[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 34 (Wednesday, March 13, 1996)]
[House]
[Page H2195]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




              ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGES AND FUNDING OF THE EPA

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Doolittle). Under a previous order of 
the House, the gentleman from Florida [Mr. Mica] is recognized for 5 
minutes.
  Mr. MICA. Mr. Speaker, I wanted to address the House this evening and 
talk about the Vice President's speech today. The Vice President was on 
a mission to distort what the Republicans are actually doing in 
Congress relating to environmental changes and funding the EPA. I think 
it is important that the Congress and the American people know what is 
happening.
  Today Vice President Gore said we are putting our kids in danger. He 
said that today more than 10 million American children under 10 
currently under 12 currently living within 4 miles of a toxic waste 
site are at risk. The Vice President also said, yes, the era of big 
Government is over.
  My colleagues, unfortunately, I think, the Vice President is talking 
out of both sides of his mouth to us. I think we need to set the record 
straight, and let me share with you some of the facts relating to what 
is going on with this great current Superfund site.
  First of all, the Superfund Program has been in existence for 15 
years, and only 75 sites out of several thousand identified sites out 
of several thousand identified sites have been cleaned up, an average 
of 5 sites per year. The average cost of a cleanup of a site is $30.7 
million. The total cost to date in the Superfund Program to the 
Government and private sectors is about $25 billion. The Superfund 
costs the Government and private sector $4 billion annually for 
nonfederally owned sites.
  However, only 53 percent of the total Superfund dollars are spent on 
cleaning up the sites. The rest of the money, and this is the Paul 
Harvey part of the story, the rest of the money, $1.3 billion annually, 
is spent on attorneys and studies.
  So we are, under this current system of Superfund that the Vice 
President is so concerned about protecting, the money does not go to 
clean up these sites. The money goes back for attorneys' fees and 
studies, and you see out of all of the sites identified, several 
thousand, only a handful have, in fact, been cleaned up.
  What about those children the Vice President spoke about today when 
he addressed group here in Washington? Are we taking care of the risk 
to human health and safety and welfare? How did the GAO report? This 
GAO report is June 17, 1994. Let me read this GAO report about the 
sites we are cleaning up.
  Although one of the EPA's key policy objectives is to address the 
worst sites first. Relative risk plays little role in the agency's 
determination of priorities. EPA headquarters leave the task of setting 
priorities to the regions. Yet the regions do not even rank the sites 
by risk. So we find that we are not cleaning up the sites that pose, in 
fact, the most risk to our children, public health, and safety, and 
that the system that President Gore is protecting is really out of 
whack.
  Ladies and gentlemen, we have also heard comments that EPA is going 
to, in fact, make polluters pay. We have to look at the record. The 
Vice President says this great system, in fact, currently makes 
polluters pay and we do not want to change that. In fact, look at these 
headlines, ``EPA Lets Polluters Off the Hook.'' In fact, under the 
current system, you find that very few of the dollars are collected by 
EPA.
  The Lincoln Star reported, June 21, 1993, that internal EPA figures 
obtained by Associated Press showed the Agency has recovered only $843 
million, or less than one-fifth of the $4.3 billion, in cleanup costs 
that could be recovered from polluters under the current law. So they 
are not doing it now. And these are the kinds of changes we want to 
make here.
  Finally, ladies and gentlemen, let me tell you what this is about. 
This is about command and control bureaucracy here in Washington, DC. 
This is about how many employees EPA has. EPA has 5,924 of its nearly 
17,850 employees in the entire agency. There are 6,000 here in 
Washington, DC. This is about command and control and bureaucracy, not 
about the environment.

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