[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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