[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 129 (Wednesday, September 18, 1996)]
[House]
[Pages H10574-H10580]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




               ENVIRONMENT MUST BE PROTECTED AT ALL COSTS

  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, for more than a quarter of a century 
successive Congresses sought to strengthen environmental law in order 
to protect our air, water, and land from pollution and other threats, 
and from the time that Democratic Senator Gaylord Nelson organized the 
first Earth Day over 25 years ago and Republican President Richard 
Nixon created the Environmental Protection Agency in 1970, there was a 
consensus that we needed laws to protect the health of our families and 
the quality of our natural resources.
  It is a consensus, a bipartisan consensus, that led to passage and 
strengthening of the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act, the Endangered 
Species Act, the Marine Mammal Protection Act, the Solid Waste Disposal 
Act, Superfund, Safe Drinking Water Act, and many other pieces of pro-
environmental legislation.
  However, that consensus, that bipartisan consensus that existed, both 
with the White House as well as with Congress, broke down during the 
Dole-Gingrich 104th Congress that we are now in, that is now about to 
end. Under the leadership of Dole and Gingrich, Congress for the first 
time in 25 years devoted more time to rolling back environmental 
protection than to improving the health, safety, and well-being of our 
families and our Nation.
  Now, many in Congress have tried to further environmental protection 
in ways that would be for the average American. But Bob Dole, Newt 
Gingrich, and their Republican leadership colleagues have instituted a 
campaign to reward special interests at the expense of the health and 
environmental heritage of our citizens. From the very first day of this 
current Congress, we saw the special interests, the polluters, actually 
sitting down in committee writing legislation that would gut many of 
the environmental bills that I already mentioned.
  Clearly, it is the obligation of those who care about the purity of 
the water for their children, that their children drink and the air 
that they breathe, to actively oppose this extremist Republican agenda 
that we have seen in this 104th Congress. We have to make sure that the 
disastrous environmental record of this 104th Congress will not be 
repeated.
  Now, I just wanted to say that this effort, if you will, to turn back 
the clock on environmental protection manifests itself in a major way 
in terms of the budget cuts that we have seen and have been proposed by 
the Republican leadership for those agencies that deal with the 
environment, such as the EPA, such as the Department of the Interior. 
And I know that we have to make tough decisions if we are going to 
balance the budget. We have to figure out where our priorities should 
be.

[[Page H10575]]

But I do not believe that environmental protection in this country has 
to suffer because of belt tightening, or budget tightening if you will.
  What we are seeing is that time and time again, Bob Dole and Newt 
Gingrich, the Speaker, have basically deprioritized environmental 
protection. They have taken money in budget cuts from the EPA and those 
agencies that protect the environment in order to primarily finance tax 
breaks for wealthy Americans.
  The reason I am mentioning this today is because I am very concerned 
that with the economic plan that Bob Dole has put forward, that what we 
will see if he were elected and if that economic plan were put into 
place is a further deterioration of our environmental protection laws 
because less and less money would be available for investigation and 
for enforcement of violations of our environmental laws.
  Basically, what we would see, what we would expect if the Dole 
economic plan went into effect is about a 40-percent cut, if you will, 
in environmental programs, 40-percent cut in enforcement and 
investigation against violations of our environmental protection laws.
  And these cuts, if you will, these efforts to cut back on these 
agencies and what they can do for enforcement indirectly accomplish 
what the Republican leadership tried to do in this Congress by simply 
gutting the Clean Water Act or the Superfund Program outright. They 
were not able to make the changes in the substantive law, and so what 
they do instead is to go after the funding for those agencies that 
carry out the law because they know that if there is not adequate 
enforcement then the laws do not mean anything.
  I just wanted to give an idea of what kind of impact these cuts would 
have if they were enacted into law. A 40-percent cut in enforcement 
would mean that the EPA, for example, would not be able to reach its 
normal average of 9,000 inspections per year. It would have a 
significant impact on the 3,700 enforcement actions normally taken by 
the EPA annually as a result of their inspection programs. So if you do 
not have the people to do inspection, then you cannot bring the 
enforcement actions, where you basically slap a fine on those who are 
violating the law.

