[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 56 (Tuesday, April 8, 2003)]
[House]
[Pages H2922-H2928]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
CONCENTRATED ASSAULT ON ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTIONS
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Porter). Under the Speaker's announced
policy of January 7, 2003, the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Blumenauer)
is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
Mr. BLUMENAUER. Mr. Speaker, I come to the floor this evening while
there is a battle raging in Iraq, one
[[Page H2923]]
that is well known to the American public, and I want to spend a few
minutes this evening dealing with another battle that is taking place,
a battle that is raging in this country that has potential risks that
are every bit as great as that of international terror for the safety,
health, and well-being of our citizens and, indeed, the citizens of the
planet.
I am talking about a concentrated assault on environmental
protections in this country. I am deeply troubled by the gap between
what we have seen growing in terms of the political process with some
of my Republican Members and people in the administration in terms of
what environmental protection means, where we are, and where we should
go.
Now, I come from the perspective as somebody who was part of an
Oregon tradition of politics that was decidedly nonpartisan or, in
fact, aggressively bipartisan when it came to environmental protection.
My first assignment as a college student from a government official was
from the legendary Republican Governor of Oregon, Tom McCall, who
appointed me to his Livable Oregon committee. Throughout the years that
I worked in Oregon politics on the State and local level, I was pleased
to work hand in glove with a wide variety of people who put
environmental protection first, and partisanship and special interests
came later.
On the floor this evening, I must, I guess, acknowledge my dismay
about the growing gap between the parties when it comes to
environmental protection. I think this was crystallized for me when I
received a copy of a widely circulated memorandum from the famous
Republican pollster and political consultant, Frank Luntz, that was
distributed to Republicans in Congress earlier this year. It was
ironically entitled ``Straight Talk.''
Frankly, Mr. Speaker, I do not think this memorandum has been given
enough attention, and I hope to do a little bit of that this evening
because I think it is very important to understand the differences
between the two parties as they relate to environmental protection; and
this memorandum is revealing strategy where some of my Republican
friends, people in the administration and Congress, are advised do not
use your ingenuity to develop more environmental protection, do not use
your creativity and political muscle to put the money behind enforcing
our environmental laws to try to extend the boundaries. Instead, the
approach of this memorandum is to put the time and the energy into how
you describe what you are doing, try and feather the impact, try and
obscure the real record. I think there is no place it is going to be
more telling for the American public this week than to look at the
energy bill that is on its way to the floor.
There we see instance after instance where the bill that has been
passed by the Republican majority is going to put off our energy
problems into the future for the next generation or maybe even the
generation that follows them to deal with. There is a refusal to deal
with global climate change.
In committee, I am sorry that the Republicans rejected both the
bipartisan language that had been passed unanimously in the Senate as
well as even the President's woefully inadequate voluntary climate
change initiative. We will not find these in the energy bill.
We will find that the critical area of transportation, which consumes
70 percent of the United States oil consumption, indeed just to provide
fuel for our automobiles, takes for the United States just our cars,
and we represent less than 5 percent of the world's population, that
consumes 10 percent of the world's oil production. But amazingly, the
bill that is coming before us does not act on efficiency standards.
Indeed, they are giving additional tax breaks, and it seems that my
Republican friends in committee have yet to find a problem in this
country that is so great that it cannot be solved by another tax break,
tax deduction, or tax benefit.
But these tax breaks do not go to the 99 percent of the American
public that arguably if we can afford tax reductions, and this will be
the first time in war that we are proposing not sacrifice but tax
deductions for those that need it the least, these tax breaks and
royalty relief are to the interest of oil, gas, coal, and nuclear
energy. Indeed, some of the provisions incredibly at this time would
take away the payments that are due to the American public, royalties
for energy sources that are extracted from public lands at a time of
skyrocketing energy prices. Well, the proposal there is to reduce the
royalties that would otherwise be paid to the American taxpayers.
When we speak of the environment, one of the strategies that is being
suggested by Mr. Luntz is to hug a tree, to support open space and
parks. Well, by reducing the money that otherwise would go to the
Federal Treasury to provide support for our public priorities, one of
the most important sources of the revenue that comes from the royalties
would go to the Land and Water Conservation Fund, which has been
eviscerated under the President's budget.
Also in this legislation, there are proposals to again open the
pristine lands in the Arctic Wildlife Refuge, a land that was set aside
for all time by Republican pro-business President Teddy Roosevelt.
