[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 39 (Wednesday, March 20, 1996)]
[House]
[Pages H2538-H2542]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                     CUTS IN ENVIRONMENTAL PROGRAMS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of May 
12, 1995, the gentleman from New Jersey [Mr. Pallone] is recognized for 
60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
  Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, this evening I would like to talk about the 
environment and my concern over cuts that the Republican leadership has 
made in environmental programs and in the various agencies of the 
Federal Government that are involved in environmental protection.
  I should point out that just a couple weeks ago, our environmental 
task force, within the Democratic Caucus, issued a report on the impact 
of Republican budget cuts on the environment. What this report points 
out very vividly is that the House Republican leadership so far in this 
Congress, with particular attention to 1995, basically from a budget 
point of view and in terms of authorization bills and various 
amendments that came to the floor, was involved in a systematic effort 
to turn back the clock on the last 25 years of environmental 
protection.
  This is affecting every State and the various Government shutdowns 
and the level of funding cuts for continuing resolutions that fund the 
Environmental Protection Agency, the Interior Department, and other 
departments and

[[Page H2539]]

agencies that are involved in environmental protection have had a 
cumulative effect on the environment so that in effect right now, even 
though we have many laws on the books that seemingly protect the 
environment, we do not have the investigators, the enforcers and the 
people that will go out and, if you will, nab the polluters so that our 
environmental laws are effectively enforced. Our report points out that 
this process continues.
  As many of you know, just a week or two ago this House passed a 
continuing resolution that would take us in terms of our spending until 
the end of this fiscal year. And once again the funding levels that 
were in that continuing resolution for the environment are essentially 
22 percent for the EPA below the President's fiscal 1996 request. The 
bill, the continuing resolution, also includes a number of 
antienvironment riders that affect both the Environmental Protection 
Agency and the Department of the Interior.
  Mr. Speaker, we know that if this process continues, either through 
this long-term continuing resolution or through the stopgap measures 
that we are seeing now pass every week--last week we had a continuing 
resolution for 1 week. My understanding is that by the end of this 
week, this Friday when funding runs out again, we may pass or the 
Republican leadership may bring to the floor another continuing 
resolution for another week. The level of funds in those continuing 
resolutions, those stopgap measures, continue to provide the EPA, the 
Interior Department and other agencies that protect the environment 
with such woefully low amounts of funding that they simply cannot do 
their job.
  I wanted to go through some of the points more specifically that our 
report on the environment, that our task force on the environment 
makes. We had a hearing a few weeks ago, and testimony at that hearing 
provided incontrovertible evidence of the impact of policies promoted 
by the Republican leadership and supported by an overwhelming majority 
of Republican legislators. We found first that Republicans have 
targeted environmental programs for particularly deep budget cuts.
  Just as an example, the Republican-passed interior appropriations 
bill vetoed earlier this year by President Clinton funded overall 
operations of the Department of the Interior 12 percent below the 
President's fiscal 1996 request. Funding for the Endangered Species Act 
was set at 38 percent below the President's request. Land acquisition 
for parks and other public uses was funded at 42 percent below the 
President's request.
  In the VA-HUD appropriations bill passed with a slim Republican 
majority and also vetoed by President Clinton, EPA's overall funding 
was cut by 21 percent but pollution enforcement functions received a 25 
percent cut. Again, it is very nice to have environmental laws on the 
books, but if you do not have the people, the environmental cops on the 
beat, so to speak, to go out there and find the polluters, then you 
might as well not have the environmental protection laws.
  In addition, what our report concludes is that antienvironment 
legislative riders have caused appropriations gridlock. Republicans 
have delayed the timely completion of the appropriations process by 
almost 6 months by including on funding bills a host of highly 
controversial legislative riders having little to do with cutting 
spending. The policy changes rendered by these riders are normally 
handled by the authorizing committees, not the appropriation 
committees. But the riders were included in the appropriations bill and 
typically are barred from amendment on the House floor in an effort to 
exhort the President to accept antienvironmental policies that could 
not survive in legislative debate on their merit.

