[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 83 (Friday, June 7, 1996)]
[Senate]
[Page S5971]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         GOVERNMENT REGULATION

  Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I will make this very brief, because 
several questions have come up concerning Social Security. I think it 
is a very critical thing. I happen to have been privileged to be 
presiding yesterday when the distinguished Senator from Wyoming, the 
senior Senator, Senator Simpson, who is the chairman of the Social 
Security Subcommittee and, I think we all agree, is the authority in 
this body on Social Security--he is here and will be responding to 
these questions in a much more informed and eloquent way than I would 
be able to respond to them. But I do have to respond to a few things 
that have been said by both my good friend, the Senator from North 
Dakota, and the Senator from Kentucky.
  First of all, it was implied--I am sure it was not intentional--that 
I was only concerned about Republican grandchildren. Obviously, we are 
all concerned about our own. I opened my remarks yesterday on the floor 
making a reference to Senator Simon, who had talked about Nicholas 
Simon, his grandchild. I said I know he is just as emotionally involved 
with his children and grandchildren as I am, and Democrats are as much 
as Republicans. I hope that is understood.
  But, when the distinguished Senator from North Dakota used the 
example of government control, with the rats eating the bread laced 
with arsenic, certainly if I had been there at the time I would have 
strongly supported an effort to stop these types of abuses and these 
types of unsanitary practices from taking place.
  But there is a fine line here. You come to a point where, if you see 
that point, you have too much government control. I think that is one 
of the basic philosophical differences, and it is an honest difference, 
between Democrats and Republicans. I suggest to you, if you talk to Tim 
Carter of Skiatook, OK, who was called a couple of days before 
Christmas a few years ago and put out of business by the EPA, what he 
had done wrong was he moved his business from one area of Skiatook, OK, 
a very small city, to another area, and did not inform the EPA of this 
move.
  I said, ``They do not know that you moved?'' He said, ``Well, yes, I 
informed the district office, but they apparently did not inform the 
national office.'' For that reason they put him out of business and 
they took his number away from him.
  Then, when I finally got that corrected, he called me again and he 
said, ``Now I have another problem. I have an inventory of 50,000 
bottles.'' He had some kind of operation, horse spray or something, 
that they manufactured. Apparently there is a market for it. He said, 
``The EPA says I cannot use those bottles now, because during that 
brief time I was out of business they gave my number to somebody 
else.'' This is the type of thing.
  Or Jim Dunn, who owned a third generation family lumber company in 
Tulsa, OK, who called me up and said, ``The EPA put me out of 
business.'' This was a couple years ago. I was in the other body at the 
time. I said, ``What did you do wrong?'' He said he did not do anything 
wrong. He said, ``I have been selling used crankcase oil to the same 
contractor for a couple years and they traced some of that to the 
Double Eagle Superfund Site and they say I am in violation. They are 
going to impose $25,000 a day fines on me.'' This is a company that had 
its net increase the year before of something like $50,000. He was out 
of business. The heavy hand of overregulation.

  We corrected that situation. But if he had not called me, he probably 
would be out of business today. That contractor he sold his oil to 10 
years ago was licensed by the Federal Government, by the State of 
Oklahoma, by Tulsa County. He did nothing illegal. Yet Government was 
regulating him out of business. This is what I am talking about. Have 
we gone beyond that point, to where we are the most overregulated 
society or country, to the point where we are not globally competitive? 
I say, yes, we are overregulated.

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