[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 53 (Tuesday, April 23, 1996)]
[House]
[Pages H3667-H3668]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




  THE REPUBLICAN MAJORITY IS HOLDING UP THE BUDGET BY INSERTING ANTI-
                    ENVIRONMENTAL RIDERS IN THE BILL

  (Mr. PALLONE asked and was given permission to address the House for 
1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, Democrats and Republicans have almost come 
together on a budget that would

[[Page H3668]]

carry us through the rest of the year, but the one thing that is 
holding it up are the anti-environmental riders that the Republican 
leadership insists on putting in the bill.
  Today they insist on environmental riders that would bar new listings 
under the Endangered Species Act, prevent the EPA from protecting 
wetlands, provide no drinking water standards to protect the public 
from radon, and also to limit and cap the number of hazardous waste 
cleanup sites around the country.
  It is no surprise to me that today the only reason we are held up on 
this budget bill is because the Republican leadership continues to 
insist on putting these anti-environmental riders in the appropriations 
in the budget process. It is because fundamentally, from the very 
beginning of this Congress, they took an anti-environmental stance 
because they wanted to cater to the special interests, the corporate 
interests, that wanted to continue to pollute and tear down our 
environmental laws that we have worked so hard for since Earth Day 
1970.
  Mr. Speaker, I know we are going to hear all kinds of rhetoric today 
from the Republicans about how they are so pro-environmental, but the 
real test is if they would eliminate the environmental riders and not 
put them in the budget bill. All the rest is simply rhetoric for Earth 
Day.

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