[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 29 (Wednesday, March 6, 1996)]
[House]
[Pages H1753-H1754]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




              MICA EXPRESSES OUTRAGE AT OUT-OF-CONTROL EPA

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Florida [Mr. Mica] is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. MICA. Mr. Speaker, I come before the House this afternoon really 
in a sense of outrage about our out-of-control Environmental Protection 
Agency. We have heard EPA talking about how the new majority and 
Members of Congress on both sides of the aisle were going to gut their 
budget and hurt the environment and do away with any regulations. That, 
Mr. Speaker, is all bunk.
  We have seen EPA use public resources in the past to continue their 
mission of misinformation of untruths and distortions. Today I received 
a copy of EPA Watch dated January 31, 1996. This, Mr. Speaker, really 
takes the cake. It says, ``EPA Enlists PTA To Battle Congress Over 
Budget Cuts.''
  This story tells how the EPA's Office of Enforcement and Compliance 
has a memo dated January 19 that states that their staff, from no fewer 
than 11 offices, are working in this mission of lies and distortion and 
now trying to drag the children, parents and teachers of this Nation 
into this campaign against much-needed reform.

  First of all, let me tell the parents and teachers and my colleagues 
that EPA was a Republican idea. It started in 1972. It was an idea to 
do a better job in cleaning up the environment. It was a Republican 
proposal to set some national standards and we have done that. We have 
begun to clean up. We have had 20 some years of experience and we have 
seen where mistakes have been made and we need to draw on that.
  When President Clinton came into office in 1993, in January, and I 
quote from the New York Times, it said, ``in January, mayors from 114 
cities and 49 States opened a campaign by sending the President a 
letter urging the White House to focus on how environmental 
policymaking had, in their view, gone awry.''
  That is what started the debate. The cities, the counties, the 
special districts, the Governors, the State associations came to us and 
said, ``Some of what you're doing, some of what you're imposing makes 
no sense, it's a great cost on us, and we pass it on to the taxpayer in 
higher, unwarranted costs in many cases.'' So they gave us the 
responsibility of trying to make some sense out of this.
  Mr. Speaker, I served on the committee that conducted oversight of 
EPA from 1992-94. What I saw was a horror story and the children and 
the parents and teachers should know, not just the misinformation that 
they are being fed by this compliance office to lobby Congress for more 
money but they should know what is really going on.
  Let me cite, for example, a memo dated March 31, 1993, from the 
inspector general for audit of that agency. He is talking about the 
Environmental Research Laboratory, one of the operations of EPA. He 
said for over a period of up to 7 years the audit concluded that ERLA 
management had avoided or circumvented laws, regulations, and agency 
procedures in the award and funding of certain contracts and had 
misused or abused the use of contracts, and it goes on and on and on 
about the misuse.
  Mr. Speaker, this is how taxpayer dollars are being expanded. When I 
served on the committee, we looked at Superfund, a multibillion-dollar 
project that was to clean up the hazardous waste sites. What we found 
in this report from GAO in 1994 said although one of EPA's key policy 
objectives is to address the worst sites first, relative risk plays 
little role in the agency's determination of priorities.
  This study by GAO finds in fact that they choose cleanup sites on the 
basis of political pressure, not the risk to children and safety. That 
is something our American children, our teachers, and the Congress 
should know.
  What about polluters? Do polluters pay? Not with EPA. They let them 
off

[[Page H1754]]

the hook. Look at this headline, ``EPA Lets Polluters Off the Hook,'' 
$4.8 billion in noncollected funds.
  Mr. Speaker, I have just about had it with EPA. I am calling on the 
Speaker, and I am calling on Chairman McIntosh of the oversight 
committee to conduct an investigation of what they are doing. Rather 
than going out and enforcing environmental laws, they are using 
taxpayer funds to start a campaign against Congress, and this action 
must stop.

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