[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 48 (Tuesday, April 16, 1996)]
[House]
[Pages H3439-H3440]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                 REPUBLICANS CARE ABOUT THE ENVIRONMENT

  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 and my colleagues, I took to the floor earlier 
today in response to charges from the other side.
  With Earth Day coming up, the other side is bashing Republicans. 
Republicans are going to hurt the environment. They send an incorrect 
message to the American people. Let me take, if I may, a few minutes 
and set the record straight.
  First of all, probably most of the Members and the young people who 
have come here to serve in Congress do not realize, Mr. Speaker, that 
in fact the Environmental Protection Agency is a Republican idea. It 
was started and proposed by President Nixon in 1972. But the idea was 
not to create a huge bureaucracy. The idea was to set some national 
standards, because Republicans want clean air. Republicans want clean 
water. Republicans want clean land. We have children. We breathe the 
air. We drink the water. We want our children to inherent a land that 
is environmentally protected and clean and secure.
  So it is a Republican idea that we are talking about. But the idea 
was not to pay more and get less. In fact, the Republican idea was to 
set some national standards of regulation. But let us look at what has 
happened. Just take a minute and look at this. Since today, we have 
18,000 Federal bureaucrats in the Environmental Protection Agency, not 
to mention thousands of contract employees, and their job is to pump 
out rules.
  You think they might be in my State of Florida, but in fact they are 
scattered throughout 10 regional offices and 1,000 at a clip there. 
Then here in Washington, DC, we have 6,000 EPA employees within almost 
speaking distance of my voice.
  Mr. Speaker, we have 6,000 EPA Federal bureaucrats who, again, their 
responsibility is to pump out more rules and regulations and justify 
their bureaucracy and their rulemaking ability. So we have seen that 
bureaucracy grow. In 1972, we did not have 47 of the 50 States that 
have full-blown environmental protection agencies. Almost every city, 
every county, every State has full-blown authorities.
  Let us look at the programs that they talk about, the gentleman from 
New Jersey came back and talked about. Do these programs work? Are we 
making polluters pay? Look at this headline from 1993: ``EPA Lets 
Polluters Off Hook.'' So polluters are not paying under the current 
law. So this misinformation is incorrect.
  These are the facts. Now, of the sites that we have in Superfund, a 
program which was well-intended, are we cleaning up the Superfund? 
Wrong. Look at the number of sites. We have over 2,000 sites, and only 
a handful have been cleaned up at great expense. So we are not cleaning 
up the sites, and that is according to GAO reports. They do not want to 
deal with the facts. Then a GAO report that was released in 1994, it 
says: ``Are we cleaning up the sites that are most hazardous to public 
health, safety and welfare? And the answer is no.''
  The report says EPA does not use risk to set priorities. You know 
what drives the cleanup? Political pressure. That is what this report 
says. That is what Republicans are trying to change. We say why pay 
more and get less? Superfund is a disaster. You know who gets the money 
in this? The lawyers and the people who do studies. About 80 percent of 
the billions of dollars that are expended on these programs go to the 
lawyers and the studies.

  Mr. Speaker, I sit on the committee that oversees EPA. You know who 
does the studies? Another report by the General Accounting Office 
showed that the largest percentage of contractors are former EPA 
employees. An incestuous relationship. So this is what they want to 
keep. They want to keep the pollution. They want to let the polluters 
off the hook. They do not want the sites cleaned up that are hazardous 
to our children and our future. They want to pay more and get less. 
They want the attorneys and these fat cats from EPA who have gone into 
the private sector to keep milking the cow because the taxpayers are 
paying. This is what the argument is about, and the American people and 
this Congress must listen.
  Republicans care about the environment. Republicans care about the 
land and the water and the air we breathe. The thing is, we are not 
getting our money's worth. The thing is, people are out there busting 
their buns to send money to Washington, and this is where the billions 
are going and the hazardous waste sites are not being cleaned up and 
priorities are not being met and promises are not being kept.