  Based upon estimates from last year's budget cuts, it is likely that 
scores of Superfund sites ready for significant new construction would 
not get funded and, furthermore, the cleanups at many of the hundreds 
of Superfund sites currently being remediated would be slowed down 
essentially to a snail's pace.
  A 40-percent budget cut would also have a marked impact on the 
leaking underground storage tank trust fund that was established by the 
Superfund Amendments and Reauthorization Act of 1986. Leaking tanks 
have polluted drinking wells in many communities, and the trust fund 
has proven to be an effective effort to combat the problem. Current 
funding for this program represent about a 30-percent cut from fiscal 
year 1995 levels, and a further 40-percent cut would lead States to lay 
off hundreds of enforcement personnel and greatly reduce their cleanup 
activities.
  So, even with the current appropriation levels we are seeing cutbacks 
in the enforcement actions and the inspections that these environmental 
agencies can do. Whatever cuts would come about as a result of the Dole 
economic plan would simply reduce the ability to enforce the law that 
much more.
  I just wanted to point out some of these facts because I think it is 
important when we are debating the issue of what Bob Dole's economic 
plan would mean that we realize and that we take into consideration 
what the effect would be on the environment.
  Now, I just wanted to point out also that interestingly enough, 
President Clinton has been very proactive in terms of what he says he 
would do if reelected on November 5. At the Democratic Convention he 
basically pointed out a progressive, if you will, environmental agenda. 
He said, for example, that he would accelerate Superfund toxic waste 
cleanup, nearly doubling the pace of cleanup. By the year 2000, 
approximately two-thirds of the Superfund priority sites would be 
cleaned up.
  So here we have a situation where one person, the Republican in this 
case, is talking about cutting funds for some of these agencies that 
would mean less cleanups of Superfund sites, and President Clinton is 
actually talking about increasing the pace of cleanup at Superfund 
sites.
  Also, the need to expand the right to know. One of the major reasons 
why we are able to bring enforcement actions against polluters for 
various violations that occur is because we have a community right to 
know law on the books now that allows individual Americans, individual 
citizens, to know some of the toxic substances that exist in the 
community around them. And oftentimes they will bring actions on their 
own or citizen groups will bring actions on their own so that it is not 
always necessary for the Federal Government to get involved. This 
supplements the enforcement action of the Federal agency.
  Again, what the President has proposed is basically expanding 
Americans' rights to know about toxics in their community so that the 
EPA would do more investigation, release more information and 
individual companies that generate toxic waste, for example, would have 
to provide more information about what kind of toxic wastes are being 
generated in their communities.
  I wanted to just give some examples about how President Clinton has 
worked to protect the environment, and how former Senator Dole has 
worked very hard to do just the opposite.
  On August 6, 1996, President Clinton signed a bill reforming the Safe 
Drinking Water Act, which requires drinking water tests to eliminate 
dangerous contaminants. President Clinton also vetoed the extreme 
Republican leadership VA-HUD-EPA appropriations bill, which cut safe 
drinking water funding by 45 percent from the President's request. On 
the other hand, Senator Dole, Bob Dole when he was a Senator, in 
December 1995 voted for the extreme Republican VA-HUD-EPA 
appropriations bill which would have cut safe drinking water funding by 
45 percent. The 1995 Dole regulatory reform bill, which was written by 
lobbyists for polluters, would have prevented the EPA from instituting 
effective safety regulations for drinking water.
  Let us talk about toxic wastes. Since taking office, the Clinton 
administration has cleaned up more toxic waste dumps than in the first 
12 years of the Superfund Program, increasing the pace of Superfund 
cleanups by 20 percent and reducing costs, reducing costs by 25 
percent. In December 1995, President Clinton vetoed the GOP 
appropriations bill which cut Superfund toxic dump cleanup funding by 
25 percent from his request. So not only has the President increased, 
accelerated the pace of the Superfund cleanup in this country in the 4 
years that he has been in office, but he also vetoed these bills, the 
Republican leadership bills, that would have made it more difficult to 
clean up Superfund sites.
  On the other hand, then Senator Dole in 1965 was one of only four 
Representatives, actually when he was a Congressman in this House, to 
vote against the Clean Air and Waste Disposal Act, which authorized 
$92.5 million during fiscal year 1966 through 1969 for research and 
development of methods to dispose of solid waste. The bill passed 294 
to 4. Dole supported repealing the Superfund provision which forces 
polluters to pay for toxic waste cleanup, and he supported repeal of 
retroactive Superfund liability, which is also supported by his 
political contributors.
  What the Republican leader has proposed and what then Senator Dole 
has basically supported is this idea that instead of having the 
corporations that polluted the environment, that caused the toxic waste 
sites to be created, the Superfund sites, instead of having those 
corporations clean up the sites, we would have the Federal Government 
clean up the sites or pay the polluters for the work that they already 
did to clean up the sites.

                              {time}  1500

  Essentially instead of polluter pays, it is government pays the 
polluters. I see that my colleague from Minnestoa is here. I yield to 
the gentleman from Minnesota [Mr. Vento].
  Mr. VENTO. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his statement that 
he has been making, calling attention to the dismal record of this 
Congress responding to environmental laws and policy.

