[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.
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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
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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.
____________________