[[Page H3440]]



                          THANK YOU TO MY WIFE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from California [Mr. Dornan] is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. DORNAN. Mr. Speaker, my colleagues and the broad C-SPAN audience 
of a million people or more, sometimes a million and a half when we are 
having a hot debate here on public policy, I watch in 1-minute speeches 
at the beginning of some days hear Members from both sides of the aisle 
get up and proudly talk about a little league team, a professional 
basketball team, a professional baseball team, or some worthy American 
citizen in their district who has passed away who lived a great life 
and contributed to the overall greatness of our country and to the 
benefit of their fellow citizens. But today I rise to do that very 
thing for someone very close to me, my wife. Today is her birthday, but 
it is also our 41st wedding anniversary. Last year it was the day that 
I declared for President in the city of by birth, the island of my 
birth, Manhattan, in New York City.
  It was Easter Sunday last year, the 16th, and we went to mass in the 
beautiful cathedral where I was baptized, the seventh largest church in 
the world, St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York. On that beautiful 
Easter Sunday, we went up to the baptismal font where I became a 
Christian and we retook our wedding vows, and this last year has been 
one of the most exciting, delightful years of my life, running, 
fulfilling a boyhood dream for the Presidency of this great United 
States.
  Mr. Speaker, I just want to thank my wife for putting up with an Air 
Force fighter pilot who ejected twice, saved a couple other aircrafts, 
landing in dangerous conditions without any power, dead-sticking, 
almost lost at sea once, traveling around the world in dangerous areas. 
The plane that killed our Commerce Secretary Ron Brown was the very 
airplane that Mr. Callahan flew on not 4 weeks before, 3 weeks and 6 
days before. Four times I flew with that same wonderful Air Force crew. 
About seven of the eight on that crew were with Sonny Callahan's crew 
and Bob Stump of Arizona and myself. Great, fine young people.
  We flew into some dangerous fields, Tuzla, in a snowstorm, Sarajevo 
in a snowstorm. That could have been me. It could have been six Members 
of this House instead of 24 CEO's, 35 people overall, including Ron 
Brown. But it is not easy being married to someone that is living a 
life of adventure and trying to serve his fellow countrymen, giving up 
wonderful opportunities in media to make a lot of money and still 
contribute significantly.

  I just want to thank my wife, Sally Hanson Dornan, for putting up 
with me for 41 years, giving us five beautiful children, all of them 
charging conservatives of principle.
  This year, on the eve of the Iowa debate, I won the Presidential 
election because I got a 10th grandchild. And I woke up this morning to 
my granddaughter handing me Molly Dornan, looking at that beautiful, 
precious face. We have had all 10 grandchildren together for the first 
time over this Easter week, and I am just overwhelmed that I have so 
many blessings from God to account for an to never retire, to just find 
some way to serve my fellow Americans.
  We spent Saturday all day at Mount Vernon. What an inspirational 
point in American history, the birthplace of the Father of our country, 
first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his 
countrymen.

                              {time}  1600

  That was the first time I would be back to Mount Vernon since my dad 
took my two brothers and me there in 1941 in the summer, right before 
we were drawn into World War II, and I remember those 8-year-old 
boyhood memories of the beautiful vistas of the Potomac, but I did not 
remember the house, and what a humble way, in spite of the dark clouds 
of slavery over that plantation and that Washington freed his slaves on 
the death of his wife, which happened 4 years after his own. He died at 
age 67; Martha died at age 70.
  But you walk through those small bedrooms, wooden floors, looked at 
the bed where George Washington died, and thought what great dreams he 
had for this country, this man of character, how far we have fallen in 
some areas, then the promise that Washington, Adams, Jefferson, 
Madison, the Father of our Constitution, Abraham Lincoln, fighting 
Teddy Roosevelt; all these Presidents, so many of them general officers 
that were shot and wounded in combat.
  Washington, when he was with Braddock, was 1 of only 4 officers out 
of 100 that were not wounded. Thirty-eight of them were killed, and he 
said only by God's hand was he saved, and he was 23 years old and he 
wondered why.
  Mr. Speaker, that is what I wondered when I bailed out of the jet the 
second time at 23, wondered why did God keep me around, and hope I am 
not disappointing anybody. I will continue, Mr. Speaker, to keep 
fighting for faith, for family, and for freedom, and again I thank my 
wife on here birthday for 41 wonderful years.

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