  For example, on the Department of the Interior appropriations, the 
Republican riders would accelerate logging of the old-growth rain 
forest by 40 percent in the Tongass National Forest in Alaska, remove 
funding for the National Park Service operation of the Mojave desert 
national preserve, terminate the Columbia basin ecosystem's management 
project and continue an irresponsible moratorium on the listing of 
endangered and threatened species under the Endangered Species Act.
  Numerous legislative riders affecting EPA include provisions to bar 
oversight of wetlands policy and limit EPA's authority to list new 
hazardous waste sites for cleanup under the superfund law.
  Now, one of the points that we have been trying to make in our report 
on the environment, our task force report, is that these Republican 
cuts in environmental enforcement do not save money, and I repeat, do 
not save money. The EPA Administrator, Carol Browner, stated at our 
hearing that the environmental cop is absolutely not on the beat. 
Because of funding cuts in the continuing resolutions and the two 
Government shutdowns in late 1995, EPA was unable to perform 40 percent 
of planned health and safety inspections of industrial facilities in 
the first quarter of fiscal year 1996.
  In addition, the Department of Justice's environmental division had 
its budget cut down to $83 million, 12 percent less than requested by 
the President and nearly 10 percent less than the fiscal 1995 budget. 
Now, again, cutting funds for enforcement makes no fiscal sense. 
Assistant Attorney General Lois Schiffer stated or testified that since 
civil enforcement litigation in fiscal 1995 resulted in fines and costs 
recoveries totalling over $300 million. But in a sense what we are 
seeing here in that the amount of money coming back to the Treasury for 
fines because polluters are violating the law decreased because we can 
not go out and find the polluters.
  I would like to continue to talk about our report, but I know that I 
have some other Members here tonight who wanted to join with me in 
talking about these environmental cuts and what they mean. If we would 
like to at this time, I yield to the gentleman from Wisconsin [Mr. 
Barrett].
  Mr. BARRETT of Wisconsin. Mr. Speaker, I want to congratulate the 
gentleman, and I think that the Members of this body know, and if they 
do not know, they should know, the tremendous work that you have done 
on this issue. I think you have certainly been our leader on this side 
of the aisle in talking about the short-sightedness approach that is 
being used by the Republicans in their attacks on the environment this 
session.
  I rise tonight because I, as you do, oppose the Republican's Party's 
attack on our Nation's environmental laws. I find it somewhat ironic 
and sad when you think President Teddy Roosevelt as being the leader of 
the environmental movement basically in this century that his party now 
is ending the century by trying to undo a lot of the progress that he 
made when he first became a leader in this area.
  Mr. Speaker, I think it is instructive for us to talk a little bit 
about how this has come about. We do not hear much on this floor 
anymore about the Contract with America, but I think the Contract With 
America is a good starting point to discuss why we have this attack on 
the environment. As we have heard over the last several months, the 
Contract With America was put together in large part on the basis of 
focus groups, of going out to the American people and trying to use 
sort of a slick procedure to find out what was on the American people's 
mind and what was their highest priority, what issues were their 
highest priorities.
  It is no accident, I think, that the word environment does not even 
appear in the Contract With America. The environment is not a priority 
for those people who put together the Contract With America. The reason 
it is not a high priority is I think frankly, that they had some very 
flawed polling and flawed approach to their focus groups in deciding 
that the environment was not an issue that the American people care 
about. I think the American people care very much about the 
environment. But in putting together their focus groups and trying to 
decide whether this was an issue, they probably--and I do not know, I 
do not have access to their data--but they probably asked the American 
people to list what they thought were their highest priorities. I would 
imagine that there were a lot of people who said increased 
environmental protection was one of their higher priorities.

  Now that might strike you as a surprise, but the reason I do not 
think most Americans prior to January of 1995 thought the environmental 
laws were a high priority is because the environmental laws were 
working. In the

[[Page H2540]]

past 25 years, this Congress and the Presidents, under both parties, I 
think have done a pretty credible job in cleaning up our Nation's 
rivers, in cleaning up our Nation's lakes, in cleaning up our air.