[[Page H10576]]

  The last point that Mr. Pallone was making with regard to Superfund 
is an especially important one in the end because I think of what I 
would characterize as extreme positions in Congress, outside the 
mainstream of the last 20 or 30 years of environmental law, of what we 
have learned and what we know and have put that knowledge to use in 
terms of public policy, it has been disregarded and run roughshod over. 
As I said in the past, I think science to some of the new majority is 
what the Inquisition was to religion, something to be used basically to 
undermine and to keep raising questions against and to withdraw from 
what, I think, had been historically a bipartisan effort to deal with 
the conservation of our resources, the preservation of what deserves to 
be and the rehabilitation of our landscapes and air and water, a very 
important endeavor, one that is strongly supported by the American 
people. and it reaches back over across Democratic and Republican 
Presidents and on a bipartisan basis in Congress.
  But that has not been what has happened in this Congress. It is a 
great tragedy, because it meant that we did not do the big things or 
the little things in this Congress that needed to be addressed with 
regards to environmental law.
  In fact, one example the gentleman was just touching on was 
Superfund, which means that we are still without a current policy. I 
think all of us admit that the 1980 Superfund law that was passed has 
had its imperfections. But as an example, I work on the Committee on 
Banking and Financial Services. Many financial institutions are saddled 
with lender liability. And even that fundamental issue cannot be 
resolved in this Congress because those forces that want to keep all 
liable, even though a bank may have exercised its right to recover 
property and the damage that has been done to it has been done by a 
third party, that was delinquent in terms of their loan transfers the 
liability to the financial institution. So it is a great tragedy that 
we cannot focus on that because there has not been an adequate effort 
to resolve that lender liability issue, the polarized positions that 
have existed.
  Frankly, in the first 2 years of the Clinton administration, a lot of 
progress was made, in spite of the hand that was dealt to him by his 
predecessor administration in terms of a host of issues highlighted by 
the northwest forests. The Clinton Northwest Forest plan, a 
controversial plan, one that all of a sudden forced everyone to face 
reality. Before that I think many in congress and certainly in the 
administration had been in a state of denial with regards to what was 
happening in the Pacific Northwest with regards to the harvesting of 
trees and the crashing of the ecosystem in that region.
  But the Clinton administration had made a commitment for a positive 
effort, and all the news was not good news. As we learned more and more 
about these areas, we realized the fragility of those areas and what 
had to be done. The tragedy is that Congress on its own in the 1970's 
and 1980's had mandated cuts in timber harvests in these areas that 
were excessive over the carrying capacity of those lands in the Pacific 
Northwest. The truth is that dollars are gone that come from those 
historic big timber harvests. In so far as we do make some dollars in 
profitable sales areas, too often we do not have profitable sales but 
lose money and the forests. Today we are faced with very expensive land 
management schemes that are necessary to restore and maintain these 
landscapes in terms of forest restoration, in terms of watershed 
restoration, in terms of thinning and a whole range of different 
responsibilities in which the Forest Service itself and those that are 
involved in that industry could no longer sustain themselves. So they 
necessarily needed investment.

  But beyond that, this administration had worked on the Endangered 
Species Act, working out significant problems in Florida with the 
Florida panther, working incidentally in the Everglades with regards to 
the water problem, arguably a good solution with regards to the sugar 
farmers there, the gnatcatcher in terms of the west coast in 
California. All across the Nation we saw a new spirit that existed, 
even with regards to our industries. This administration put in place 
something called the XL, XL means excellence in terms of environmental 
and compliance with rules, leaving industries and businesses to come up 
with solutions that really exceed the requirements of law that the 
Environmental Protection Agency may have with respect to air, to water, 
to other indices that are required. So we had, I think, for some time 
and throughout this administration a good positive effort embracing 
pragmatic solutions to problems which had festered for decades.
  Unfortunately, that had not all been picked up. The whole idea of 
brownfield restoration, in other words, changing the whole dynamic and 
agenda of what we do in terms of cleanup was something that was put 
forth by this Clinton administration.
  Many are now trying to emulate it, and that is good. In politics 
there is no law that bars us from taking other people's good ideas and 
putting them into law. I guess that is the idea. The competition of 
ideas, the competition of debate ought to bring forth the best that we 
have to offer with regard to solutions, especially I think in issues of 
the environment.
  Of course, in the past 2 years much of that has changed, things are 
at a standstill here, fingers pointed back and forth. But I think as we 
look at what happened in the Clean Water Act, where it was an open 
secret that special interests reported that Washington, DC, K Street 
lobbyists on the front page of the newspaper had been responsible for 
writing the Clean Water Act. It turned out to be a very bad bill and 
that should have been no surprise. Fortunately, that did not pass the 
Senate. It left the House on almost a straight party line vote, and it 
has not been heard from in the Senate since.
  The fact there were various actions taken on the Endangered Species 
Act which, incredibly, the policy came out of a committee that is 
supposed to be the specialists in this issue, which stated that species 
could exist without habitat, that you could have a living animal or 
plant without a habitat. So you could protect it in a zoo, I guess, and 
make a greenhouse for plants. The proponents actually wanted to count 
zoo populations as protected. But it was really pretty elemental in 
terms of the differences that existed there. I am sure that the point 
is well understood.
  Mr. Speaker, as we looked, sadly, some measures were not considered 
by the committee and were enacted such as suspending the Endangered 
Species Act for a long period of time, and this action did irreparable 
harm to some of the fostering of biodiversity in our society. Other 
measures like the timber salvage bill today are still, because it was 
signed into law and in a must pass appropriation bill; of course many 
of us feel the President should have vetoed that bill a second time to 
make the point but the President relented.
  Apparently some thought that there was more authority, executive 
flexibility and that the President could prevent the damage from the 
timber rider. The courts have ruled to the contrary. Now we see the 
harvest of not just salvage trees but the harvest of green trees, 
old growth trees in the Pacific Northwest because of provisions put on 
the affected section 318 lands.

