[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 53 (Tuesday, April 23, 1996)]
[House]
[Pages H3659-H3660]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                               EARTH DAY

  Mr. MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, today the Republican 
leadership of the House will bring forward several noncontroversial 
bills that are designed for one purpose only, to camouflage the 
Republican Party's dreadful and irresponsible record on the environment 
in the 104th Congress. We know that is the spin of the Republican 
leadership, thanks to a March 29 memo from Majority Leader Armey 
advising Republican Members how to drive our Republican themes home 
each week.
  This week, following Earth Day, their theme is trying to make the 
Republican voter believe that antienvironment Republicans really care 
about protecting the environment and public health despite their 
horrible voting records. But these bills are not about making the 
environment green, they are about giving a faint green cover to the 
Republican Members who have voted time and again against clean water, 
against national parks, against endangered species, and against 
protecting Americans from pollution that threatens their health and 
safety. Four out of five Americans want the Environmental Protection 
Agency maintained or strengthened and they are shocked by the 
statements of Majority Whip Tom DeLay who declared the EPA the Gestapo 
of government. Eighty-five percent of Americans who say they are 
environmentalists are baffled when they hear Resources Chairman Don 
Young denigrate them as a despicable group of individuals, a self-
centered bunch of waffle-stomping, Harvard-graduating, intellectual 
bunch of idiots. They are outraged when they hear Congresswoman 
Chenoweth say that environmentalism is repugnant to America's values.

  The fact is that simply is not true, but the effort is underway to 
create some political coverage and as they bring these bills to the 
floor as a result of discussions, apparently within the environmental 
task force that the Speaker promoted to suggest that the Republicans 
care about the environment, we now see, we now see that the average 
voting record on environmental issues of that task force is only 18 
percent and nearly half of the members of that task force have earned a 
zero on their record.
  Later today as we watch a parade of Republicans come down here and 
tell us how they support the environment by supporting these 
noncontroversial bills, we will offer them a figleaf, a figleaf that 
shows that while the vote on the noncontroversial coastal zone 
management legislation to give them a better environmental record, what 
we really see is that they voted in the past of this session killing 
coastal zone nonpoint pollution control, the dirty water bill, more 
sewage in oceans, ocean dumping of sewage, keeping the 
antienvironmental riders on legislation to harm the ability of that 
agency to clean up the Superfund sites and our coastal zones and 
gutting the wetlands protection provisions of legislation, of which 70, 
80, and 90 percent of the Republicans voted for that very harmful 
legislation. But today most of them will vote for this and try to tell 
the people back home that they are for the environment. This is a sham. 
It is a bluff. It is inconsistent with the record of the Republicans in 
this Congress to date because when they had the votes, when they had 
the momentum, when they had the initiative, what they chose to do was 
to do the work of those who have spent so long bashing the 
environmental laws of this country.
  The fact is what they have now discovered is the clean environment, 
environmental protection is part of the ethic of the American value 
system. It is ingrained in us. It is ingrained in our children that we 
must preserve this environment. We must protect this environment to 
hand it on to future generations.
  But unfortunately, the Republican leadership and a vast majority of 
their caucus has sought to do otherwise when they voted to gut the 
Clean Air Act, when they voted to gut the Clean Water Act, when they 
voted to hamper the Environmental Protection Agency from working, when 
they voted to repeal water reform in California, when they voted to 
clearcut the Tongass forests. These are provisions that are destroying 
and harming our environment for future generations. So the figleaf will 
provide a little cover but what it will not cover up is the massive

[[Page H3660]]

antienvironmental voting record of the Republicans in this Congress.

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