                                  2130

  As a result of that, the American people think that this is an area 
that the Government actually was acting responsibly to make sure that 
you did not have polluters that were making it more difficult for 
people to have a clean environment.
  So, just as if you asked any ordinary American whether the roof on 
their house was a high priority, nobody would say yes, unless, of 
course, the roof was leaking, and now you have a situation where the 
roof is leaking in terms of environmental policy because the American 
people recognize that all the progress that we have made in the last 
generation on cleaning up our lakes and rivers and air is under attack 
under the current leadership in Congress. It is almost as though the 
Speaker and his followers have said, ``Yes, those environmental laws 
have worked for many, many years, so let's repeal them, let's move 
backward.'' And that is not the message that the American people want, 
and that is not the message that I have heard.
  I will tell you that one of the interesting things for me and one of 
the surprises that I first started seeing early last year was the 
increased number of pieces of mail and calls that I got from people in 
my district who raised environmental concerns as an issue, and this was 
happening far before any of these polls that we now see many leaders on 
the other side talking about where they are saying, ``Oh-oh, the 
American people think that the Republican Party has gone too far in 
dismantling the environmental laws.'' Now I think that the people in 
the Republican Party recognize that they have gone too far in trying to 
dismantle the environment laws.
  Mr. Speaker, they have tried to do it in a number of ways. Obviously, 
they tried to do it in the Clean Water Act here in the House of 
Representatives, and that bill was so bad the U.S. Senate would not 
even take it up. They said, ``We're not going to consider that; that's 
too extreme.'' So they said, ``Well, let's try to dismantle these 
agencies piecemeal, and let's do it through the appropriations 
process.''
  And that is why you saw attempt after attempt after attempt to attach 
riders, to attach lower levels of funding, to go after a lot of these 
agencies to make sure that they could not get their job done.
  The Republican budget has cut funding, as you indicated, for 
pollution enforcement by the EPA and the Department of Justice by 25 
percent so it is going to make it easier for companies that want to go 
out and pollute to do it. It lowers the cost of polluting in our 
country. Is that the direction the American people want us to go? 
Absolutely not.
  It funds the Endangered Species Act at a level 38 percent below what 
the President requested. Is that where the American people want us to 
go? Absolutely not; that is not where we should be going.
  In my State of Wisconsin we also have seen some of the ramifications 
of this. The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources relies on EPA 
funds authorized under the Clean Water Act for its surface water and 
groundwater protection programs. Any reduction in these funds will 
result in a proportional reduction in staff responsible for water 
quality monitoring, inspection, and enforcement. It will make it more 
difficult for my home State, which cherishes its fishing, which 
cherishes its clean lakes, to make sure that you have that for tourism, 
for people who want to fish, for the people who live in our State.
  The EPA has also joined forces with the State in an effort to reduce 
the discharge of mercury into the surface waters of Wisconsin. Mercury 
contamination is a serious problem in Wisconsin, where 246 rivers and 
lakes are so contaminated that fishing is restricted. The EPA provides 
both the State and private sector with experience necessary to measure 
mercury levels, but reduced budgets again will threaten the agency's 
ability to help.