  We areas of Montana that were wilderness study areas at one time. 
They were administrative wilderness study area, roadless areas that 
have now been opened to harvest areas like the Yak that Bass has 
written about, Dick Bass, many other areas that really in a sense 
should have been set aside and left as the way they left the hand of 
the creator are now being spoiled because of specific provisions that 
related to Montana.
  Of course, the whole issue of forest health and the science of that 
forestry, I think, was made a mockery of by the execution of this 
timber rider, which suspended all the environmental laws and 
fundamentally provided for expedited harvest of many areas. I think 
that the administration, frankly, the Clinton administration under Jack 
Ward Thomas had in fact moved ahead, administratively, with salvage 
sales.
  In fact, that made up a greater part of the harvest in the Pacific 
Northwest where there was controversy about the limits of what could be 
cut. It concerned many of us, but they at least had put in place 
certain safeguards. This measure went far beyond that and has of course 
as its purpose to invade these green tree areas. It has done

[[Page H10577]]

great damage with little money available really to offset that.
  As we look at these forest sentinels that have stood for hundreds of 
years over the past centuries in terms of their evolution, we know that 
once they are harvested, they will not be back in our lifetime and the 
lifetime of my grandchild, my one grandchild or many, or any of, maybe 
perhaps his grandchildren.
  Of course, this Congress attempted to put on the bidding block many, 
many different resources, selling our water resources, the grazing 
language, all very polarized, obviously we have to come to resolution 
with that. No one expects we are going to get wealthy as a nation and 
solve our fiscal problems on the back of ranchers and farmers. But 
clearly I think we need to expect a higher degree of conservation and 
stewardship on the part of those that use those lands. That is only 
reasonable, but not to many in this Congress.
  Mr. Speaker, I think we are moving in that direction under the 
guidance of Secretary Babbitt. He tried very, very hard, I must say. It 
was partly my fault and others that we did not pick up on some of his 
work in the last session in 1993-94. We also committed the same 
trespasses that I suggested in opposite direction that others are doing 
in this session in despoiling our landscapes. ANWR, the Arctic National 
Wildlife Refuge, at 1.4 million acres in area on the Buford Sea north 
of the Brooks Range, was proposed by this Congress to be opened up.
  This 1.4 million acres which is the calving area for 160,000 
porcupine caribou herd really, I would say, represents a window on the 
Ice Age. It is the way life existed in North America 20,000 years ago 
when the glaciers pulled back and retreated from the ocean, the 
northern arctic oceans the current Buford Sea. It is an area that needs 
to be preserved.
  It is something, I think, that while there may be a 1-in-10 chance of 
finding oil, there is a 100-percent chance of destroying this arctic 
tundra, this arctic desert, as it were, in the north of the Brooks 
Range.
  So I think these examples indicate the actions that have taken place 
in the 10th Republican Congress. Of course it is no wonder that the 
record of this Congress is reported to be so dismal with regard to the 
environment. The Members have received such very low grades by 
objective groups looking at this, that the Republican majority have 
formed committees and groups on the side to try to restore their 
credibility.
  It sort of reminds me of the story of the two Marx brothers that I 
adopt from my friend Barney Frank. They said, when Groucho said to 
Harpo, he said, Harpo, who are you going to believe, me or your own 
eyes? So we have to look at what this 20-month record is that has 
occurred, not just the slogans that seems to characterize the election 
cycles, as we know, where everybody seems as a prerequisite of being 
elected they must be an environmentalist. But being an environmentalist 
or being someone that is working on these issues is enormously 
important not just for the political stump at home or for the political 
stump on this floor in election years but what happens over the course 
of our service in Congress.
  There are many more things that should be talked about, the rules and 
regulations game that was played here, suggesting that a Member could 
be against bureaucrats and rules, the various ways we put laws into 
effect, ending up with more and more litigation and less and less 
effectiveness, the result effectively tying the hands of the EPA or 
departments or agencies that have these responsibilities, which I might 
say from the land management agencies, from the other agencies that 
regulate our air and water, we are very fortunate in this country that 
they are led by professionals, and staffed by professionals from the 
ground on up.
  They are decisions that are not necessarily political, but they 
certainly are authorities with regard to science and the facts and what 
has to be done. So we have a great task here. I think Congress has a 
role, an unchallenged Federal role in terms of working with the States, 
the significant collaboration that has gone on between the Federal and 
State government, the great success in terms of turning the corner on 
solving environmental problems.
  We see streams and rivers and landscapes that are being restored 
because of the 30 years and many decades before that of work that went 
on with the great Democratic Presidents and Republican Presidents. But 
this Congress itself obviously had not learned those lessons, it is 
very clear. Whether they are being educated today in the election cycle 
remains to be seen.
  Mr. Speaker, I just came from committee sessions, at which the 
Republican majority were trying to strip away the U.S. authority to 
designate world heritage areas. We are one of 125 countries that 
participate, 146 signatories worldwide trying to preserve cultural and 
natural landscapes. All we would have is the power of persuasion, but 
this new majority on September 17, 1996, want to somehow take away that 
power, take away whatever authority exists. The United States, which 
led and created this list of man in the biosphere sites, seek to limit 
U.S. leadership that voluntarily seeks to build, educate nations around 
the globe. That did not happen last year. That is happening right now.
  That bill has passed out of the Resources Committee today, the 
committee that holds itself up as your expertise and specialist, that 
is suppose to be a knowledgeable group of men and women that are to 
guide this Congress in terms of such issues. That is what they did this 
day. That is the type of Congress that we have. That is the type of 
House of Representatives that we have had for 2 long years. I submit 
that to the American people and to my colleagues in this body. I hold 
that up as an example of what not to do.
  I thank the gentleman for yielding to me and for taking out this 
special order.

