $10,977,700 shall be for Research and Development; and
       (B) $10,042,500 shall be for Program and Research 
     Operations.
       (c) Limitations.--No funds are authorized to be 
     appropriated by this title for--
       (A) the Environmental Technology Initiative;
       (B) the Climate Change Action Plan; or
       (C) indoor air pollution research.
       (2) No sums are authorized to be appropriated for any 
     fiscal year after fiscal year 1996 for the activities for 
     which sums are authorized by this title unless such sums are 
     specifically authorized to be appropriated by Act of Congress 
     with respect to such fiscal year.
       (3) Notwithstanding any other provision of law, no sums are 
     authorized to be appropriated for fiscal year 1996 for the 
     activities for which sums are authorized by this title unlead 
     such sums are specifically authorized to be appropriated by 
     this title.

     SEC. 504. SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH REVIEW.

       (a) In General.--The Administrator shall assign to the 
     Assistant Administrator the duties of--
       (1) developing a strategic plan for scientific and 
     technical research activities throughout the Agency;
       (2) integrating that strategic plan into ongoing Agency 
     planning activities; and
       (3) reviewing all Agency research to ensure the research--
       (A) is of high quality; and
       (B) does not duplicate any other research being conducted 
     by the Agency.
       (b) Report.--The Assistant Administrator shall transmit 
     annually to the Administrator and to the Committee on Science 
     of the House of Representatives and the Committee on 
     Environment and Public Works of the Senate a report 
     detailing--
       (1) all Agency research the Assistant Administrator finds 
     is not of sufficiently high quality; and
       (2) all Agency research the Assistant Administrator finds 
     duplicates other Agency research.

     SEC. 505. PROHIBITION OF LOBBYING ACTIVITIES.

       None of the funds authorized by this title shall be 
     available for any activity whose purpose is to influence 
     legislation pending before the Congress, except that this 
     shall not prevent officers or employees of the United States 
     or of its departments or agencies from communicating to 
     Members of Congress on the request of any Member or to 
     Congress, through the proper channels, requests for 
     legislation or appropriations which they deem necessary for 
     the efficient conduct of the public business.

     SEC. 506. ELIGIBILITY FOR AWARDS.

       (a) In General.--The Administrator shall exclude from 
     consideration for awards of financial assistance made by the 
     Office of Research and Development after fiscal year 1995 any 
     person who received funds, other than those described in 
     subsection (b), appropriated for a fiscal year after fiscal 
     year 1995, from any Federal funding source for a project that 
     was not subjected to a competitive, merit-based award 
     process. Any exclusion from consideration pursuant to this 
     section shall be effective for a period of 5 years after the 
     person receives such Federal funds.
       (b) Exception.--Subsection (a) shall not apply to awards to 
     persons who are members of a class specified by law for which 
     assistance is awarded to members of the class according to a 
     formula provided by law.

     SEC. 507. GRADUATE STUDENT FELLOWSHIPS.

       In carrying out the graduate student fellowship program for 
     which funds are authorized to be appropriated by this title, 
     the Administrator shall ensure that any fellowship award to a 
     student selected after the date of the enactment of this Act 
     is used only to support research that would further missions 
     of the Office of Research and Development in fields in which 
     there exists or is projected to exist a shortage in the 
     number of scientists.

  The CHAIRMAN. Are there any amendments to title V?


                    amendment offered by ms. lofgren

  Ms. LOFGREN. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.
  The CHAIRMAN. The Clerk will designate the amendment.
  The text of the amendment is as follows:

       Amendment offered by Ms. Lofgren: On page 133, line 6, 
     ``(B) the Climate Change Action Plan;'' and renumber 
     accordingly.

  Ms. LOFGREN. Mr. Chairman, I offer this amendment to H.R. 2405 to 
enable EPA to continue to do research in assessment on climate change.
  Mr. Chairman, section 503(c) of the bill prohibits EPA from doing 
research in certain areas that do not match the vision of science in 
this country held by some. The change in the climate change research 
areas specifically outlines the work on the climate change action plan. 
In the broad area of global change research the bill reduces the 
funding level form $22.5 million to $2.4 million, a 90-percent 
reduction. The bill directs EPA to terminate its Global Change Research 
Program on the grounds that it is duplicative in research in other 
agencies. The only problem with the logic is global change in virtually 
every other agency is similarly terminated or drastically reduced.
  Mr. Chairman, we have seen the intensity of the view of some that 
environmental research is not what our country needs, but I believe 
that, and I think many others on the other side of the aisle do too, 
that we are well advised to know certain things. One of the things we 
need to know about is whether our climate is changing.
  We recently, as I mentioned in our previous amendment, noted that the 
Nobel Prize committee has recognized that the ability and actually the 
threat of human activity can indeed have an impact on the globe and on, 
potentially, climate. This is something that we need to research 
further so we can go well-armed for the future.
  Mr. Chairman, my amendment addresses the provision of the bill which 
is very dangerous because it ignores a large body of scientific 
evidence and critical scientific research by simply shutting down this 
program.
  The section 503 tells EPA that they can no longer spend money on an 
action plan that they have already developed. It says, ``Take your 
report back, get rid of it, pretend it never existed,'' but that is not 
a message that we should give to scientists.
  The EPA, as well as other agencies such as the Forest Service and 
DOE, was asked by President Bush to coordinate a strategy for 
responding to commitments made at the Rio convention several years ago. 
The whole idea was to make sure that the administration had a 
coordinated research and policy framework so that there would be no 
duplication of efforts or ambiguities regarding agency responsibility. 
There is now a plan which is continuing to be developed. The impact of 
the prohibition in the bill is to eradicate the plan. The EPA could not 
even mail the report out, much less continue the policy development 
process.
  Mr. Chairman, my amendment would reinstate the climate action plan as 
a legitimate planning document and template for the policy actions over 
the next several years as the research on global changes matures. It is 
clear that some things can be done easily and cheaply. Others will be 
enormously expensive and difficult. It makes economic sense to know 
which is which, how long we can wait before taking any action, and 
indeed whether action needs to be taken at all.
  Mr. Chairman, the committee's prohibition on the climate action plan 
is not sensible in a very literal sense. It also reveals a deeper 
problem that I hope we can come to grips with which is direction of 
scientific research on the basis of our own druthers, on what we hope 
is true.
  The environmental problems that we face may be real. I hope they are 
not, but they will not go away simply by killing funding or refusing to 
mail out a report.
  Now, hearkening back to our earlier discussion in the last amendment, 
I was heartened that members of the committee on both sides of the 
aisle do not intend to preclude long-term global research. The 
amendment before us would not authorize any additional funds. It would 
simply, as in the prior discussion, eliminate the prohibition on 
research in this important activity, and I would urge that we, in a 
show of bipartisan embrace of our future and planted in the climate, 
accept this amendment.
  Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word.
  Mr. Chairman, here we go again. These amendments would restore global 
warming programs to the Environmental Protection Agency.

[[Page H 9942]]

  Let me just state right off the bat that it is my belief and the 
belief of the majority that this has nothing to do with the basic 
mission of the EPA. I mean does really having the EPA studying what 
will happen to fish after 100 years of global warming, does that really 
go to the heart of what we want the EPA to do? Is this part of its 
mission?
  The answer is no, it is not. The EPA badly needs to prioritize its 
funds and to get sound science to determine regulatory process.
  Mr. Chairman, the fact is that, if we put the EPA and keep the EPA 
involved in global warming research, what we have done has a budgetary 
impact on each and every other area in which the EPA is involved, some 
of the other things which are part of the core mission of the EPA. Keep 
the EPA involved in global warming research, and that means the other 
functions will have less money to spend, and although there is not a 
specific amount mentioned in the amendment, frankly it has a major 
impact on the funding of the various parts of EPA.
  Mr. WALKER. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. ROHRABACHER. I yield to the gentleman from Pennsylvania.
  Mr. WALKER. Let us be clear about what the gentlewoman's amendment 
would be.
  EPA does not regulate CO2 emissions. They do regulate ozone. 
What we are doing is saying that they ought not be doing work in 
CO2 emissions that they do not regulate because that is not the 
office, but we specifically allow them to do the ozone research and do 
the stratospheric kind of evaluations.
  So what the gentlewoman's amendment would do would be to give them 
the opportunity at least to divert funding away from that which they do 
not or do regulate toward things which they do not regulate which 
undermines the specific mission of the Office of Research and 
Development, and so we think that we are permitting them to do one of 
these things that has been regarded as a global warming issue, but to 
do it in the area where they have the regulation power, to do it 
related to what they are supposed to be doing over the long term, in 
stratospheric ozone, and for the life of me I cannot understand why, 
when we are spending $1.8 billion on global warming across the whole 
Government, why we feel we have to have everybody doing the same thing 
over and over.
  Mr. Chairman, it seems to me that targeting it toward that where the 
agency has expertise and regulatory power is exactly the right 
direction to go. That is what our bill does.
  Mr. ROHRABACHER. In fact, Mr. Chairman, these programs that are 
spread throughout the Federal Government's budget on global warming are 
a product of basically the Vice President of the United States' zeal 
for this particular issue. Many of us believe that that zeal is what we 
would call environmental fanaticism.
  Mr. WALKER. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. ROHRABACHER. I yield to the gentleman from Pennsylvania.
  Mr. WALKER. Was it not the Vice President the other day who 
criticized our committee for having held a hearing where we actually 
allowed scientists with a diverse point of view to come in and testify? 
I mean, in other words, he is so committed, he is so ideologically 
driven on this, that he does not want any witnesses appearing on 
Capitol Hill that do not share his point of view and, in fact, 
criticized the gentleman's subcommittee for actually allowing 
scientists to come in and testify who did not share his point of view.
  Is that not correct?
  Mr. ROHRABACHER. That is correct.
  Mr. WALKER. It was astounding.
  Mr. ROHRABACHER. In fact we will be holding hearings on global 
warming, and these hearings, I can assure all of my colleagues, will be 
very balanced, which again will probably raise the fur on the back of 
the Vice President's neck because we are permitting experts in the area 
of global warming who disagree with his position to actually testify 
and have a juxtaposed position with those scientists who agree with the 
Vice President's position in global warming.
  Mr. Chairman, we need to make sure that we handle our appropriations 
and authorizations with an eye towards focusing the effort in those 
areas where they can be most effective. Global warming should not be 
handled in EPA. We have in the last debate suggested that we both agree 
that long-term climate research is something that should be done in 
NOAA. In EPA it is out of place, and the gentlewoman's amendment would 
take funding away from all the other areas of EPA in order to fund 
something that it should not be doing.
  Ms. LOFGREN. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. ROHRABACHER. I yield to the gentlewoman from California.
  The CHAIRMAN. The time of the gentleman from California [Mr. 
Rohrabacher] has expired.
  (By unanimous consent, Mr. Rohrabacher was allowed to proceed for 2 
additional minutes.)
  Ms. LOFGREN. The Interagency Task Force on Global Change in EPA was 
created in 1989 by then President George Bush, as my colleagues are 
aware, not by Vice President Gore. I did not vote for President Bush, 
but he was my President, too, and I am glad he started this endeavor. 
The fruit of his efforts has now been completed. We have a plan that 
unless this amendment is passed cannot even be distributed. Talk about 
taking money and flushing it completely away. I think that is foolhardy 
indeed.
  Second, we have talked a lot in this committee and in this Congress 
about using sound science, about cost-benefit analysis, and part of 
what we need to do is to have judgments that can be made based on sound 
science. We have talked about ozone. How do we know the benefit of 
regulation of ozone if we do not know at least in part the impact on 
our climate? That may be part of our sound science.