  I think the sum product of what we are seeing here again is an attack 
on the progress that we have made over the last generation, and it is 
not an attack that I think the American people deserve, it is not an 
attack that the American people support.
  So again I just wanted to stop by tonight to applaud you on the fine 
work that you have done because I truly think you have been a leader on 
this, and I want to encourage you to continue your fine work.
  Mr. PALLONE. I appreciate that, and I particularly wanted to mention 
how you highlighted clean water, and I think that is a very good 
example of what the Republican leadership has done in this Congress.
  My district in New Jersey, a large part of it is on the water, either 
on the Raritan River, the Raritan Bay or the Atlantic Ocean, and we 
were the part of the State that was most severely impacted in the late 
1980's when the medical waste and other debris washed up on our shores 
and basically put an end to our tourism season in the summer. The 
beaches were closed. The people did not come down. It took about, I 
would say, 4 or 5 years before the Jersey shore recovered and people 
were back in full force and the water was clean. And basically that was 
because of the efforts in this Congress and on a bipartisan basis then, 
Democrats and Republicans, to try to pass some very strong laws that 
forbade ocean dumping that put medical waste tracking systems in place 
and essentially made it more difficult for polluters to drop; you know, 
to discharge items into the rivers, harbors and bays that would 
eventually come down to the Jersey shore.
  I would hate to see, and I know that my constituents would hate to 
see, a situation where, because of the relaxation of these laws or the 
improper enforcement of these laws, that we went back to the beach 
closings that we had in some cases now 7, 8 years ago.
  In addition, I would point out that you could take really any State 
in the country and see the impact of these budget cuts. I have some 
information just about my own State of New Jersey, for example, and 
what the Republican budget cuts have meant in New Jersey. Just as an 
example, to cite some of the areas that are impacted under the 
Superfund program, the Federal program to clean up hazardous waste 
sites, which is particularly important to New Jersey because we have 
more sites than any other State, 12 sites slated for significant new 
construction would be shut down by these budget cuts and 30 other sites 
in New Jersey with ongoing work will also experience shutdowns or 
slowdowns as a result of the Republican budget cuts with various 
impacts.
  Projected impacts are severe also on leaking underground storage 
tanks. There is a program to basically fix those which is impacted.
  The safe drinking water program, which is very important to New 
Jersey; the EPA estimates that more than 6 million residents of New 
Jersey are served by drinking water systems that have violated public 
health standards last year. But Republican budget cuts would reduce the 
funding available to these communities to improve their drinking water 
systems by about $5 million.
  With regard to the Clean Water Act, which Mr. Barrett mentioned, 
according to the EPA, about 85 percent of New Jersey's rivers and 
streams are too polluted for basic uses like swimming. And under the 
fiscal year 1996 conference report, again the Republican Conference 
report, New Jersey stands to lose $52 million in clean water funding 
that would help stop pollution from getting into the State's rivers, 
lakes and streams as well as the Atlantic Ocean. This is basically a 53 
percent cut from the fiscal year 1995 enacted funding level.

  Also huge cuts in New York's wastewater treatment loans and other 
clean water funding would threaten New Jersey's beaches through washups 
of untreated sewage and wastewater, again repeating the unfortunate 
situation that we had along the Jersey shore in the late 1980's.
  As far as enforcement is concerned, in New Jersey the environmental 
cop will be off the beat as inspections and enforcement efforts will be 
severely curtailed under the Republican budget proposal, which 
represents a cut of 25 percent, as we mentioned, below the President's 
budget request.

[[Page H2541]]

  Decreased inspections due to cuts create public health threats that 
would have to be addressed by a staff made smaller by the budget cuts. 
Essentially in Region II, which is the EPA region that New Jersey is 
part of, because of these ongoing Republican budget problems there is a 
growing backlog of permits which they have been unable to process.
  So, as I said, I can cite New Jersey, which is my home State, but we 
could get into almost really every State in the Nation to highlight 
what these Republican budget cuts mean for environmental protection.
  I was very happy that in order to highlight some of these concerns in 
my home State of New Jersey President Clinton came to the State, was in 
Bergen County just about a week or so ago, and he, of course, was there 
to highlight the problems with the Superfund program and the cuts in 
the Superfund program and what those would mean to the State of New 
Jersey if these Republican budget cuts in the Superfund program were 
allowed to continue.
  Now again, I wanted to go back, if I could, to the report that our 
Democratic task force put together that shows the impact of Republican 
budget cuts on the environment and stress again that these cuts in 
enforcement do not save money. In a sense, what these cuts do for both 
the EPA and the Department of the Interior is they undercut the 
Department of Justice's ability to recover funds, prosecute criminal 
violations, and prevent the degradation of the environment.
  It is, I guess, obvious, I would think, from anyone who thinks about 
it from a preventive point of view, that it is much less costly to the 
taxpayers to prevent problems from occurring than it is to fix 
environmental disasters after they occur. Slashing the budget and 
essentially preventing or making it impossible to do the preventive 
measures that the EPA and Department of Interior have been doing all 
along in the long run is only going to make it most costly when the 
Federal Government or the taxpayers have to pay the bill for the 
pollution that occurs.
  The other thing that the Republican leaders have been trying to get 
across, and I think is again a false premise, is that somehow the 
States can do all this on their own; in other words, that statements 
were made on the floor that in the past 10 years or the past 20 years, 
``Yeah, we have passed some good environmental laws, but now each State 
has its own department of environmental protection, or something like 
that, and they do a good enough job, and so we don't need the Federal 
EPA to intervene and do a lot of the things that the Federal EPA has 
been doing.''