                              {time}  1515

  Mr. PALLONE. I appreciate the gentleman's comments, particularly 
since he brought out what this Republican leadership has been trying to 
do for the last 2 years on the natural resource issues, because that is 
the truth. They have basically been selling the store and trying to 
basically give away all of our natural resources, and I think it has to 
be brought out.
  In addition, I know the gentleman from Minnesota [Mr. Vento] talked 
about the record, if you will, by nonpartisan groups in basically 
analyzing this Republican Congress, and because of the poor record on 
the environment that was established by the Republican leadership, they 
put together this Republican Environmental Task Force early in this 
session in order to try to highlight how they were going to improve 
things, and the League of Conservation Voters actually gave the members 
of that task force, of that environmental task force on the Republican 
side, a 27-percent rating.
  In fact, we heard just this past Monday that a group of the most 
antienvironmental Republicans in Congress had urged the Speaker, Newt 
Gingrich, to remove moderate Congressman Sherwood Boehlert from his 
position as cochair of this Republican Environmental Task Force. They 
were so outraged by his behavior in trying to moderate this terrible 
Republican antienvironmental agenda that they actually wanted him 
removed as the cochair of the task force, and if they, of course, had 
dropped Congressman Boehlert from the task force, the rating by the 
League of Conservation Voters would have even been less than 27 
percent.
  So this is not something that is going away. The Republican 
leadership continues to this day, with only a few weeks left in this 
Congress, to continue to try to turn back the clock on environmental 
protection.
  I would like to yield now to my friend, Mr. Markey, the gentleman 
from Massachusetts.
  Mr. MARKEY. I thank the gentleman very much, and I thank you for 
calling this special order because it is so important to remind the 
American people here at the end of this congressional session that the 
GOP--you know, GOP used to stand for grand old party, but today it 
stands for gang of polluters. They took the whole first year and a half 
of this Congress trying their best to undermine the environmental law 
which were put on the books in this country over the last 25 years. 
They took the EPA and they wanted to change it from EPA to every 
polluter's ally.
  You know, the American people, they have to ask the question: Is the 
water

[[Page H10578]]

really too clean? Is the air too clean? Is there too little 
cryptosporidium in our water? Is there too little E. coli in our 
hamburger? Is the ozone hole too small? Can we really afford to cut the 
EPA, the Environmental Protection Agency, enforcement budget by 30 
percent, which was the Republican proposal?
  I do not think so. I do not think the American people want less 
environmental protection. I do not think they want their water to be 
dirtier, their air to be dirtier, their food to be less safe. They want 
it to be more safe. They appreciate the fact that in the 20th century, 
largely because of Democratic initiatives, we have extended the life 
expectancy of the average American from age 48 in 1900 to age 70 today. 
We have added 31 years to the life expectancy of the average American 
in this country in the 20th century, largely because the Democratic 
Party health and environmental and job safety initiatives.
  What a radical change. We went from the Garden of Eden to 1900, and 
the life expectancy of the average American male or female was 48 years 
of age, added 31 years in the last 95 years, and the Republicans look 
at it, and they say, ``Let's roll back Medicare, let's roll back 
Medicaid, let's roll back the Environmental Protection Agency, let's 
roll back all the safeguards we offered to ordinary people so their 
lives could be protected in ways that no one from the dawn of time 
until the introduction of these programs had ever been protected if 
they are working people, if they are ordinary people, white, black, 
hispanic, Asian, whatever, in our country they all get the 
protections.''