                              {time}  1500

  Mr. ROHRABACHER. Reclaiming my time, Mr. Chairman, global warming and 
ozone are two different issues. For the record, there is nothing in the 
language of our bill or our authorization that suggests that any work 
that has already been done by EPA should not be circulated or not be 
made available to anyone who would like to request it, or who they 
would like to send it to.
  What we are trying to do instead is in the future we would like EPA 
to focus on those many environmental issues that are significant and 
that they hold the responsibility for, rather than having this just 
another one of the many global warming projects within the Federal 
budget.
  Mr. Chairman, I respectfully disagree with my colleague's amendment.
  Mr. OLVER. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of 
words.
  Mr. Chairman, this debate is sometimes a little bit like Alice in 
Wonderland. It is quite a moving target one has to deal with along the 
way.
  Mr. Chairman, I was in support of the amendment that has been offered 
by the gentleman from California [Ms. Lofgren] an amendment that 
strikes language that precludes EPA from spending money on climate 
change research and action. I would just, at the beginning, say that it 
seems to me, Mr. Chairman, that this amendment attempts to least to 
correct the wrongheadedness of the authorization bill that is the 
underlying legislation here.
  The chairman of the subcommittee claims to be a strong fan of risk 
assessment, and I notice here in this document which is put out by the 
Environmental Protection Agency, the Science Advisory Board, dated 
September 1990, a document specifically related to reducing risk and 
setting priorities and strategies for environmental protection, 1990 
being before the time under the previous administration, that on page 
13 under the relatively high-risk environmental problems, specifically 
the EPA and the Science Advisory Board speak of global climate change 
as one of the high-risk areas of environmental problems that we really 
need science done on.
  It seems to me that at least the Science Advisory Board for EPA has 
been quite clear on what are the high risks that we ought to be dealing 
with. I guess I would add that it seems to me that not all scientific 
issues are clarified by congressional hearings. In fact, I think that 
quite recently, and I think the one which has already been alluded to 
and which the Vice President has some unkind words about, I think that 
one probably mostly further muddied the water and further obfuscated 
the circumstances.

[[Page H 9943]]

  The chairman of the full committee and the chairman of the 
subcommittee surely know that the Nobel Prize in chemistry was just 
given out in the last couple of days to three researchers doing work in 
ozone, the ozone later.
  Mr. BROWN of California. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. OLVER. I yield to the gentleman from California.
  Mr. BROWN of California. Mr. Chairman, is it possible that this 
liberal claptrap that he is complaining about is the creation of the 
Bush Science Advisory Committee?
  Mr. OLVER. It would seem that that might be the case.
  Mr. BROWN of California. They agree with that. Good.
  Mr. OLVER. It is possible. They agree. In any case, I wonder, it 
seems to me that this global climate change is very close to the 
mission of the EPA, to the core mission, which is what the Science 
Advisory Board of the EPA the previous administration determined. I do 
not think we should be removing EPA's capacity to work on one of the 
very functions that it was created to do.
  We certainly would not ask the FDA to stop researching whether drugs 
are safe. We certainly would not ask the Department of Agriculture, the 
USDA, to stop making sure that the food we eat is safe, although 
actually, I suppose I maybe should not be asking those questions, since 
it seems that all too many of the people here are quite willing to do 
exactly those things.
  However, I would ask that this Congress recognize the need for 
research into our global environment. Particularly during this record-
breaking hurricane season, it would be particularly ironic if the 
Congress were to turn its back on the research necessary to understand 
climate change.
  Mr. Chairman, we have been hearing for some time about the need for 
good cost-benefit analysis. The problem seems to be the question of 
analysis. We have to have good data in order to do any kind of analysis 
at all. Whether Members disagree or agree with the concept of global 
warming, we ought to be willing to gather the data that are necessary, 
so we can debate this with an educated viewpoint.
  Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. OLVER. I yield to the gentleman from California.
  Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Chairman, I would ask the gentleman, are there 
any, of the 12 agencies that are now involved with global climate 
change, would he eliminate any of them from that job? Is there any one 
that the gentleman would agree should refocus their efforts, and 
perhaps maybe only 11 agencies or 10 agencies should be involved? What 
agencies would the gentleman agree should not be involved in this?
  Mr. OLVER. Mr. Chairman, I am not privy to the list of the 12 
agencies, nor do I know exactly what the missions are of each of them. 
All we have been talking here about is NOAA, and it is clearly a core 
function of NOAA, by its very name, it is a core function of NOAA, and 
in terms of environmental protection and risk analysis to environmental 
risks, then it seems to me it is pretty clearly a core function of EPA. 
It is not wrong to have some different agencies working on an issue 
where the core functions do not completely overlap. I am not going to 
try to defend each of the other 10. I do not know what the other 10 
are. These, it seems to me, are core functions for EPA, by its very 
name, and to NOAA, by its very name.
  Mr. ROHRABACHER. I would be very happy to provide the gentleman a 
list of the 12 agencies in which global warming is a concern.
  Mr. OLVER. I would be happy to study the list and give an answer as 
to whether one or more or several as to which the issue of global 
warming is not a core function, but these two agencies we have been 
talking about today, it is a core function.
  Mr. TIAHRT. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of 
words.
  Mr. Chairman, as I understand this amendment, what we are doing is 
elimination of or striking the clause where EPA is going to continue or 
start into global climate change research. It is my understanding of 
the EPA charter or the scope of their job, that it is to study the 
environment for regulatory purposes. My concern here is that we already 
have 12 agencies that are undergoing global warming research to the 
tune of about $1.8 billion, if my information is correct. I think we 
probably have a shotgun approach to this already.
  Some of these agencies probably, along with EPA, should not be in the 
business of studying this climate change, doing this research. The 
Department of Defense may have some arguments for it because of the 
nature of the business of defending the people of America. The 
Department of Commerce, I think, is an area where we probably should be 
redirecting some of this effort, and the Department of the Interior 
also. Certainly, there are other agencies like NASA and the National 
Science Foundation that have a direct tie into what we are doing in 
this research.
  Mr. WALKER. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. TIAHRT. I yield to the gentleman from Pennsylvania.
  Mr. WALKER. Mr. Chairman, the gentleman is making an excellent point. 
I think maybe because it has been indicated that somehow this is the 
only money being spent in global change research, that not to allow 
this spending to be done would in fact decimate the global change 
research program, that we ought to talk a little bit about it.
  The Department of Agriculture spends over $60 million a year on 
global change. The Department of Commerce spends over $135 million a 
year on global change. The Department of Defense spends $6.5 million on 
global change. The Department of Energy spends over $120 million on 
global change. The Department of Health and Human Services spends over 
$25 million on global change. The Department of the Interior spends 
over $30 million on global change. The Department of Transportation 
spends a little less than $1 million on global change. The 
Environmental Protection Agency spends a little over $25 million on 
global change. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration spends 
$1.25 billion on global change. The National Science Foundation spends 
$170 million on global change. The Smithsonian Institute spends $2.8 
million on global change, and the Tennessee Valley Authority spends 
$1.2 million on global change.

  We have a lot of agencies spending a lot of money on global change. 
To suggest that somehow this amendment is going to do something about 
the global warming change program becomes somewhat ridiculous.
  Mr. TIAHRT. Reclaiming my time, Mr. Chairman, I think the gentleman 
made a very good point. When we are trying to find a solution to a 
problem, often we want to have a few diversified groups looking into 
the problem to see exactly how we can come up with a solution. Perhaps 
we could get some fresh thoughts and fresh minds looking at new ideas, 
maybe new concepts.
  However, to spread it over 12 agencies to the tune of $1.8 billion, I 
think we already have that much diversity. I think it probably exceeds 
common sense in the realm of applying one more agency, the EPA. I think 
it is probably time to draw back some of the reins on studying climate 
change, that research, let it concentrate on areas that have a very 
keen interest and, I might add, a charter for such research, like NASA, 
perhaps even the Department of Energy, would be better suited that EPA, 
the Department of Defense.
  I think what this amendment does is it just goes beyond the 
commonsense thought process here, because we already have plenty of 
agencies looking into climate change, global climate change. I think 
putting it back in EPA will serve no purpose for the taxpayers.
  Ms. LOFGREN. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. TIAHRT. I yield to the gentlewoman from California.
  Ms. LOFGREN. I would like to make a couple of comments, Mr. Chairman. 
I think this is sounding a little like a partisan issue, and I honestly 
think it should not be. We have all, on both sides of the aisle, 
discussed our commitment to basic research because that is important to 
understanding our 

[[Page H 9944]]
world, and it is important to the economic vitality of our country. 
Basic research is mission-driven in a whole variety of agencies 
throughout the country, because there is value in the diversity of 
different approaches in basic research. We come up with different 
answers. That is why we do not have a science czar that directs all 
scientific inquiry.
  I think this is somewhat similar to that. I would just add this. All 
of us will be grievously distressed and our citizens will be distressed 
if we fail to take action in an appropriate manner and our country pays 
a terrible economic price. We are now on the Rs for hurricanes, the 
first time I think that has ever happened on names.
  I am not a scientist. I notice that the Nobel Committee thinks 
something is going on with climate change. I think it is up to us to 
put aside our partisanship and to let scientists move forward into a 
legitimate inquiry in this.
  Mr. TIAHRT. I think the gentlewoman made a good point about 
diversification, but I think 12 agencies and $1.8 billion is excessive.
  Mr. WAXMAN. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of 
words.
  (Mr. WAXMAN asked and was given permission to revise and extend his 
remarks.)
  Mr. WAXMAN. Mr. Chairman, the issue of global warming is a matter of 
great concern. I have an editorial from the Washington Post. They said 
that ``There are great uncertainties in how much the temperature will 
rise and how great any damage will be, but the case for being concerned 
about global warming is getting stronger. That makes it especially 
distressing that committees in the House and Senate are slashing funds 
for programs aimed at protecting the global environment.''
  That is what is happening in this legislation, we are cutting funds 
to deal with the problem of the global environment. In a few minutes we 
are going to have a discussion about the provision of the bill that 
strikes funds dealing with indoor air pollution. It is almost as if 
this Congress were anti-science. We act like we belong to the Flat 
Earth Society. Time after time we are ignoring sound science, we are 
ignoring sound concerns to our environment, so our response is to cut 
back funding in understanding the threat and how to deal with it.
  Let me put this in perspective. I do think this Congress is more and 
more anti-science. It is very distressing. An example: this House 
passed a Clean Water Act, and despite the National Academy of 
Science's, our Nation's most prestigious scientific organization, 
recommendations on what would be a sound scientific definition of a 
wetland, the House of Representatives threw it all out and decided to 
adopt a scientifically indefensible definition of wetlands that wipes 
out most of our Nation's wetlands. That is not a decision made on good 
science.
  Another example, ozone depletion. Yesterday Dr. Sherwood Rowland and 
two other scientists were given a Nobel Prize for their discovery that 
manmade chemicals are destroying the ozone layer. Their science has 
been endorsed by virtually every reputable scientific organization in 
the world. These are Nobel Prize winners. What happens with the House 
Committee on Science? They do not accept this science. Instead, the 
committee has been holding hearings that feature eccentric witnesses 
who argue that there is no ozone hole.
  Today we are talking about taking another sad step into the realm of 
anti-science. We are debating a bill that would defund important, basic 
scientific research into these key environmental problems. The global 
warming plan at the Environmental Protection Agency was the result of 
the work of EPA administrator William Reilly, who was appointed by 
President Bush. This is not a partisan issue. This should not be a 
partisan issue.
  When we get to indoor air pollution, it is amazing to think that we 
are not going to be doing the work on indoor air pollution when the 
EPA, when they were told to come up with some priorities of the threats 
to human health, put indoor air pollution right at the top.
  I think we have to step back and put this all in perspective. Because 
some industry groups do not like the idea that maybe they are going to 
face regulation because some scientists have a difference of opinion, 
that should not mean that we will ignore scientific opinion and not 
conduct further research to try to implement action plans that can, in 
a very prudent way, protect us from the results of global warming, 
should the threat be as severe as we are being led to believe.