  In reality, the reality is just the opposite, and we had testimony at 
our hearing from Assistant Attorney General Schiffer who explained 
again that, without the minimum environmental standards set by Federal 
law and the Federal enforcement actions, the health of our communities, 
the environment and economy, would be compromised; in other words, that 
the States rely on the Federal Government both in terms of dollars and 
in terms of minimum enforcement standards that are set to essentially 
do a good job with environmental protection at the State level and at 
the local level. And she gave an example that before the creation of 
the EPA in Federal statutes, the 6 States in the Chesapeake Bay 
watershed allowed the waters to become very severely polluted. Without 
a strong environmental presence, citizens in States like Virginia, 
which has cut its environmental budget by 26 percent, would have little 
recourse against pollution originating from other States.
  Pollution knows no boundaries. Although States, in many cases, do a 
good job, it makes sense to the Federal Government to have strong anti-
pollution laws and strong enforcement because air, water, and many 
other things that we talk about when we talk about the environment 
basically cross State boundaries. So it makes sense to have Federal 
laws and good Federal enforcement.
  The other myth, if you will, that is out there that our report, I 
think, successfully rebuffs is the notion that enough progress has been 
made on the environment; in other words, that somehow we have been at 
this now for 20, 25 years, we have made a lot of progress in terms of 
environmental protection, and we really do not need to do much more. 
And again, nothing could be further from the truth. Although there has 
been significant progress, there still obviously is a lot more to be 
done.
  I could just use the example of the Superfund sites in my home State 
where progress has been made in cleaning up quite a few of them, but 
there is still a tremendous amount more that needs to be done, and 
certainly when we talk about clean water and the ultimate goal of the 
Clean Water Act of safe and swimmable waters, we still have a long way 
to go before all the waters, or a significant portion of the waters in 
the country, are safe and swimmable.
  The other thing that we bring out in our report, and I think is very 
important, is, and again contradicting the notion that somehow 
protecting the environment or strong regulations against polluters 
hurts the economy, our report makes the case that a healthy environment 
contributes to a growing economy and that basically pollution control 
and proper management in natural resources ultimately results in the 
creation of more jobs, creates more income.
  Obviously, the best example of that, again, if I could use it, is my 
own district, the Jersey shore. The tourism is now in New Jersey the 
No. 1 or No. 2 industry in the State in terms of job creations and 
income coming to the State of New Jersey. During the summer, the 
summers of 1988 and after that, when the beaches were actually closed 
in most of the shore area of New Jersey, billions of dollars were lost 
in tourism, people were laid off, businesses almost had to close.