  Then they look at the Superfund Program. As you know, we have 
hundreds of sites across this country where polluters in the twenties, 
in the thirties, in the forties, fifties, sixties, they just dumped 
their chemicals into the water, into the ground near neighborhoods, 
turning the whole neighborhood into a neighborhood nightmare, but, more 
importantly, putting the children in those neighborhoods at risk 
because the water that they drank, the dirt which they might have been 
playing in, it came back to haunt communities, and so the Superfund 
Program was put into place. It is not perfect. It needed to be 
reformed, and the Democrats were more than willing to work to ensure 
that the imperfections were corrected.
  But that was not the objective of the Republican Party. Their 
objective was to destroy the Superfund Program. In fact, they 
constructed something which I call the Ed McMahon polluters' 
clearinghouse sweepstakes, which meant that if you were a polluter, if 
you had already in a court of law or in an administrative proceeding 
accepted legal responsibility for having polluted a neighborhood and 
you had already cleaned it up, you will get a rebate from the Federal 
taxpayer, and it will be half of all the money which we, as taxpayers, 
put into the Superfund Program. We give the money to the polluters, but 
accepted legal responsibility.
  And then they had a backup solution. It is the Evian solution: Well, 
we really cannot afford to clean up your site, but if there is an 
acceptable alternative for you to get water in your neighborhood, then 
the site will not be cleaned up. And this is called the Evian solution. 
That is, if you can go down to the corner store and buy bottles of 
Evian every day for the rest of your life, that is a good substitute 
for actually having water that is drinkable coming through the tap.
  Now, there is a great innovation. Everyone in America, buy stock in 
Evian, buy stock in any water, and, by the way, you will get no Federal 
subsidies for that either.
  And then you have the superfence. If there is a way in which you can 
build a superfence around the site, not cleaning it up, well, that is a 
good substitute, too, for ensuring that the hazardous waste material 
has been taken out of the community. It is the superfence superfiction, 
to be more accurate, because we all know that kids on their bikes are 
going to go right through these fences within about 15 minutes after 
they are put up, and they will be riding up and down these hills, these 
embankments of hazardous materials, not really aware of what the long-
term consequences for them and their families will be.
  That is the concept that the Republicans brought to environmental 
reform in our country.
  And then I sit on the Committee on Natural Resources. What a great 
idea they came up with. We have subsidies on the public lands which we 
give to the mining industry. We have subsidies on the public lands of 
the United States that we give to the timber industry. We have 
subsidies; we are talking billions of dollars every year that come out 
of the Federal taxpayers' pockets. That is money we do not ask mining 
companies, timber companies, grazing companies to pay the American 
people for use of the public lands of our country. We just give it away 
to these Fortune 500 companies.
  So the Republicans, they said, ``Well, we have a deficit crisis in 
America. We're gong to have to do something in order to ensure we raise 
more money to reduce this deficit.''
  So they touched grazing subsidies of the Fortune 500 companies? No. 
Gas, timber, mining, no. We would not want to touch those people, those 
people who exploit our resources every day and then go and make a 
private sector profit on it.
  What do they offer as a reform in our committee? Well, we allow 
grandmothers and grandfathers to get into national parks across our 
country for half price. What they did was strip out this spring the 
protection given to grandma to get in with her Golden Age passport into 
the national parks of America.
  That is how we are going to balance the budget, on grandma's back, 
not the mining, not the oil, not the gas, not the timber, not the 
grazing industries that are on the public lands. They do not have to 
pay market price. But grandma, she loses her senior citizen pass.

  And, by the way, and the gentleman from New Jersey knows this better 
than anybody, what a tough year and a half for grandma, huh? Boy, has 
she had a tough year and a half.
  You know we have about 13 million elderly women in America who live 
on $13,000 or less a year. The Republican proposal was to take their 
Medicare payment and increase it by $400 a year.
  And grandma, of course, has sacrificed throughout her life. A lot of 
people think she has really been getting too much for free here in 
America; you know, all these grandmothers living on $13,000 a year and 
Medicaid. Well, grandpa might be in the nursing home, but the 
Republicans' proposal was to make grandma sell her home before she 
would qualify for any Federal help at all to keep grandpa in the 
nursing home, and we know the average cost of nursing home care in the 
United States is $55,000 a year in most of the larger States, $40,000 
at a minimum even in the smaller States, $40,000 a year.
  No matter how hard you try, no matter how many years you save, you 
cannot save enough money, if one of the spouses has Alzheimer's or 
Parkinson's, to pay $40,000, $50,000, $60,000 each year to keep them in 
a nursing home. And, by the way, 50 percent of all people in nursing 
homes in this country have Alzheimer's, and 70 percent of all people in 
nursing homes are on Medicaid. But let us make grandma sell the house 
before she qualifies for anything.
  And, by the way, they also propose to strip off the books the 
regulation which said that grandpa cannot be drugged while he is in the 
nursing home or tied down just to keep him under control.
  Mr. PALLONE. The gentleman forgot when he came to the well and 
challenged the Speaker on the qualified Medicaid beneficiaries we are 
going to take away from the poorest widows in the country where 
Medicaid was paying for their Medicare part B premium. You brought that 
up. The Speaker said he was going to correct it and he never did. You 
might want to mention that.
  Mr. MARKEY. Again, when they were called on it out here on the floor, 
they said, ``Don't worry, our intention is not to hurt grandma,'' and 
they never corrected it. We were forced to vote out here on the floor 
on the bill with grandma paying 400 extra bucks each year, and, by the 
way, the same bill giving $25,000 a year tax breaks for people who make 
$400,000 or $500,000 a year. It would take 70 or 80 grandmas, each 
kicking in 400 bucks to then turn around and hand away 25,000 tax 
breaks to people making over $400,000 or $500,000 a year.