                              {time}  1515

  I have a couple of articles that I am going to put into the Record. 
One is an article from the New York Times, September 18, headlined, 
``Scientists Say Earth's Warming Could Set Off Wide Disruptions.'' The 
first paragraph reads, ``The earth has entered a period of climactic 
change that is likely to cause,'' likely to cause, ``widespread 
economic, social and environmental dislocation over the next century if 
emissions of heat-trapping gases are not reduced, according to experts 
advising the world's Governments.'' We are hearing from most of the 
scientists about this issue.
  Another article which I will insert into the Record, September 10. 
``Experts Confirm Human Role In Global Warming.'' The article goes on 
to talk about, ``In an important shift of scientific judgment, experts 
advising the world's governments on climate change are saying for the 
first time that human activity is a likely cause of the warming of the 
global atmosphere.''
  Mr. Chairman, if that is the case, how do you take the Environmental 
Protection Agency out of this issue? How do you stop their action plan 
in its tracks from reducing some of these manmade chemicals that are 
causing this problem?
  This is an example of this problem which has led to this amendment. 
To keep the funds in place, not to cut back, is it seems to me a very 
shortsighted move, and I believe one that ignores the overwhelming 
scientific opinions and denigrates it. We do not have certainty, but we 
ought not to denigrate the mounting evidence and wait to the point 
where we have a problem that cannot be fixed.
  Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. WAXMAN. I yield to the gentleman from California.
  Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Chairman, I have two questions for the gentleman 
from California [Mr. Waxman]. From what the gentleman has said, 
especially about the hearing on the ozone, is it the position of the 
gentleman that we should not have had a renowned scientist on the other 
side of the issue?
  Mr. WAXMAN. Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time, absolutely not.
  The CHAIRMAN. The time of the gentleman from California [Mr. Waxman] 
has expired.
  (By unanimous consent, Mr. Waxman was allowed to proceed for 1 
additional minute.)
  Mr. WAXMAN. Mr. Chairman, I would say to the gentleman, of course 
not. Scientists are reflecting different opinions. We ought to hear 
from them, but we ought not to make a decision to vote one way or the 
other based on which scientist you like and ignore what is turning out 
to be an overwhelming accumulation of evidence.
  Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Chairman, if the gentleman will continue to 
yield, my colleague does know that the majority of scientists of the 
day thought the Earth was flat and thought that the Sun went around the 
Earth, and at times, the scientist order of the day was wrong.
  Mr. WAXMAN. Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time, sometimes the 
politicians under those circumstances decided to punish the scientists 
who were coming in with some scientific opinions that they did not 
like. I do not want us to do the same thing today that the Neanderthals 
of years past have done. I think we ought to have a free and open 
inquiry of science. We ought not to prejudge it and defund it because 
we do not like what they are doing.
  Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Chairman, if the gentleman will yield further, 
just so my colleague will know, one of those scientists that was 
present to present another view on the ozone situation, contrary to 
what the current common knowledge is, had been threatened and had been 
told that she would not receive any more grants if she came to testify. 
I think the evidence is showing that people who are suppressing 
information are those who believe ozone is going to destroy us.

[[Page H 9945]]

  Mr. WAXMAN. Mr. Chairman, I include for the Record the two articles 
referred to earlier.

             [From the New York Times, September 18, 1995]

                        Global Warming Heats Up

       The evidence mounted last week that manmade gases are 
     causing deterioration of the earth's atmosphere. First came 
     news that a United Nations scientific panel believes it has 
     found, for the first time, evidence that human activities are 
     indeed causing a much-debated warming of the globe. The 
     report, though preliminary, appeared to strengthen the case 
     that governments throughout the world may need to take 
     stronger action to head off potential damage.
       Then came an announcement from the World Meterological 
     Organization that a worrisome hole in the earth's protective 
     ozone shield appears to be getting even larger over 
     Antarctica. Such enlargement had been expected because it 
     will take a while for corrective actions already taken by 
     many governments to exert their effect. But the report 
     underscored that the battle to save the ozone layer is not 
     yet safely won.
       The U.N.'s global warming report, described by William K. 
     Stevens in the Sept. 10 Times, indicates that man-made global 
     warming is a real phenomenon. It can not be dismissed as 
     unproved ``liberal claptrap,'' as Representative Dana 
     Rohrabacher, Republican of California, who heads a House 
     environmental subcommittee, has derisively suggested.
       For years now scientists have been arguing over whether the 
     emission of ``greenhouse gases,'' such as carbon dioxide 
     generated by the burning of fossil fuels, has contributed to 
     a small rise in global temperatures over the past century--
     and whether such emissions will drive temperatures even 
     higher in coming decades.
       Such a change in temperature might, if drastic enough, have 
     serious consequences, as is made clear today in a second 
     article by Mr. Stevens. Global warming could cause a rise in 
     sea level that would flood coastal lowlands, an increase in 
     weather extremes and damage to forests and croplands in some 
     regions. Forestalling truly severe damage might well warrant 
     action to slow the emission of greenhouse gases by reducing 
     the world's reliance on fossil fuels. But that would be a 
     wrenching, costly process that few political leaders are 
     eager to undertake absent compelling evidence that human 
     activities really are driving world temperatures toward 
     dangerous levels.
       Now the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 
     the scientific panel charged with analyzing the problem, has 
     concluded in a draft report that it is seeing signals that 
     man-made global warming is under way. The signals are not in 
     the form of a ``smoking gun.'' Instead, they are found in 
     computer patterns. The computer models that predict rising 
     temperatures seem to be matching up more closely with some of 
     the patterns of climate change actually observed. There are 
     great uncertainties in how much the temperature will rise and 
     how great any damage might be. But the case for being 
     concerned about global warming is getting stronger.
       That makes it especially distressing that committees in the 
     House and Senate are slashing funds for programs aimed at 
     protecting the global environment. Steep cuts have been 
     imposed on research to study global climate change, on 
     programs to help reduce carbon emissions and on funds to help 
     developing countries phase out their ozone-destroying 
     chemicals. It is perverse that, as the evidence of global 
     atmopsheric harm gets somewhat stronger, the political 
     response to mitigating it gets progressively weaker.
                                                                    ____


               [From the New York Times, Sept. 10, 1995]

              Experts Confirm Human Role in Global Warming

                        (By William K. Stevens)

       In an important shift of scientific judgment, experts 
     advising the world's governments on climate change are saying 
     for the first time that human activity is a likely cause of 
     the warming of the global atmosphere.
       While many climatologists have thought this to be the case, 
     all but a few have held until now that the climate is so 
     naturally variable that they could not be sure they were 
     seeing a clear signal of the feared greenhouse effect--the 
     heating of the atmosphere because of the carbon dioxide 
     released by burning coal, oil and wood.
       Even the string of very warm years in the 1980's and 1990's 
     could have been just a natural swing of the climatic 
     pendulum, the experts have said.
       But a growing body of data and analysis now suggests that 
     the warming of the last century, and especially of the last 
     few years, ``is unlikely to be entirely due to natural causes 
     and that a pattern of climatic response to human activities 
     is identifiable in the climatological record,'' says a draft 
     summary of a new report by the Intergovernmental Panel on 
     Climate Change.
       The panel's role is to advise governments now negotiating 
     reductions in emissions of greenhouse gases like carbon 
     dioxide under the 1992 treaty on climate change.
       The panel's draft summary, although intended for internal 
     use, was recently made available on the Internet. The draft 
     has been through at least one round of scientific review but 
     its wording may change, since it is now being reviewed by 
     governments. Scientists who prepared the full chapter on 
     which the summary statement is based say they do not expect 
     any substantial change in their basic assessment. The chapter 
     has gone through extensive review by scientists around the 
     world.
       ``I think the scientific justification for the statement is 
     there, unequivocally,'' said Dr. Tom M.L. Wigley, a 
     climatologist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research 
     in Boulder, Colo., one of the chapter's authors.
       The scientific community ``has discovered the smoking 
     gun,'' said Dr. Michael Oppenheimer, an atmospheric scientist 
     with the Environmental Defense Fund, who is familiar with the 
     draft report. ``This finding is of paramount importance. For 
     many years, policy makers have asked, `Where's the signal?' 
     '' The intergovernmental panel, he said, ``is telling us that 
     the signal is here.''
       But Dr. Wigley and others involved in the reassessment say 
     it is not yet known how much of the last century's warming 
     can be attributed to human activity and how much is part of 
     the earth's natural fluctuation that leads to ice ages at one 
     extreme and warm periods at the other.
       Nevertheless, the panel's conclusion marks a watershed in 
     the views of climatologists, who with the notable exception 
     of Dr. James E. Hansen of the NASA Goddard Institute for 
     Space Studies in New York have until now refused to declare 
     publicly that they can discern the signature of the 
     greenhouse effect.
                                                                    ____


               [From the New York Times, Sept. 18, 1995]

     Scientists Say Earth's Warming Could Set Off Wide Disruptions

                        (By William K. Stevens)

       The earth has entered a period of climatic change that is 
     likely to cause widespread economic, social and environmental 
     dislocation over the next century if emissions of heat-
     trapping gases are not reduced, according to experts advising 
     the world's governments.
       The picture of probable disruption, including adverse 
     changes and some that are beneficial, emerges from draft 
     sections of a new assessment of the climate problem by the 
     Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and from interviews 
     with scientists involved in the assessment. The panel, a 
     United Nations group of 2,500 scientists from around the 
     world, advises parties to a 1992 treaty that are negotiating 
     reductions in heat-trapping greenhouse gases like carbon 
     dioxide.
       The new feature of the assessment--the first in five years 
     by the intergovernmental panel--is that the experts are now 
     more confident than before that global climate change is 
     indeed in progress and that at least some of the warming is 
     due to human action, specifically the burning of coal, oil 
     and wood, which releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. 
     Like its predecessors, the forecast depends heavily on 
     uncertain computer simulations of the atmosphere's response 
     to heat-trapping gases.
       While some environmentalists and their allies have long 
     believed potentially catastrophic human-induced climate 
     change to be a fact, and some political conservatives and 
     industry groups have been skeptical, experts in the 
     mainstream of climate science have never confirmed either 
     view.
       So far, most governments have taken small steps to rein in 
     emissions of greenhouse gases, with the hope of at least 
     avoiding further contribution to the warming problem. But 
     even before the current reassessment, parties to the 1992 
     treaty had agreed that these steps were inadequate and had 
     opened talks aimed at stronger measures.
       According to draft sections of the new forecast, some of 
     the predicted effects of climate change may now be emerging 
     for the first time or with increasing clarity. The possible 
     early effects include these:
       A continuing rise in average global sea level, which is 
     likely to amount to more than a foot and a half by the year 
     2100. This, say the scientists, would inundate parts of many 
     heavily populated river deltas and the cities on them, 
     making them uninhabitable, and would destroy many beaches 
     around the world. At the most likely rate of rise, some 
     experts say, most of the beaches on the East Coast of the 
     United States would be gone in 25 years. They are already 
     disappearing at an average of 2 to 3 feet a year.
       An increase in extremes of temperature, dryness and 
     precipitation in some regions. A United States Government 
     study conducted by one of the panel's scientists has shown 
     that these extremes are increasing in America. There is a 90 
     to 95 percent chance, the study concluded, that climate 
     change caused by the emission of greenhouse gases like carbon 
     dioxide is responsible. The intergovernmental panel forecasts 
     an increase in droughts like the current one in the 
     Northeastern United States, heat waves like the one in 
     Chicago this summer, and more fires and floods in some 
     regions.
       A ``striking'' retreat of mountain glaciers around the 
     world, accompanied in the Northern Hemisphere by as shrinking 
     snow cover in winter. In some semi-arid regions, the panel 
     says, runoff from melting glaciers may increase water 
     resources. But in most places, rivers and streams could be 
     diminished in the summer.
       ``While there will be some beneficial effects of climate 
     change, there will be many adverse effects, with some being 
     potentially irreversible,'' says one of the panel's draft 
     summaries.
       Beneficial effects, if the panel's forecast is right, would 
     include, for instance, milder 

