[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 171 (Wednesday, November 1, 1995)]
[House]
[Pages H11667-H11668]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




           THE VA-HUD-INDEPENDENT AGENCIES CONFERENCE REPORT

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Gekas] is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. DORNAN. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. GEKAS. I yield to the gentleman from California.


      regarding attacks on members and their representative duties

  Mr. DORNAN. Mr. Speaker, I want to say to my distinguished colleague, 
the gentleman from Pennsylvania, that I just went up and checked our 
own 

[[Page H 11668]]

House manual book, our rules manual. It is in every office. On page 
360, you will read that an attack upon a Member about his 
representative duties is a bona fide point of personal privilege. I 
would recommend that you do what I said I would not do myself to 
correct some attacks on my honor. I will not waste the committee's 
time, because they were more personal. But that is an attack on the 
whole freshman class, on me, on all of us, on what we are trying to do. 
I would recommend you do it in the middle of the day tomorrow, or as 
soon as you can next week, check it with the Speaker, but not----
  Mr. GEKAS. And not tonight.
  Mr. DORNAN. And not tonight.
  Mr. GEKAS. Thank you for yielding back my time.
  Mr. Speaker, I am engaged in a small war of ``Dear Colleagues.'' My 
office sent out a ``Dear Colleague'' letter on the impending conference 
report and the vote we are going to take on the VA-HUD-Independent 
Agencies appropriations. That ``Dear Colleague'' was answered by 
another one, and now we have submitted a surrebuttal ``Dear 
Colleague.''
  I would like to explain this to the House, because this information 
flowing back and forth is going to be very important in the decision 
that each Member of the House has to make on the appropriations for EPA 
under the Independent Agencies portion of the VA-HUD conference report 
that we are going to be debating.
  First of all, Mr. Speaker, let us start from the beginning. This is 
important. When we passed the Clean Air Act, and all of us want clean 
air, for gosh sakes. Who can accuse anybody in the Congress or outside 
the Congress of not wanting to have clean air? Well, anyway, because of 
the language in the Clean Air Act and the authorization granted in 
there, the EPA had certain powers. One of them was to set auto emission 
standards for the 50 States.
  What has happened is that the mandates issued out of the EPA for 
centralized emissions mechanisms in the various States were so 
draconian and so devoid of proper standards for clean air, and really 
devoid of the necessary information upon which proper testing could be 
accomplished, that 16 States had to throw up their hands and determine 
that it was impossible for them to comply with that kind of centralized 
emission mechanism called for by the EPA.
  So what has happened is that, with a lot of intermediate history 
which I will not reiterate here, we came to the point where a rider, 
one of the 16 or 17 riders, is being inserted into these Independent 
Agency appropriations for the EPA which would say, very innocuously and 
reasonably, that we would like to see the EPA conduct a 2-year study of 
air sampling, shall we say, to determine what is an alternative to the 
centralized mechanism that they are mandating, because we do not think 
that 16 States, and perhaps others, will be able to safely and cost-
effectively comply. That is all we wanted to do with this rider that is 
1 of the 16 or 17 riders.
  Now, when I sent out my letter, my ``Dear Colleague'' letter, I 
alerted everyone that we ought to vote no on the Stokes-Boehlert motion 
to instruct conferees, because we could be cutting out highway funds 
unless we supported this rider. If we supported Stokes-Boehlert, we 
could be cutting out highway funds for the 16 States. That is the 
essence of my ``Dear Colleague.''
  What that was followed by was a ``Dear Colleague'' by the gentleman 
from New York, Sherwood Boehlert, and I guess the former chairman, the 
gentleman from Ohio, Mr. Stokes, that that was not true, that no State 
would be facing losing highway funds if they got rid of this rider and 
let the EPA do what it wanted to do.
  So what did I do? I researched as fast as I could, and my staff did 
an excellent job to try to bring this into focus. We have learned that 
indeed the EPA sends out letter after letter to California, to 
Pennsylvania, to Virginia, threatening the loss of highway project 
funds and highway funds unless those States and others comply with this 
centralized version.
  Then they say, ``We do not mandate centralized monitoring of auto 
emissions,'' but then if you do not, then if you implement something 
else, you could lose 50 percent of the credits that in themselves wind 
up costing highway funds to the States.
  Mr. Speaker, I am trying to straighten this out. Let me repeat, the 
rider which is in the bill now, which I want to protect, is one that 
would put the EPA on hold on these mandates for this centralized 
system, put them on hold until we can test the air, get some samples, 
determine the best way to determine this auto emissions program, not to 
force this down our throats in an ineffective, cost-ineffective manner.

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