[[Page H10579]]

  Now let me say this about grandma. There was one weekend where she 
could get grandpa out of the nursing home, and they were so happy. They 
decided to take the grandkids to a national park, and so they got into 
the 1974 Ford Fairlane with the grandkids and headed off for the 
national park, and then the ultimate indignity: The Republicans propose 
to strip away the Golden Age passport so they can get into national 
parks.
  Now is that right? I mean, yeah, OK, maybe we should look at some of 
these programs, but do you really think grandma and grandpa are getting 
too much? You know they took us through the thirties, the Depression, 
World War II, and then they built us into the greatest country in the 
world in the fifties, sixties, and seventies that has ever been known 
in the history of the planet. They have sacrificed to make this the 
great country it is.
  Now is it really fair to tell yuppies who are making $500,000 that 
you deserve a $25,000 tax break and we are going to turn again to 
grandma and get $400 out of her in order to make that tax break 
possible? That is wrong. We should not be giving out those tax breaks 
to the wealthy.
  And within the same bill we should not be telling the mining and the 
timber and the grazing industries that they should be paying market 
price. If you are taking coal, if you are taking oil, if you are taking 
timber, if you are taking grazing materials off of public lands, you 
should pay the same that you would pay if it was on a private piece of 
property. We should not be subsidizing you.
  Adam Smith is spinning in his grave looking at this policy. We tip 
grandma upside-down on Medicare and Medicaid, and then we turn a blind 
eye to the people making $500,000 a year and say, ``No, we're going to 
give you a tax break this year.'' Well, where is the sacrifice, the 
shared sacrifice? Grandma will always do what she always has, but is it 
fair, before you have gone to the people, that you should ask her to 
sacrifice for tax breaks? That is wrong. So that we do not have to 
touch the mining or the grazing or the coal or the other companies on--
that is wrong.
  So the environmental policies of the Republican Party over the last 
couple of years have been just upside-down, just completely 
misunderstanding what the American people want.

                              {time}  1530

  They want clean water, they want clean air, they want hazardous waste 
sites cleaned up. They want our national parks to be protected. Again, 
Americans are willing to sacrifice, but they want it to be fair. They 
want the priorities to be correct. They do not want it to be all skewed 
toward the wealthiest in our society. They want it to be balanced. if 
it is balanced, they will sacrifice. But there is no reason why the 
environment has to be sacrificed in this entire endeavor.
  So my point is that we have a reckoning that has arrived where the 
American people have to decide whether or not in fact they are going to 
allow for a continued erosion, and by the way, a lot of the Republicans 
right now, they are engaging in the moderate macarena, where for about 
6 weeks here they are going to pretend that they are as concerned with 
all these issues as we are. The point is, though, that once they get 
back in January, we are going right back to where we were over the last 
1\1/2\ years. We have a 6-week macarena where they are walking around, 
I see nothing, I hear nothing, I am with you, and they do the little 
twist, and let us hope we make it through this election. But we are 
coming right back with the same agenda, cutting, slashing the 
environment of this country.
  Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for bringing this subject up. I 
think it is very important for us to have the American people know the 
critical nature of this election and the referendum that has been 
created on whether or not we should gut the EPA and Superfund and clean 
air and clean water, right down the whole line, all of these issues. I 
do not think that they do.
  I hope that, working with the gentleman and those who have led this 
charge across the country, because it has been a grassroots movement, 
ordinary people in cities and towns all across this country, who have 
risen up against this environmental radicalism, I think that the day of 
reckoning is approaching where the voice of the people will be heard on 
clean air, clean water, and all the rest of the environmental issues.
  Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, I just want to thank the gentleman, because 
I think he is bringing back the fact that we are talking about real 
people here when we are talking about these policies, whether they are 
natural resources, clean air, clean water. We are talking about real 
lives and individuals that are impacted by it.
  We had a hearing today as part of our Democrats' Family First agenda 
on environmental issues. We had three just regular citizens, 
essentially, from the DC metropolitan area who talked about their own 
experiences with health problems or environmental problems that really 
have not been addressed.
  In other words, here we are talking about the Republican leadership 
trying to turn the clock back, when there are real needs that have not 
even been addressed, when there is a need for legislation in certain 
health, safety, and environmental areas that has not even been 
addressed, that the Republicans have not even yet thought about.
  We have one gentleman who actually lives in the District of Columbia 
who died from Salmonella poisoning, or I should not say died, nearly 
died from Salmonella poisoning. He went into the whole situation of how 
he was impacted. He was in the hospital for such a long period of time.
  Last night on Dateline there was a whole expose, basically, about 
Salmonella poisoning, and how eggs, so many of the eggs that are now 
produced in the country and that people buy in the store have the 
potential for Salmonella poisoning. There have been hundreds of deaths 
and thousands of people who may have been made sick because the Federal 
Government has not addressed the issue of how to deal with eggs, not 
only producing them, but making sure they are properly processed before 
they get to the market and before people buy them.