[[Page H 9946]]
     winters in northern climes, an increase in rainfall in some regions 
     that need it, and faster crop growth. Grain belts of North 
     America and Russia could expand. Agricultural production 
     worldwide is not expected to decrease much.
       But some regions--especially sub-Saharan Africa, South and 
     Southeast Asia and tropical Latin America--could suffer 
     losses in their harvests. Deserts are expected to expand, and 
     the heartlands of continents to become drier. There would be 
     more rain throughout the world. Northern temperate regions 
     would experience more rain and less snow in winter. In 
     summer, water would evaporate faster, drying the soil.
       Natural ecosystems, being untended, would be even more 
     vulnerable than cropland. Forest trees could not keep up with 
     shifting climatic zones, and some forests would disappear, 
     the panel says.
       Computerized models indicated that if atmospheric carbon 
     dioxide levels double, ``one-third of all the forest area of 
     the earth will change,'' said Dr. Steven P. Hamburg, a forest 
     ecologist at Brown University who is a member of the 
     intergovernmental panel. ``But we still don't have a good 
     grasp of what it will look like,'' he added. Carbon dioxide 
     concentrations are expected to double late in the next 
     century if no further action is taken to limit emissions.
       Climate forecasting is a difficult and often controversial 
     science. One major subject of dissension are the computer 
     models on which the intergovernmental panel's report largely 
     depends. The climate experts on the panel believe their 
     models have become increasingly reliable. But skeptics 
     continue to assert that the models fail to simulate the 
     present climate realistically and hence are an unsure guide 
     to future climates.
       There is wide agreement among scientists that the average 
     surface temperature of the globe has already risen by about 1 
     degree Fahrenheit over the last century, with the steepest 
     rise taking place in the last 40 years. But given the natural 
     variability of the earth's climate and the wide fluctuations 
     in temperature known to have occurred in the distant past, 
     climate experts have until now been almost unanimous in 
     saying they could not prove that human emission of greenhouse 
     gases was playing in part in the warming.
       Scientific opinion among climatologists is now shifting, 
     and more are prepared to say that human activity is a likely 
     cause of at least part of the climatic change experienced so 
     far.
       The human contribution to global warming could range from 
     highly significant to trivial. The scientists say it is not 
     yet possible to measure how much of the warming has been 
     caused by human activity and how much is a result of natural 
     causes.
       Computer models are the principal basis for the draft 
     report's forecast that the world's average surface 
     temperature will rise by about 1.5 to 6 degrees Fahrenheit by 
     the year 2100 if no further action is taken to rein in 
     greenhouse gas emissions. Further warming--50 to 70 percent 
     more than what took place by 2100--would take place after 
     that year, the report says. The warming would be somewhat 
     larger if, as appears possible, industry stops emitting 
     sulfate aerosols, which exert a cooling effect by reflecting 
     sunlight and are air pollutants in their own right.

  Mr. BROWN of California. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last 
word.
  Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of the Lofgren amendment. Again, I 
take this time not because of my concern with what will happen to this 
legislation, because I have already said it is not going anywhere, but 
to support some issues here, to explore some issues. Some of them 
involve the views of the gentleman from California [Mr. Rohrabacher] 
who I would characterize as an original member of the Flat Earth 
Society, except that he is on a space committee, so he could not be 
part of that any more.
  Mr. Chairman, the gentleman from California [Mr. Rohrabacher] has 
made his position so clear with regard to long-range climate research 
and other things of that sort, global warming, that we need to explore 
this. Frankly, I want the gentleman to be the clear leader of those who 
think that the Reagan-Bush position announced by their Science Advisory 
Committee was liberal clap trap.
  Mr. Chairman, that is going to divide the Republicans on this issue. 
Of course the true believers like the gentleman from California [Mr. 
Rohrabacher] hope they will prevail, and I hope that the liberals like 
Bush and Reagan will prevail on these kinds of issues.
  Now, the gentleman may or may not recall that the Committee on 
Science in its earlier incarnation first established an environmental 
subcommittee in 1975. I was the chairman of the subcommittee at that 
time. Global warming was an issue before us at that time. We did not 
know what to believe, so we had extensive hearings.
  We had scientists who said, there is clear indication of global 
warming. We had scientists who said, that is malarkey, there is clear 
indication of global cooling. Then we had scientists in the middle, who 
said, it is an open question at this point. We need more research. That 
is a favorite ploy of all scientists. We need more research. The issue 
was important enough that we funded more research, and we continued to 
fund it for 20 years.
  Today, that curve of those who think it is warming, those who think 
it is cooling, and those who think we need more information has changed 
substantially. There are very few who think it is cooling, a lot more 
who think it is warming, and of course the majority still think we need 
more information, which is why we fund long-term global climate 
research. It is important, and we need to continue funding it. I hope 
that we will continue to do that, although the majority view has 
gradually grown larger and larger, that global warming is a serious 
problem.
  Now, a point has been made by a number of gentlemen on the other side 
that we have too many agencies doing global warming research. We have a 
dozen or so, I think the number was. The Defense Department is studying 
global warming because it has something to do with our defense posture: 
If all of the ice caps in the North and South Pole melt, it will affect 
our strategies. It will affect submarine detection, it will affect 
other things of that sort.
  The Coast Guard is worried, because if it raises the level of the 
ocean, they have a whole new problem. Where is the coast that they used 
to be concerned about? It will have changed substantially.
  Other agencies like the Energy Department, for example, are 
interested because it has to do with the energy mix that we use in this 
country, and what its effects will be. These are legitimate. These 
relate to the core mission of these agencies.
  Now, should we scrap them all and say, we will just have one agency 
do it, the Weather Service? No. We recognize the complexity of this, 
and many other issues of a research nature, and in the office of the 
President, we have a science adviser and we have a Presidential Science 
Advisory Committee.
  We used to have something called a FCCSET Committee, which is an 
interesting name. It meant the Federal Coordinating Council on Science 
Engineering and Technology, which was aimed at resolving the respective 
jurisdictions of the various agencies, cabinet level agencies on 
complex, interagency science problems.
  The problem is not putting everything in one basket and say, nobody 
else does it. Defense is going to want to do it if it relates to 
defense and Energy if it relates to energy. The problem is making sure 
they do not waste money on it. That does not necessarily mean they do 
not lose similar research, but they do not lose money on it, and they 
get the best science that is possible.
  Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. BROWN of California. I yield to the gentleman from California.
  Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Chairman, am I incorrect in my assumption that 
the impact of the amendment would be that all of the other areas of 
Environmental Protection Agency research would suffer as a result of 
this amendment because the funds that would have to be spent according 
to this amendment would be coming from all of those other areas? Is 
that not what we are talking about here?
  Mr. BROWN of California. Mr. Chairman, the gentleman raises an 
interesting point.
  The CHAIRMAN. The time of the gentleman from California [Mr. Brown] 
has expired.
  (By unanimous consent, Mr. Brown of California was allowed to proceed 
for 1 additional minute.)
  Mr. BROWN of California. Mr. Chairman, the EPA's research function 
has already suffered. The gentleman on your side spent the first part 
of this year emasculating EPA, making sure they went through a lot of 
hurdles in getting the proper science to justify their regulation. They 
have so many restrictions on the regulatory process that they are going 
through, and so many injunctions by using good science, they cannot 
possibly do it with the seriously eroded budget that you have given 
them. So they are in real trouble.
  Yes, they will be in trouble, they will have to redistribute funding 
here, but 

[[Page H 9947]]
that is a very small part of the total problems that they face at the 
present time, which will grow greater if you have your way.
  Mr. WALKER. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word.
  Mr. Chairman, I have been enlightened by the discussion a little bit 
here too. We had the gentlewoman presenting her amendment telling us 
about the Nobel Prize winners. They got their money out of the 
Department of Energy and out of NSF; none of it came out of EPA or NOAA 
that related to the amendment of the gentlewoman from California [Ms. 
Lofgren]. That talks about the diversity and the multiplicity of places 
at which this kind of research is being done. So when we cite the Noble 
Prize winners, the fact is that they are in accounts where the 
gentlewoman is not touching.
  Mr. Chairman, I was also fascinated by the gentleman from California 
[Mr. Waxman] lecturing us about the Flat Earth Society. The gentleman 
lectures us about the Flat Earth Society and then criticized this 
committee for having the audacity to allow scientists to come in who do 
not agree with his point of view.
  Now, the fact is, the reason why the Flat Earth Society was able to 
stay in place for so long is because there was a consensus among all of 
the scientists that the Earth was flat. So for centuries we belabored 
under the opinion, the scientifically confirmed opinion that the Earth 
was flat, and it was a few nutty scientists who said, no, maybe it is 
round. Maybe it is round. They were regarded as nuts, they were thrown 
out of the academy. They were not listened to.
  Well, the fact is, diversity is a very important part of science. It 
is a very good thing to have diverse points of view in science, just as 
it is a very good thing to have a diverse point of view in politics.
  Now, the fact that this committee has made a determination that we 
are not going to do one-directional scientists, just because there is a 
consensus, just because everybody believes the earth is flat, we do not 
think that that is the only people we have to listen to. We think that 
maybe we ought to listen to people who have differing points of view.
  We do not have to agree with them. We do not have to agree with 
anybody that comes before the committee to testify, but it sure does 
help to have all of the points of view available to us before we make 
determinations, particularly policy determinations that can affect us 
for years to come.

  When we are trying to balance a budget, we are looking out 7 years. 
The decisions that we make here look out 7 years. We would like to know 
whether or not the things that we are doing are based upon sound 
science, which gets us to the amendment of the gentlewoman from 
California [Ms. Lofgren].
  The gentlewoman's amendment is about an agency, the Office of 
Research and Development at EPA that was designed for one purpose. The 
one purpose of that particular research agency, its mission, is to 
assure that EPA regulations follow good science. That is what it is all 
about. The idea is the fact that what they are supposed to do is give 
us the good science so that we have good science behind our 
regulations.
  Now, sometimes we ignore that science. Sometimes we spend $100 
million to look at clean air and then because we are worried about what 
the report may look like, we pass a clean air bill before we get the 
study. We do that around here. Normally we think it is maybe a good 
idea to look at some good science before we regulate.
  Now, that is what we said in our bill. We said that in the whole area 
that is called global warming, one of the issues that we are looking at 
is ocean depletion. The fact is, EPA has the jurisdiction to regulate 
ozone. So, what we have done under our bill is given them the authority 
to continue their research in this area, this large area known as 
global change, we have given them the authority to continue to do 
research in those areas that they regulate; namely, the ozone 
depletion.
  What we have said, however, is, there are other areas that they have 
been looking at where they have no jurisdiction to regulate. We think 
it would be better for them to focus their mission, use their money the 
way it was intended to be used at their agency and let other people 
with other missions that fit more with the process do the other work.
  Now, the gentlewoman from California [Ms. Lofgren] would have us 
think, as others have had us think, that somehow there is no other 
money anywhere in the Government to do this, that the EPA has to do it 
because there is no other money. The fact is, we are spending $1.8 
billion on global change, and at 12 different agencies that I just read 
off here, spending tens of millions, even hundreds of millions of 
dollars, this work is going on.
  The Nobel Prize winners to which the gentlewoman referred got their 
money out of the DOE and NSF. We have not done anything to stop DOE and 
NSF from doing global change.