                                  2145

  I think that shows dramatically how there is a direct impact that a 
healthy environment contributes to a good economy.
  Again, Mr. Speaker, we will continue to make the case as we proceed 
in this Congress how important it is, how important it is for the 
Democrats to continue to prioritize the environment in terms of the 
budget, because even though it is true that we have good laws on the 
books in terms of environmental protection, if we do not have the money 
to adequately do investigations and enforcement to protect the 
environment, enforce those laws, the laws might as well not be on the 
books.
  Tomorrow again, I believe, or at the end of this week, we are going 
to face another one of these stop-gap continuing resolutions that the 
Republicans are going to bring forward. Again, if that continuing 
resolution is similar to the one we passed last week, that it means 
severe cuts, and constant effort on the part of the Republican 
leadership to cut back on the amount of money for environmental 
enforcement, we as Democrats will continue to oppose that and make the 
case that the Republican leadership is continuing this assault and this 
effort to turn back the clock on 20 or 25 years of progress on 
environmental enforcement in this Congress.
  Mr. DELLUMS. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to urge support of strong 
environmental legislation and funding for those programs. Our progress 
to date has been immense in improvements in public health and 
restoration of clean air and water. Our people and our natural 
resources must be protected for future generations. Recently in a 
fervor to reduce the budget, some majority Members have lost sight of 
our responsibility for the health and welfare of the people of this 
country. This ill-advised and short-sighted approach hits hardest at 
the segments of our population which are minorities and poor. The 
Republican majority of the Congress has lost touch with the needs of 
the population as a whole. They are concerned only with the interests 
of the wealthy and large industry. This is reflected in the reductions 
in environmental programs; thereby, benefitting those who pollute our 
world the most.
  Budget cuts of one-fourth in EPA enforcement programs will leave 
polluters at liberty to violate communities without the ability to 
defend themselves. Reductions have further caused the cessation of 
cleanup in 68 hazardous waste sites and slowed hundreds of others. The 
health of our children and elderly are endangered by the pollution and 
further compounded our inability to stop it. In my own state of 
California, 41 percent of rivers and streams and 52 percent of our 
lakes are too

[[Page H2542]]

polluted for people to use for swimming. Who will be responsible for 
ensuring that the pollution does not continue? We, the Members of 
Congress, will be held accountable to the people who have entrusted us 
with their welfare.
  Drinking water quality may not be an issue if you can afford to buy 
bottled water. However, many cannot afford this luxury; they are 
struggling just to feed their families. Safe drinking water is a right 
that the citizens of the United States deserve and demand. The cost of 
the human damage that may be incurred by drinking contaminated water is 
not worth near term savings from the EPA budget cuts. The most impacted 
groups are the most vulnerable segments: the young, elderly, and the 
poor. Moreover, there is evidence that living areas of the minority 
populations are subjected more to pollution than other segments of the 
populace. Unable to battle the air and water pollution or to afford 
alternatives, they succumb to the worst of the hazards. The cost of 
human illness and life is too high a stake in this gamble. We must use 
prevention to curtail any problems with our water sources, such as 
heavy metals, toxic chemicals, and dangerous microorganisms. The 
majority party must be able to understand the most cost-effective 
solution is pollution prevention. We have seen the cost of 
environmental cleanup and the health care expenses resulting from 
hazardous exposures and poor quality air and water.
  Not only is health of people endangered, but so is the health and 
diversity of our wildlife and the stability of our forests. We now face 
a 38-percent cut in funding for the Endangered Species Act. The cuts 
and the moratorium on placing new species on the endangered species 
list will not cause the problem to subside. It will only cause a 
festering of the problem. We have a responsibility to ensure that the 
environment is examined in its totality. The decrease in species is a 
result of poor environmental management and will lead to subsequent 
compounded environmental imbalances.
  Additionally, we must preserve our public lands for their 
environmental role, such as watershed capacity, as well as their scenic 
and recreational value. Tagging important legislation with amendments 
which, directly and indirectly, attack these treasured resources is not 
responsible. We must have comprehensive legislation to address the 
whole issue, not just a single Member's narrow interest. We must use a 
logical and scientifically sound approach. And as such, we must keep 
our research in ecological and environmental topics at a robust level. 
Recent efforts have stripped the EPA, and specifically Superfund, 
research by devastating amounts.
  Overall, we cannot allow our environmental progress to fade and 
return to prior conditions. We should not take steps away from 
environmental improvement, but toward it. I urge support and passage of 
budgets which will allow Federal agencies to complete this important 
work without the impediment of restrictive language.

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