  Mr. MARKEY. If the gentleman will continue to yield, Mr. Speaker, it 
has come to my mind, listening to you, that there was another 
initiative which was absolutely preposterous. It was a national parks 
closings bill. We had a military base closings bill, because as the 
cold war ended, there was clearly going to be a need to consolidate 
military activities across this country to save a little bit of money.
  The Republicans in this Congress, they decided they were going to 
have a national parks closings bill. They were going to close down 
national parks across the country. Mr. Speaker, I have been in Congress 
for a while and I have talked to thousands and thousands of people over 
my years in public service. I can tell the gentleman this, I have never 
had a person come up to me yet and say, ``Ed, do you know what the 
problem with this country is? We have too many parks in this country. 
Really, we have to shut down the parks in this country.'' That is the 
preposterousness of their interpretation of what the American people 
were saying in 1994.
  The American people want a balanced budget. We accept that. We are 
going to go along with it. We heard the message.
  Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, that parks bill, I think they called it the 
parks decommissioning bill, they were trying to make out that they were 
going to do a study and see which parks should be decommissioned, and 
obviously it was a nice way of saying closed. When the bill was 
originally proposed, the sponsor sent a Dear Colleague to other Members 
of Congress and he used a national park, the Sandy Hook unit of Gateway 
National Park, in my district as an example of a park or recreation 
area that should be closed.
  This summer we had somewhere between 2 million and 4 million people 
that visited Sandy Hook, mostly, pretty much from the New York 
metropolitan area; New York, New Jersey. Imagine that many people using 
this facility, and he is proposing to close it, and using it as an 
example of a national recreation area that should be closed. It is just 
incredible.
  Mr. MARKEY. Again, Mr. Speaker, this bill is not going anywhere this 
year, but it just sits there right behind

[[Page H10580]]

the moderate macarena for the next 6 weeks. They are sending out memos 
about adopting a tree, or go visit a zoo and show that you are 
politically sensitive to the environmental concerns of your 
constituents, but it is the agenda of the Contract With America.
  I do not think the American people understood that in 1994, but as it 
has been outlined in detail, as each week and month has gone by in the 
last 1\1/2\ years, the American people have become quite aware that it 
is an environmentally radical program that has been put on the books 
that calls into question every environmental advance we have made over 
the last quarter of a century. I do not think the American people want 
to go backwards. I think they want even cleaner water, even cleaner 
air, even safer areas around hazardous waste sites.
  Mr. PALLONE. I think the gentleman is correct.
  Mr. MARKEY. In each and every one of these areas I think they have a 
big decision to make in 1996, and thanks to the gentleman, I think 
millions are having it explained to them here today.
  Mr. PALLONE. I want to thank the gentleman for coming on the floor, 
Mr. Speaker, and talking about this issue. I think there is no question 
that if you ask the average person, and certainly all the polling data 
that both Republicans and Democrats have done shows that people feel 
that there needs to be more environmental protection and more health 
and safety protection.
  When we had our Families First hearing today and we talked, and we 
had witnesses that talked about some of the problems they face, we had 
another gentleman who was infected with Cryptosporidium from tap water, 
and almost died. We had another woman who helped organize a community 
effort to reduce toxic waste in her neighborhood. She talked about how 
we need more right-to-know measures.
  So the types of things that the President has proposed, accelerating 
the cleanup of Superfund sites, providing more right to know for 
citizens and citizen groups, trying to basically provide better 
enforcement and more money for enforcement, this is what my 
constituents are telling me, and I believe when I talk to other members 
of Congress and other colleagues, what their constituents are telling 
them, that there should be more protection and more funding where 
necessary for investigation and enforcement.
  I just want to conclude the special order today just giving an idea 
of what, again, the Dole economic plan would mean in terms of 
environmental protection. The concern many of us have is that not only 
many of the environmental programs, whether it be the Clean Water Act, 
the Clean Air Act, Superfund, that the Republican leadership in this 
Congress tried to gut that legislation, but even more so, that by 
deprioritizing funding for environmental protection, by slashing the 
amount of money that was available to the EPA, to the Department of the 
Interior, to protect our national resources and protect our health, and 
to protect our environment, that by allowing those levels of cuts to be 
proposed and in some cases actually implemented, what we are seeing is 
the inability, if you will, of the Federal Government and also State 
governments that depend on Federal dollars to actually do the 
investigation and the enforcement that is necessary to carry out our 
environmental laws and to make sure that there is adequate protection 
of individual's health and safety and environmental concerns.
  If the Dole economic plan were to be put into effect, we know that 
there would be essentially a 40-percent cut in environmental programs. 
So the types of cuts that were proposed in this last Congress for the 
last 2 years would even be deeper, and the effect would be that the 
environmental protection and the 25 years, if you will, of efforts on a 
bipartisan basis to protect the environment and improve the level of 
protection by the Federal Government would simply be reversed, because 
of the inability of Federal agencies to carry out the law.
  That is what we do not want to see. That is what we do not think that 
the average American wants to see.

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