                              {time}  1530

  That is an appropriate place for some of this long-term basic 
research she talked about. She said there ought to be a consensus on 
basic research. There should be.
  But the fact is the EPA's ORD office is not a basic research office. 
It is an office designed to do mission-oriented research. It is an 
office designed to supply the EPA the good science it needs to back up 
its regulation.
  That is what we are trying to do. We are trying to make certain we 
prioritize moneys in ways that they do the job that they were intended 
to do. You cannot get to a balanced budget any other way. I would 
suggest that the right way to proceed here is to reject the 
gentlewoman's amendment and support the committee.
  Mr. KENNEDY of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the 
requisite number of words.
  Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of the amendment offered by my 
colleague the gentlewoman from California [Ms. Lofgren].
  Once again we find ourselves in the position of cutting and 
eliminating programs prior to having any hearings to consider their 
merits and shortcomings. Therefore, I would like to take this 
opportunity to raise some important issues and to challenge what I 
believe is a fundamentally flawed assumption providing the underlying 
actions that are being taken.
  The global climate change research has been singled out for 
significant cuts or outright elimination in all departmental research 
budgets this year. In Interior it was cut by 7 percent, NASA by 37 
percent, NOAA by 21 percent, the Department of Energy, by 57 percent, 
USDA by 6 percent, and the EPA by 100 percent.
  We are told that this is for the purposes of efficiency and to 
eliminate redundancies in the program. However, there have been little 
if any examples provided to assure us that only duplicative global 
research programs are being eliminated or that in fact duplication 
exists.
  USDA has a global change research program so that experts in 
agriculture and forestry science can determine what, if any, effects 
changes in temperature, moisture, and regional weather patterns will 
have on our agriculture and forest systems. The Department of the 
Interior manages Federal land, such as forests and rangeland and 
wildlife refuges. They also manage vital water distribution networks in 
cooperation with Western States. It seems to me we might want to 
understand what effects the climate might have on these resources as 
well.
  The Department of Energy has responsibility for energy research, 
fossil fuel energy as well as alternative energy. No one disputes that 
carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, that its atmospheric concentration 
has increased and continues to do so, and that fossil fuel burning is a 
primary source for that increase. Understanding the global carbon 
balance from the perspective of fossil fuel consumption as well as 
other sources is a role that DOE is best suited to play.
  NASA oversees the design, construction, operation, and maintenance of 
our satellites and it compiles data gathered from them. Without 
measurements, we are reduced to hand-waving. Perhaps that is all fine 
in some people's opinion but it seems to me that when we pump billions 
of dollars into these agencies, we ought to find out what the impact is 
going to be.
  The EPA is the Agency that is charged with the responsibility of 
protecting our environment. Their role 

[[Page H 9948]]
should be to use our knowledge of emission sources and technology to 
suggest options for mitigating and controlling those greenhouse 
emissions.
  These programs are not duplicative. They are intended to make the 
best use of the expertise and knowledge base of each agency to ensure 
that we have comprehensive approaches and assessments of a complex 
global phenomenon.
  I realize that many of my colleagues remain unconvinced that global 
climate change is a problem, just an example of environmental hysteria. 
If you are so confident of that, then why stop the research that can 
prove your point?
  Ignorance is not bliss, it is just ignorance. We should support this 
comprehensive research effort so that if these climate changes create 
the problems that some believe they will, we will be able to approach 
the problem with the best possible information. If it is not a problem, 
we will have proof of that, and we will have extended our knowledge on 
climate and its impacts on the natural systems on which we depend.
  The CHAIRMAN. The time of the gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. 
Kennedy] has expired.
  (On request, of Mr. Brown of California, and by unanimous consent, 
Mr. Kennedy was allowed to proceed for 2 additional minutes.)
  Mr. KENNEDY of Massachusetts. I yield to the gentleman from 
California.
  Mr. BROWN of California. Mr. Chairman, I want to acknowledge the 
excellence of the gentleman's statement. I was trying in my own 
inadequate way to make some of these points that he has made so well in 
indicating the core interest of many departments in this overall issue 
of global warming.
  I also want to take just a moment to ask the distinguished chairman 
of the Committee on Science, who earlier made the statement, and the 
gentleman from California [Mr. Rohrabacher] has repeated it, I think, 
that EPA's Office of Research and Development only has a mandate to do 
research in the areas in which it regulates. That does not happen to be 
the case, and if the gentleman thinks that I am wrong, I would invite 
him to substantiate his statement, because under both Reagan and Bush 
ORD was mandated to do research in areas in which they had no 
regulatory authority, and that has continued under Mr. Clinton. If he 
has some other understanding, I would like to have that put forward in 
the record so that the House as a whole can understand the basis for 
that kind of a statement.
  Mr. WALKER. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. KENNEDY of Massachusetts. I yield to the gentleman from 
Pennsylvania.
  Mr. WALKER. Mr. Chairman, the gentleman simply is going back to the 
original intent of the EPA. There is no doubt that they have been 
mandated to do things beyond what was the original intent of the 
agency, and have done things well beyond the scope of doing regulation. 
It is one of the reasons why we have had bad regulation, because we 
have not had good science. One of the things that we are attempting to 
do is to assure that we do good science pursuant to regulation and use 
their limited resources in the proper way. That is the point this 
gentleman is making.
  Mr. BROWN of California. The gentleman's actions contradict his words 
because he has drastically cut in this bill research, basic research, 
which he would agree is basic research, which would contribute to the 
good science that is necessary. In fact, that is my main objection to 
this bill. It guts the science----
  Mr. ROHRABACHER. If the gentleman will yield, what are the basic 
research cuts in this bill?
  Mr. KENNEDY of Massachusetts. Reclaiming my time, the fact of the 
matter is, just to repeat the cuts, you have a 7-percent cut in the 
Interior Department, a 37-percent cut in the NASA, 21 percent in NOAA, 
57 percent in the Department of Energy, USDA by 6 percent, and EPA by 
100 percent. The truth of the matter is you are gutting the research 
capabilities of this country so you can stick your head in the sand. 
You want to fight the notion that somehow you are in the flat earth 
society. You are not in the flat earth society, you have got your head 
stuck in the sand. You are in the ostrich society.
  The CHAIRMAN. The time of the gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. 
Kennedy] has again expired.
  (On request of Mr. Brown of California, and by unanimous consent, Mr. 
Kennedy of Massachusetts was allowed to proceed for 2 additional 
minutes.)
  Mr. KENNEDY of Massachusetts. I continue to yield to the gentleman 
from California.
  Mr. BROWN of California. Mr. Chairman, the distinguished gentleman 
from Pennsylvania voted for in 1990 the Global Change Research Act 
which authorized EPA to do global change research. Now he is arguing 
that they have no mandate to do so because it does not involve 
regulation. I have just asserted that there is no mandate that they 
only do research that has relationships to regulation. I further state 
that the gentleman has cut basic research, which he denies, because he 
has stated over and over that the actual figures are that there is a 
1.1-percent increase.
  Mr. Chairman, I include for the Record the following table which 
shows that we in the area of basic research, there has been a decrease 
of 1.3 percent in the budget that the gentleman is proposing:

------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                       Fiscal year               Percent
                                   -------------------   H.R.    change 
                                                         2405     from  
                                      1995     1996               1995  
------------------------------------------------------------------------
DOE...............................   $1,648    $1,773   $1,699      +3.1
NSF...............................    1,958     2,107    1,911      -2.4
NASA..............................    1,850     1,822    1,784      -3.6
NIST..............................       40        48       42        +5
EPA...............................      107       120       92       -14
                                   -------------------------------------
      Total.......................    5,603     5,870    5,528      -1.3
------------------------------------------------------------------------

  Mr. WAXMAN. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. KENNEDY of Massachusetts. I yield to the gentleman from 
California.
  Mr. WAXMAN. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding.
  I think we ought to have an answer from the other side about these 
important charges, but I want to use this opportunity to say that we do 
all want a diversification of scientific opinion but if we do not fund 
the research, we are not going to have researchers doing the work to 
give those considered opinions.
  On the ozone depletion hearings, I do not want us in that area or any 
other area to find science that is politically correct. It seemed to me 
that from what I understand about those hearings, scientists who had 
never published peer review articles were given an elevated status to 
argue against what hundreds of other scientists around the world had 
found as a genuine threat in the ozone depletion problem.
  I have a history with this issue because in 1977 when we enacted a 
change in the Clean Air Act, we first started to hear about the hole in 
the ozone. Of course a lot of people said, ``Let's study it, let's 
study it, let's don't take action.'' This is one of those rare examples 
of a scientific issue that moved so quickly that it moved from the 
theoretical to the measurable.
  Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Chairman, if the gentleman would be courteous 
enough to yield to a question, I held the hearing, the hearings the 
gentleman was referring to, you were invited to, and I seem to remember 
you were supposed to be at those hearings. You did not show up. Now you 
are on the floor complaining about the hearings.
  Mr. WAXMAN. I am complaining about a trend in this House and I think 
those hearings exemplify it, where there is a politically popular, 
politically correct point of view that seems to be given a spotlight, 
and I have no problems with having diverse opinions. But let us give 
spotlights and elevation to views of people that do not have the 
scientific standing of the hundreds of other scientists that have 
studied this problem and have raised concerns about it.
  Mr. KENNEDY of Massachusetts. Reclaiming my time, I think when all is 
said and done on this debate, there is a very simple thing that is 
going on, which is that there is an attempt to protect ordinary 
citizens from the devastating impact of global warming, and there is a 
recognition by some that that is going to take an increase in funds for 
companies to invest in the kinds of technologies to be able to 

[[Page H 9949]]
withstand that protection that the ordinary people of this country 
need. We want to protect the American people. You once again want to 
protect the wealthy and powerful interests of this country.
  Mr. TANNER. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of 
words.
   Mr. Chairman, I yield to the gentleman from California [Mr. Brown].
  Mr. BROWN of California. Mr. Chairman, this is chapter 10 in the 
effort to explore a few more of the issues here and this is the one 
having to do with whether we are cutting or not cutting basic research. 
We can also call this the battle of the dueling charts because the 
gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Walker] has his chart and I have my 
chart here.
  This is the trend in basic R&D. The authorization bill cuts basic 
R&D. It indicates the agency and the amount of the cuts below the zero 
baseline.
  It does show that there are increases in two areas of R&D. One is 
defense, basic R&D, and the other is in NIST.
  I have the actual numbers here, and I do not ask you to accept these 
as my word against the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Walker]. The 
gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Walker] has had his staff use his 
definitions of basic research and to come up with some figures that 
show that he is right, that there has been an increase. I am going to 
use the data which the Federal agencies supplied to OMB pursuant to OMB 
circular A-11, and the actual numbers for basic research as submitted 
to OMB by the agencies in accordance with A-11 are as follows:
  DOE will have an increase of plus 3.1, that is indicated over here; 
National Science Foundation, which I think the number of the gentleman 
from Pennsylvania [Mr. Walker] shows an increase, the OMB is minus 2.4 
percent; NASA, minus 3.6 percent; NIST, plus 5 percent, and that is 
because they have eliminated all of the applied research and left just 
the basic; EPA, minus 14 percent; and the total is minus 1.3 percent 
according to OMB.
  I do not know why sometimes the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. 
Walker] is willing to rely on OMB when it agrees with him, sometimes he 
is not. I am just presenting these as the figures that are the official 
Government tally of what is happening to basic research under the 
scenario that we have before us.

                              {time}  1545

  The CHAIRMAN. The question is on the amendment offered by the 
gentlewoman from California [Ms. Lofgren].
  The question was taken; and the Chairman announced that the noes 
appeared to have it.


                             Recorded Vote

  Ms. LOFGREN. Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.
  A recorded vote was ordered.
  The vote was taken by electronic device, and there were--ayes 199, 
noes 215, not voting 18, as follows:

                             [Roll No. 709]

                               AYES--199

     Abercrombie
     Ackerman
     Andrews
     Baesler
     Baldacci
     Barrett (WI)
     Becerra
     Beilenson
     Bentsen
     Berman
     Bevill
     Bishop
     Blute
     Boehlert
     Bonior
     Borski
     Boucher
     Browder
     Brown (CA)
     Brown (FL)
     Brown (OH)
     Bryant (TX)
     Cardin
     Clay
     Clayton
     Clement
     Clyburn
     Coleman
     Collins (IL)
     Collins (MI)
     Conyers
     Costello
     Coyne
     Cramer
     Davis
     de la Garza
     DeFazio
     DeLauro
     Dellums
     Deutsch
     Dicks
     Dingell
     Dixon
     Doggett
     Dooley
     Doyle
     Durbin
     Edwards
     Engel
     English
     Eshoo
     Evans
     Farr
     Fattah
     Fazio
     Filner
     Flake
     Foglietta
     Forbes
     Ford
     Fox
     Frank (MA)
     Frost
     Furse
     Gejdenson
     Gephardt
     Gillmor
     Gilman
     Gonzalez
     Gordon
     Greenwood
     Gutierrez
     Hall (OH)
     Hamilton
     Harman
     Hastings (FL)
     Hayes
     Hefner
     Heineman
     Hilliard
     Hinchey
     Holden
     Horn
     Hoyer
     Jackson-Lee
     Jacobs
     Jefferson
     Johnson (CT)
     Johnson (SD)
     Johnson, E. B.
     Johnston
     Kanjorski
     Kaptur
     Kelly
     Kennedy (MA)
     Kennedy (RI)
     Kildee
     Kleczka
     Klink
     LaFalce
     Lantos
     LaTourette
     Lazio
     Leach
     Levin
     Lewis (GA)
     Lincoln
     Lipinski
     LoBiondo
     Lofgren
     Lowey
     Luther
     Maloney
     Manton
     Markey
     Martinez
     Martini
     Mascara
     Matsui
     McCarthy
     McDermott
     McHale
     McKinney
     McNulty
     Meehan
     Meek
     Menendez
     Mfume
     Miller (CA)
     Minge
     Mink
     Montgomery
     Moran
     Morella
     Nadler
     Neal
     Oberstar
     Obey
     Olver
     Ortiz
     Orton
     Owens
     Pallone
     Pastor
     Payne (NJ)
     Payne (VA)
     Pelosi
     Peterson (FL)
     Pomeroy
     Poshard
     Rangel
     Reed
     Richardson
     Rivers
     Roemer
     Rose
     Roukema
     Roybal-Allard
     Rush
     Sabo
     Sanders
     Sawyer
     Saxton
     Schroeder
     Schumer
     Scott
     Serrano
     Shays
     Skaggs
     Slaughter
     Smith (MI)
     Smith (NJ)
     Spratt
     Stokes
     Studds
     Stupak
     Tanner
     Thompson
     Thornton
     Thurman
     Torres
     Torricelli
     Towns
     Velazquez
     Vento
     Visclosky
     Walsh
     Ward
     Waters
     Watt (NC)
     Waxman
     Williams
     Wilson
     Wise
     Woolsey
     Wyden
     Wynn
     Yates
     Zimmer

                               NOES--215

     Allard
     Archer
     Armey
     Bachus
     Baker (CA)
     Baker (LA)
     Ballenger
     Barcia
     Barr
     Barrett (NE)
     Bartlett
     Barton
     Bass
     Bateman
     Bereuter
     Bilbray
     Bliley
     Boehner
     Bonilla
     Bono
     Brewster
     Brownback
     Bryant (TN)
     Bunn
     Bunning
     Burr
     Burton
     Buyer
     Callahan
     Calvert
     Camp
     Canady
     Castle
     Chabot
     Chambliss
     Chenoweth
     Christensen
     Chrysler
     Clinger
     Coble
     Coburn
     Collins (GA)
     Combest
     Condit
     Cooley
     Cox
     Crane
     Crapo
     Cremeans
     Cubin
     Cunningham
     Danner
     Deal
     DeLay
     Diaz-Balart
     Dickey
     Doolittle
     Dreier
     Duncan
     Dunn
     Ehlers
     Ehrlich
     Ensign
     Everett
     Ewing
     Fawell
     Fields (TX)
     Flanagan
     Foley
     Fowler
     Franks (CT)
     Franks (NJ)
     Frelinghuysen
     Frisa
     Funderburk
     Gallegly
     Ganske
     Gekas
     Geren
     Gilchrest
     Goodlatte
     Goodling
     Goss
     Graham
     Gunderson
     Gutknecht
     Hall (TX)
     Hancock
     Hansen
     Hastert
     Hastings (WA)
     Hayworth
     Hefley
     Herger
     Hilleary
     Hobson
     Hoekstra
     Hoke
     Hostettler
     Houghton
     Hunter
     Hutchinson
     Hyde
     Inglis
     Istook
     Johnson, Sam
     Jones
     Kasich
     Kim
     King
     Kingston
     Klug
     Knollenberg
     Kolbe
     LaHood
     Largent
     Latham
     Laughlin
     Lewis (CA)
     Lewis (KY)
     Lightfoot
     Linder
     Livingston
     Longley
     Lucas
     Manzullo
     McCollum
     McCrery
     McDade
     McHugh
     McInnis
     McIntosh
     McKeon
     Metcalf
     Meyers
     Mica
     Miller (FL)
     Molinari
     Moorhead
     Myers
     Myrick
     Nethercutt
     Neumann
     Ney
     Norwood
     Nussle
     Oxley
     Packard
     Parker
     Paxon
     Peterson (MN)
     Petri
     Pickett
     Pombo
     Porter
     Portman
     Pryce
     Quillen
     Quinn
     Radanovich
     Rahall
     Ramstad
     Regula
     Riggs
     Roberts
     Rogers
     Rohrabacher
     Ros-Lehtinen
     Royce
     Salmon
     Sanford
     Scarborough
     Schaefer
     Schiff
     Seastrand
     Sensenbrenner
     Shadegg
     Shaw
     Shuster
     Sisisky
     Skeen
     Skelton
     Smith (TX)
     Smith (WA)
     Solomon
     Souder
     Spence
     Stearns
     Stenholm
     Stump
     Talent
     Tate
     Tauzin
     Taylor (MS)
     Taylor (NC)
     Thomas
     Thornberry
     Tiahrt
     Traficant
     Upton
     Vucanovich
     Waldholtz
     Walker
     Wamp
     Watts (OK)
     Weldon (FL)
     Weldon (PA)
     Weller
     White
     Whitfield
     Wicker
     Wolf
     Young (AK)
     Young (FL)
     Zeliff

                             NOT VOTING--18

     Bilirakis
     Chapman
     Dornan
     Emerson
     Fields (LA)
     Gibbons
     Green
     Kennelly
     Moakley
     Mollohan
     Murtha
     Roth
     Stark
     Stockman
     Tejeda
     Torkildsen
     Tucker
     Volkmer

                             {time}   1604

  The Clerk announced the following pairs:
  On this vote:

       Mr. Stark for, with Mr. Dornan against.
       Mr. Moakley for, with Mr. Bilirakis against.

  Mr. TAYLOR of Mississippi and Mr. GILCHREST changed their vote from 
``aye'' to ``no.''
  Mr. SHAYS, Mr. HALL of Ohio, and Mrs. KELLY changed their vote from 
``no'' to ``aye.''
  So the amendment was rejected.
  The result of the vote was announced as above recorded.


                          personal explanation

  Mr. GENE GREEN of Texas. Mr. Chairman, I would like the Record to 
show that had I been present for rollcall vote No. 709, I would have 
voted ``aye.'' I was tied up in traffic and could not make it here in 
the 17 minutes.


                          personal explanation

  Mr. TORKILDSEN. Mr. Chairman, during the last vote I was 
inadvertently detained while coming from a committee markup. I ask that 
the Record reflect that I would have voted ``yes'' on rollcall 709 had 
I been present.
  The CHAIRMAN. Are there further amendments to title IV?

[[Page H 9950]]



        amendment no. 8 offered by mr. kennedy of massachusetts

  Mr. KENNEDY of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.
  The CHAIRMAN. The Clerk will designate the amendment.
  The text of the amendment is as follows:

       Amendment offered by Mr. Kennedy of Massachusetts: Page 
     133, line 5, insert ``or'' after ``Technology Initiative,''.
       Page 133, lines 6 and 7, strike ``; or'' and all that 
     follows through ``pollution research''.

  Mr. KENNEDY of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, take a deep breath--fill 
up your lungs--but do not assume that you are breathing clean air. The 
air that is now in your lungs passed through several hundred feet of 
dark, dusty, dirty ductwork before reaching this room. Nearly 30 
different species of fungus have been found to grow in the dank 
recesses of building ventilation systems.
  Viruses and bacteria that thrive in air ducts have been proven to 
cause influenza, pneumonia, tuberculosis, and dozens of other diseases. 
In addition to those living dangers, the air we breath indoors can also 
contain high concentrations of radon, asbestos, formaldehyde, benzene, 
carbon monoxide, tobacco smoke, lead, and chlorine.
  Every breath you take puts you at risk of exposure to these 
contaminants. Americans spend an average of 90 percent of their time 
indoors, and the air we breathe in schools and workplaces can be 1,000 
times more toxic than the outdoor air. The right to breathe clean air 
should not end the moment we walk indoors.
  Yet today, the Republicans are telling us that sound science is no 
science. Yes, folks, believe it or not, the bill that is before us 
today would eliminate the EPA's nonregulatory indoor air research 
program. The research that this bill intends to kill is the research 
that would fuel future discoveries enabling us to prevent illnesses 
related to indoor air contamination. My amendment would strike out this 
prohibitive language.
  I find this effort to limit research to be an ironic one, as the 
Congress last year passed the Indoor Air Act--a bill that I have 
introduced every year since the 100th Congress--with bipartisan support 
on the suspension calendar. We adjourned at the end of the session 
before the bill could be signed into law, but support for the concept 
of increasing indoor air pollution research was clearly validated by 
this chamber.
  So why now retreat from this commitment? The Republican leadership on 
the Science Committee would have you believe that the EPA indoor air 
research dollars are duplicative because the Occupational Safety and 
Health Administration [OSHA] oversees issues of indoor air pollution as 
well.
  This argument is faulted on several accounts; among them is the fact 
that exposure to hazardous indoor air pollutants pose significant 
threats that reach beyond the OSHA-regulated workplace environment. 
Indoor air quality is also a problem in residential buildings and other 
institutional settings, such as nursing homes, schools, and hospitals.
  This retreat is also odd, considering the fact that the Science 
Committee explicitly gave EPA the responsibility for carrying out 
indoor air quality research in title IV of the Superfund Amendments and 
Reauthorization Act in 1986.
  The EPA rightly plays an important role in safeguarding public 
health--especially for our school children and senior citizens. Our 
Federal research dollars spent on indoor air pollution have proven to 
be a successful investment as a result of the coordination of 
information between the agencies that have jurisdiction over this 
issue. The EPA works closely with both OSHA and the National Institute 
of Occupational Safety and Health [NIOSH] to coordinate research 
efforts.
  The indoor air research conducted at the EPA provides the crucial 
link needed to solve this problem in a more global sense: by addressing 
risks outside of the workplace. Though without EPA involvement, not 
even the workplace is guaranteed to be protected. OSHA's jurisdiction 
over indoor air quality standards only covers the private sector 
workplace. Public sector workplace buildings are covered only in the 23 
States that have adopted OSHA regulations. Massachusetts, for example, 
is not an OSHA State and would not be covered. And we certainly have 
had our share of indoor air quality problems in Massachusetts.
  Recently, the registry of motor vehicles in Boston was shut down, and 
all employees relocated to another site, because of the building's 
indoor air pollution problems.
  Employees in my district at the Suffolk County courthouse suffered 
ailments connected to indoor air quality problems during building 
renovation, and a number of offices in the building have been closed.
  Students, faculty, and staff at the University of Massachusetts-
Boston Harvard campus have suffered nausea, eye irritation, and other 
illnesses traced to indoor air pollution at the main campus building.
  One of the hospitals in my district, Brigham & Women's Hospital, has 
been plagued by environmental hazards connected to poor indoor air 
quality. They were forced to shut down the eight floor, and are doing a 
floor-by-floor safety review study.
  But problems with indoor air quality are not unique to my district. 
Having sponsored the Indoor Air Quality Act each of the last four 
Congresses, I regularly receive information from workers, students, 
parents, and concerned citizens about the problems they are facing with 
indoor air pollution all over the country--from New York to California. 
This issue affects us all.
  At any moment, 21.2 million Americans are working in 1.4 million 
offices, schools, factories, and other structures where indoor air 
quality is a problem. How can we ignore these numbers?
  The cost of indoor air pollution is staggering as well. Americans 
spend an extra $1.5 billion each year in medical bills, and the loss in 
productivity for businesses translates into tens of billions of dollars 
more.
  Some may say that the argument is centered around limiting 
unnecessary regulatory burdens. But we are voting today on funds for 
EPA's research office. This office has no regulatory function.
  I can find no reason why this research should be eliminated.
  Through this research, the EPA works with private standard-setting 
bodies to develop ventilation standards and works with industries to 
develop and test building products which reduce potentially toxic 
emissions. This program is a voluntary exchange of information for the 
betterment of consumer health.
  Unfortunately, the bill that we have before us today reflects the 
decision that the best policy is to leave consumers, homeowners, and 
builders without the scientific information they need to make informed 
decisions.
  While much is known about some indoor air pollutants, scientists know 
little about sources and exposures in different indoor environments and 
more research is needed to understand the impact and severity of 
various health risks.
  The health of our citizens mandates that we guard against the 
irresponsible and foolish choice to eliminate the EPA's ability to 
conduct indoor air pollution research.
  I urge my colleagues to take a deep breath when the yeas and nays are 
ordered on this amendment--and think hard and fast about the need for 
clean indoor air before you toss away an invaluable resource for public 
health protection.
  Confirm the need for clean indoor air standards. Vote ``yes'' on the 
Kennedy amendment.

                              {time}  1615

  Mr. BROWN of California. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last 
word.
  (Mr. BROWN of California asked and was given permission to revise and 
extend his remarks.)
  Mr. BROWN of California. Mr. Chairman, at the risk of becoming 
repetitious I would like to rise in support of the amendment offered by 
the gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. Kennedy].
  Mr. Chairman, we have in the bill this one section which puts three 
limits on what the EPA can do. One was the one which we just dealt 
with, the elimination of EPA's right to do a climate action plan, a 
second one is the indoor air pollution research, and a third one, which 
I will offer an amendment to eliminate, has to do with environmental 
technology initiatives.
  Mr. Chairman, I do not think that most Members recognize that these 
are 

[[Page H 9951]]
key environmental votes. These represent a step backward which is going 
to be recorded and reported throughout this country.
  On the last vote, Mr. Chairman, a couple dozen Republicans apparently 
were aware of this and chose to vote in support of the amendment. I 
hope that by calling attention to the matter, pointing out that this 
represents a concentrated effort that is emasculating this particular 
paragraph three significant opportunities for EPA to perform a great 
public service, we may be able to successfully pass the next two of 
these amendments.
  Now the gentleman from Massachusetts has offered the amendment to 
eliminate the prohibition against doing indoor air pollution research. 
Again I point to the report that was referenced earlier in debate, some 
more of that liberal claptrap offered by the Science Advisory Board to 
President Bush in 1990, in which it points out, and I will read this 
paragraph.
  Risks to human health, pollution indoors:

       Building occupants may be exposed to radon and its decay 
     products as well as to many airborne combustion products, 
     including nitrogen dioxide and environmental tobacco smoke. 
     Indoor exposure to toxic agents in consumer products (e.g., 
     solvents, pesticides, formaldehyde) also can cause cancer and 
     a range of non-cancer health effects. Due to the large 
     population directly exposed to a number of agents, some of 
     which are highly toxic, this problem poses relatively high 
     human health risks.

  Now that has been said over and over, the gentleman from 
Massachusetts [Mr. Kennedy] said it with great eloquence, and this is 
what the Bush administration science advisory panel said, presumably 
the body charged with identifying the areas of most critical research.
  Now of course, as we know and as I delight in pointing out, on their 
side there is a slight division of opinion as to whether this is 
respectable or not respectable, and I am glad to accentuate that in any 
way that I can, and I think that my colleagues should all be aware that 
it was diseases like Legionnaires' disease, for example, which is the 
result of indoor air pollution coming from the kinds of sources that 
the gentleman from Massachusetts described so eloquently, fungal 
products, unknown toxins that come through the air conditioning system. 
I ask my colleagues, do you want to not have any more information about 
this? You want to not know what these agents are? Do you prefer to 
remain ignorant of how to control them? That is what my colleagues are 
doing with their prohibition against indoor air research.
  Now I honestly do not think my colleagues understood that. I think in 
good faith they felt that this was something that us liberals invented 
to provide for more government regulation and greater funding. I see 
some affirmative nods over here. I would like them to stand up and 
reflect that because I think this is what the American people are going 
to want to weigh, and I have faith that the American people will make 
the right decision when it comes to affirming whether or not they want 
to abdicate any responsibility for protecting the health of the 
American people, and that is exactly the position they are putting 
themselves in, and they are making it very easy for me.

  Mr. Chairman, I just delight in pointing this out, and I hope that my 
colleagues will stand up and offer a rebuttal.
  Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of the amendment offered by my 
colleague from Massachusetts. The chairman has repeatedly stated that 
this bill provides adequate funds for research. The provision of the 
bill that my colleague is seeking to change with his amendment is a 
glaring example that this is not true. Indoor air pollution has 
consistently been identified as a significant health risk and as an 
area that needs additional research by EPA's Science Advisory Panel.
  The concerns that were expressed in committee by the chairman were 
regulatory in nature. This program is strictly a research program. It 
was authorized by the Science Committee under title IV of the Superfund 
amendments of 1986. For nearly 10 years this program has generated 
information that has been used to disseminate information to State 
indoor air programs and to building owners and managers on how to avoid 
and mitigate indoor air quality problems. EPA also works in conjunction 
with industry to develop voluntary methods to reduce the health risks 
associated with indoor air pollution.
  This program is not about regulating indoor air in private homes. It 
is not about regulating at all. This program performs necessary 
research which has beneficial impacts on human health through non-
regulatory means. The question is do we want to have the facts about 
indoor air quality or not. I urge my colleagues to support knowledge 
over ignorance by supporting the Kennedy amendment.
  Mr. WAXMAN. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of 
words.
  Mr. Chairman, I rose reluctantly because I wanted to give the chance 
for the Republicans to comment on this amendment, and I do not see them 
rising to their feet, so I want to take this opportunity to strike the 
last word and speak out in support of the amendment.
  It just makes no sense at all to zero out EPA funding for indoor air, 
and I think my colleague, the gentleman from California [Mr. Brown] was 
most eloquent, as was the gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. Kennedy], 
in arguing that we have got to continue funding the research on indoor 
air pollution. Health experts consistently rank this air pollution 
problem as one of the greatest environmental threats.
  Mr. Chairman, the gentleman from California [Mr. Brown] indicated it 
was the Bush administration that set out its priorities for those 
environmental problems which are the greatest threat to human health, 
and they ranked the problems of indoor air pollution as one of the 
highest. EPA research is crucial to understanding this problem, and EPA 
has already made enormous contributions in the area of indoor air 
research.
  For example, Mr. Chairman, they have done ground-breaking work on 
environmental tobacco smoke, an issue that we did not know was as 
serious as it is turning out to be, or radon toxic emissions from 
carpets, toxic substances from carpets.
  Mr. Chairman, in the last Congress this House voted overwhelmingly, 
recognizing that indoor air pollution is a serious health matter. We 
passed legislation overwhelmingly with bipartisan support that directed 
EPA to conduct more studies on indoor air so that we would have the 
science needed to address these problems.
  I cannot believe that the election last November would change the 
view of almost all the Democrats and Republicans who served in the last 
Congress to support this research, to now change it to deny the funding 
to have EPA do this research. I do not think we ought to turn our back 
on science and on the consensus we had in the last Congress. It would 
be a terrible mistake. It would certainly be shortsighted.
  Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. WAXMAN. I yield to the gentleman from Wisconsin.
  Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I would like to get this straight.
  As I understand it, this bill says in essence that EPA can do no 
research on indoor air.
  Mr. WAXMAN. That is my understanding.
  Mr. OBEY. And the argument for that is that OSHA does that research?
  Mr. WAXMAN. I have not heard an argument.
  If I can reclaim my time, we have not heard an argument. I have 
waited for the Republicans to stand up and respond to this amendment. 
Maybe they are going to support it. Maybe they see they are in error.
  I further yield to the gentleman.
  Mr. OBEY. My understanding is that the rationale for this is that for 
instance OSHA does this research, but OSHA relies on NIOSH to do its 
research, and the NIOSH budget, if anyone will bother to look, has been 
cut drastically in the Labor-HEW bill which has passed this House. I 
mean it would seem to me that this provision makes about as much sense 
as, say, passing a new Federal mandate saying people cannot breath 
indoors.
  Mr. WAXMAN. Reclaiming my time, to rely on OSHA is not sensible when 
OSHA would have jurisdiction over acting to deal with workplace 
hazards. Cutting funds on the research at EPA, we are not going to 
understand the hazards. I guess if we do not know about it, we would 
not have to take any actions to deal with it.

                              {time}  1630

  That does not eliminate the threat, and it does not eliminate the 
fact that 

[[Page H 9952]]
some of the exposures indoors, in the air we breathe, can cause cancer. 
The cancer rates in this country are at an extraordinarily high level. 
I cannot fathom how this in any way could be a partisan issue. I do not 
think it makes sense to take the position that what we do not know will 
not hurt us, because it certainly will come back to cause serious 
health threats.
  Mr. Chairman, I urge support for the amendment.
  Mr. HASTINGS of Florida. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite 
number of words.
  Mr. Chairman, as a Member in Congress from Florida, in a fairly 
subtropical type environment, we have come to know a number of hazards, 
ranging from simple molds all the way to Radon that may be hazardous to 
individuals. In that sense, I find it absurd that we are here debating 
something that has not been concluded scientifically, and that is the 
safety of indoor air. I rise in strong support of the amendment offered 
by the gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. Kennedy].
  Mr. KENNEDY of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. HASTINGS of Florida. I yield to the gentleman from Massachusetts.
  Mr. KENNEDY of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for 
yielding to me.
  Mr. Chairman, I would say to the gentleman from California [Mr. 
Brown], I think I have finally figured out why the Republicans are not 
responding. What has happened here, I think, they have figured out if 
we actually banned indoor air pollution in this building they would not 
be able to talk.
  The fact of the matter, what we hear from the other side of the aisle 
is a lot of pollution in this Chamber, a lot of pollution for this 
country, and a lot of pollution that is going to affect future 
generations of this land.
  All we are trying to do here is that while some people are afraid 
that this is going to mean that somehow we are going to find out that 
smoking a cigarette might be hazardous to other people's health, when 
they are going to find out that the glue on the floor could possibly 
affect you, when you sit next to a copying machine, that the fumes that 
come off the copying machine might make you sick. It is no secret to 
the American people that in many, many buildings that we live and work 
in, that you get headaches, you get red eyes, you feel bad.
  What does your fellow worker, your mother, tell you to do? To go 
outside, take a walk, get some fresh air. The air we breathe is a 
thousand times more polluted indoors than it is outdoors. Why do we not 
research and find out what kinds of contaminants are causing that 
illness? Why do we not find out what is wrong, and let the American 
people know?
  We have worked with the floor manufacturers, we have worked with the 
building owners. We got a much tougher bill passed in this Congress 
last year to try to deal with actually fixing what was broke. Now all 
we are trying to do is get the basic research done which was a 
fundamental and important component of the legislation that was passed 
last year.
  Have a heart. Let us just find out what is wrong in this country, 
find out and do the research, so we can fix and protect our American 
citizens. That is what this bill will do. That is what I think we ought 
to have the guts and the courage to go out and find.
  I would hope that the people of this Chamber would support the 
Kennedy amendment and vote for knowledge, vote against the prohibition 
on gaining more knowledge in research from the EPA for the purposes of 
indoor air pollution.
  Mr. WALKER. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of 
words, and I rise in opposition to the amendment.
  Mr. Chairman, the gentleman from California and the gentleman from 
Massachusetts keep referring to last year's Congress. The American 
people made a fundamental change in Congress because of some of the 
lousy policies we passed in the past Congress, and in fact, mandated us 
to do something towards balancing the budget. We are moving in that 
kind of direction. We think that one of the ways to do that is by 
rationalizing what agencies do.
  EPA is in fact not the place that regulates indoor air; OSHA is. 
NIOSH is the place that does the research relative to OSHA research, so 
the fact is that the appropriate place to prioritize this research is 
in that agency.
  Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of 
words.
  Mr. Chairman, the last statement I just heard is the greatest 
exercise in circular logic I have seen in at least an hour in this 
place. Let me simply say that the gentleman just said, ``Well, we do 
not have to have EPA do this research, because OSHA does it and OSHA I 
going to be able to use NIOSH.'' Yet, the Republicans went after NIOSH 
with a vengeance when it was before this House in the Labor-HEW bill. 
They have had a longstanding history of trying to chain NIOSH and 
preventing it from doing much in the way of significant research.
  It seems to me it is absolutely ludicrous to use a budget 
justification for saying that an agency cannot do research which is 
crucial to public health. There is no area in this country that costs 
us more dollars each year than preventable diseases, and an awful lot 
of them are caused by air borne pollutants. The tiny, tiny pittance 
that EPA would spend on research on indoor air is a tiny fraction of 1 
percent of the cost of human diseases caused by polluted air each year.
  I have never in my life heard such a Flat Earth justification for an 
idiotic piece of legislation as I heard just 3 minutes ago.
  Mr. BROWN of California. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. OBEY. I yield to the gentleman from California.
  Mr. BROWN of California. Mr. Chairman, the gentleman has added 
substantially to the debate in pointing out the issues that he did, but 
let me broaden this just a little bit. Actually, this entire bill is 
intended to implement a 5-year plan to cut one-third or more from all 
research. The committee does not have jurisdiction over OSHA or NIOSH, 
so I cannot speak as the gentleman can with regard to what is happening 
there. But there are cuts within the research areas in our jurisdiction 
that extend all the way from total elimination of substantial areas to 
75 percent cuts, even with agencies which enjoy the public support. And 
I know that the gentleman does not support it, but NASA is taking a 
one-third cut in that Republican budget. I hope the gentleman will not 
support it just because of that.
  The point that I am making here is that the Administration, and I 
will put this in the Record, feels that this emasculates our efforts to 
provide the seed corn, the knowledge necessary to expand the 
opportunities for our children and our grandchildren; that it is the 
greatest reduction in U.S. investments in research and development that 
we have ever had.
  Then we get to the point where the other side argues, as they have on 
several occasions in this bill, that they cannot afford to find it. 
This is the defense of the teenager who shot his mother and father and 
then pleaded to the judge that he was an orphan and should not be 
penalized. They have eliminated the money and then pleaded that they 
cannot do the research that needs to be done.
  Mr. Chairman, we have to face this problem. This is a real problem. 
We need to understand that R&D can be cut, but should it be cut more on 
health and safety, like indoor air pollution, than we are cutting in 
military weapons systems, which are relatively uncut? It is a priority 
matter. This Congress has to decide what its priorities are, and 
obviously, this bill reflects one rather restricted set of priorities 
which I hope will be rejected by the adoption of some of these 
amendments.
  Mr. OBEY. I thank the gentleman.
  The CHAIRMAN. The question is on the amendment offered by the 
gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. Kennedy].
  The question was taken; and the Chairman announced that the ayes 
appeared to have it.


                             recorded vote

  Mr. WALKER. Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.
  A recorded vote was ordered.
  The vote was taken by electronic device, and there were--ayes 195, 
noes 218, not voting 19, as follows:

[[Page H 9953]]


                             [Roll No. 710]

                               AYES--195

     Abercrombie
     Ackerman
     Allard
     Baldacci
     Barcia
     Barrett (WI)
     Becerra
     Beilenson
     Bentsen
     Bereuter
     Berman
     Bishop
     Blute
     Boehlert
     Bonior
     Borski
     Brewster
     Brown (CA)
     Brown (FL)
     Brown (OH)
     Bryant (TX)
     Canady
     Cardin
     Castle
     Clay
     Clayton
     Clement
     Clyburn
     Coburn
     Coleman
     Collins (IL)
     Collins (MI)
     Conyers
     Costello
     Coyne
     Davis
     de la Garza
     DeFazio
     DeLauro
     Dellums
     Deutsch
     Dicks
     Dingell
     Dixon
     Doggett
     Doyle
     Durbin
     Edwards
     Engel
     English
     Eshoo
     Evans
     Farr
     Fattah
     Filner
     Flake
     Foglietta
     Foley
     Forbes
     Ford
     Frank (MA)
     Frost
     Furse
     Gejdenson
     Gilchrest
     Gillmor
     Gilman
     Gonzalez
     Gordon
     Green
     Greenwood
     Gutierrez
     Hall (OH)
     Hamilton
     Hastings (FL)
     Hayes
     Hefner
     Hilliard
     Hinchey
     Holden
     Horn
     Hoyer
     Jackson-Lee
     Jacobs
     Jefferson
     Johnson (SD)
     Johnson, E. B.
     Johnston
     Kanjorski
     Kaptur
     Kelly
     Kennedy (MA)
     Kennedy (RI)
     Kildee
     King
     Kleczka
     Klink
     LaFalce
     LaHood
     Lantos
     Lazio
     Leach
     Levin
     Lewis (GA)
     Lipinski
     LoBiondo
     Lofgren
     Longley
     Lowey
     Luther
     Maloney
     Manton
     Markey
     Martinez
     Mascara
     Matsui
     McCarthy
     McDermott
     McHale
     McKinney
     McNulty
     Meehan
     Meek
     Menendez
     Miller (CA)
     Minge
     Mink
     Molinari
     Moran
     Nadler
     Neal
     Oberstar
     Obey
     Olver
     Ortiz
     Orton
     Owens
     Pallone
     Pastor
     Payne (NJ)
     Payne (VA)
     Pelosi
     Peterson (FL)
     Pomeroy
     Porter
     Portman
     Poshard
     Rahall
     Ramstad
     Rangel
     Reed
     Richardson
     Rivers
     Roemer
     Rose
     Roukema
     Roybal-Allard
     Rush
     Sabo
     Sanders
     Sawyer
     Schroeder
     Schumer
     Scott
     Serrano
     Skaggs
     Slaughter
     Spratt
     Stark
     Stokes
     Studds
     Stupak
     Tanner
     Taylor (MS)
     Thompson
     Thornton
     Thurman
     Torkildsen
     Torres
     Towns
     Velazquez
     Vento
     Visclosky
     Ward
     Waters
     Watt (NC)
     Waxman
     Williams
     Wilson
     Wise
     Woolsey
     Wyden
     Wynn
     Yates
     Zimmer

                               NOES--218

     Archer
     Armey
     Bachus
     Baesler
     Baker (CA)
     Baker (LA)
     Ballenger
     Barr
     Barrett (NE)
     Bartlett
     Barton
     Bass
     Bateman
     Bevill
     Bilbray
     Bliley
     Boehner
     Bonilla
     Bono
     Boucher
     Browder
     Brownback
     Bryant (TN)
     Bunn
     Bunning
     Burr
     Burton
     Buyer
     Callahan
     Calvert
     Camp
     Chabot
     Chambliss
     Chenoweth
     Christensen
     Chrysler
     Clinger
     Coble
     Collins (GA)
     Combest
     Condit
     Cooley
     Cox
     Cramer
     Crane
     Crapo
     Cremeans
     Cubin
     Cunningham
     Danner
     Deal
     DeLay
     Diaz-Balart
     Dickey
     Dooley
     Doolittle
     Dreier
     Duncan
     Dunn
     Ehlers
     Ehrlich
     Ensign
     Everett
     Ewing
     Fawell
     Fields (TX)
     Flanagan
     Fowler
     Fox
     Franks (CT)
     Franks (NJ)
     Frelinghuysen
     Frisa
     Funderburk
     Gallegly
     Ganske
     Gekas
     Geren
     Goodlatte
     Goodling
     Goss
     Graham
     Gunderson
     Gutknecht
     Hall (TX)
     Hancock
     Hansen
     Harman
     Hastert
     Hastings (WA)
     Hayworth
     Hefley
     Heineman
     Herger
     Hilleary
     Hobson
     Hoekstra
     Hoke
     Hostettler
     Houghton
     Hunter
     Hutchinson
     Hyde
     Inglis
     Istook
     Johnson (CT)
     Johnson, Sam
     Jones
     Kasich
     Kim
     Kingston
     Klug
     Knollenberg
     Kolbe
     Largent
     Latham
     LaTourette
     Laughlin
     Lewis (CA)
     Lewis (KY)
     Lightfoot
     Lincoln
     Linder
     Livingston
     Lucas
     Manzullo
     Martini
     McCollum
     McCrery
     McDade
     McHugh
     McInnis
     McKeon
     Metcalf
     Meyers
     Mica
     Miller (FL)
     Montgomery
     Moorhead
     Morella
     Myers
     Myrick
     Nethercutt
     Neumann
     Ney
     Norwood
     Nussle
     Oxley
     Packard
     Parker
     Paxon
     Peterson (MN)
     Petri
     Pickett
     Pombo
     Pryce
     Quillen
     Quinn
     Radanovich
     Regula
     Riggs
     Roberts
     Rogers
     Rohrabacher
     Ros-Lehtinen
     Royce
     Salmon
     Sanford
     Saxton
     Scarborough
     Schaefer
     Schiff
     Seastrand
     Sensenbrenner
     Shadegg
     Shaw
     Shays
     Shuster
     Sisisky
     Skeen
     Skelton
     Smith (MI)
     Smith (NJ)
     Smith (TX)
     Smith (WA)
     Solomon
     Souder
     Spence
     Stearns
     Stenholm
     Stockman
     Stump
     Talent
     Tate
     Tauzin
     Taylor (NC)
     Thomas
     Thornberry
     Tiahrt
     Traficant
     Upton
     Volkmer
     Vucanovich
     Waldholtz
     Walker
     Walsh
     Wamp
     Watts (OK)
     Weldon (FL)
     Weldon (PA)
     Weller
     White
     Whitfield
     Wicker
     Wolf
     Young (AK)
     Young (FL)
     Zeliff

                             NOT VOTING--19

     Andrews
     Bilirakis
     Chapman
     Dornan
     Emerson
     Fazio
     Fields (LA)
     Gephardt
     Gibbons
     Kennelly
     McIntosh
     Mfume
     Moakley
     Mollohan
     Murtha
     Roth
     Tejeda
     Torricelli
     Tucker

                              {time}  1701

  The Clerk announced the following pair:
  On this vote:

       Mr. Moakley for, with Mr. McIntosh against.

  Mr. HUTCHINSON changed his vote from ``aye'' to ``no.''
  Mr. SPRATT and Mrs. ROUKEMA changed their vote from ``no'' to 
``aye.''
  So the amendment was rejected.
  The result of the vote was announced as above recorded.
  Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Chairman, I move that the Committee do now rise.
  The motion was agreed to.
  Accordingly the Committee rose; and the Speaker pro tempore (Mr. 
LaHood) having assumed the Chair, Mr. Kingston, Chairman of the 
Committee of the Whole House on the State of the Union, reported that 
that Committee, having had under consideration the bill (H.R. 2405) to 
authorize appropriations for fiscal years 1996 and 1997 for civilian 
science activities of the Federal Government, and for other purposes, 
had come to no resolution thereon.

                          ____________________