Instead, it is proposed that we open up this area even though, and here
I will show a little bit of hometown favoritism, I quote from the
Portland Oregonian from earlier this month which I think says it as
well as anybody: ``The oil beneath the refuge would not lead America to
energy independence.
{time} 1945
It would not allow the country to recede from Mideast policies. It
will have no impact on current gas prices or any shortage that is
caused by the war in Iraq, and it will take 7 to 10 years even to get
the first drop of oil from the refuge.''
And I could not agree with my hometown newspaper more. The irony is
that having visited the wildlife refuge, Mr. Speaker, having looked at
that fragile Arctic environment and weighing the costs and
consequences, it is clear to me that this ought to be the last place in
America that we drill for oil, not the first. And I note that the
American public in survey after survey has sided unequivocally with the
protection of the wildlife refuge.
It is important, Mr. Speaker, that we spend a little time focusing on
that energy bill, because I am afraid as it comes rushing to the floor
it is unlikely that we are going to have adequate time and energy to
devote to it.
But I would reference one other in these times of very difficult
problems that are radiating out from our military action in Iraq. When
people are looking at the tremendous stresses on our military, they are
thinking about ways that we ought to protect the ability of our
military to be able to maintain its position as the mightiest fighting
force in the world. We are seeing that there has been under the guise
of military exigency an attempt by the administration to exempt the
Department of Defense from protection of the environment, using the
rhetoric of defense to cover up environmentally destructive actions, to
exempt the Department of Defense from some of the most environmental
protections. These exemptions seek to address theoretical encroachments
to military readiness. There is no evidence, no sound science, showing
that our environmental laws have hampered our troops' ability to
prepare for war. Instead, these laws actually protect the health of
families living on or near military bases and actually support
readiness by sustaining and extending the life of training ranges.
I would hope, Mr. Speaker, at a time when the Members of Congress are
spending more time thinking about the condition of our military and how
to maintain its effectiveness, that instead of attempting to eliminate
these fundamental environmental protections that put our soldiers,
their families, and surrounding communities at risk, we would think
about being aggressive in terms of protecting the environment so that
we actually coax more out of these resources.
I will be speaking more about that, Mr. Speaker, in the course of
this hour. But I wanted, if I could, to take a moment to acknowledge
that I have been joined by the gentlewoman from southern California
(Ms. Solis), a woman I have known during her tenure in Congress to care
passionately about the
[[Page H2924]]
environment, to work with her community at home dealing with issues of
environmental integrity and environmental justice, working to try to
make sure that the big picture is made. And, Mr. Speaker, I yield to my
colleague to speak to these issues with me this evening.
Ms. SOLIS. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Oregon (Mr.
Blumenauer) for the opportunity to be here tonight to join him in
helping the public better understand the decoding of the environmental
rhetoric that we keep hearing from the other side. And for some time we
suspected that the Republicans were speaking from the same talking
points as we have on environmental policy issues. Now we have
confirmation. The Republicans have been trained to use so-called
straight talk; false language, distract people with personal stories,
and muddy the issues with claims that the environment and the economy
cannot coexist without measures that will cause dirtier water, fewer
parks and polluted air.
In a memo that I saw recently circulated by the Luntz Research
Companies, Republicans are told that the environment is one of the most
important issues that they are in fact very vulnerable on, and we know
that. Some of us here in the House know that, and out there in our
communities, and in order to combat this vulnerability, the Luntz memo,
to use buzz words in their arguments, words like, for example,
``safer,'' ``cleaner,'' and ``healthier.'' They are told to avoid the
economic arguments first so that personal stories can be shared. The
Luntz memo notes that Republicans should stay away from big words and
provide examples about how Federal agencies are not protecting our
natural resources. And we can see this rhetoric being used every day in
policies that the GOP is offering.
In fact, I brought a copy of the memo that was outlined. It was
circulated by the Luntz Research Group, and if I start reading from it,
my colleagues would be amazed by what they would see.
And if I could maybe share of some of that, on page 132, Overview:
The environment is probably the single issue on which Republicans in
general and President Bush in particular are most vulnerable.
Secondly, indeed it can be helpful to think of the environment and
other issues in terms of a story, a compelling story, even if factually
inaccurate, and I underscore that, factually inaccurate, can be more
emotionally compelling than a dry recitation of the truth. So here we
are talking about falsehoods.
Let me go on, Mr. Speaker. This week we are going to be debating the
energy bill, and this is a good example of how using rhetoric can be
made publicly available to folks, but it is a bad policy for people and
consumers and especially those that I represent in the State of
California. The Republicans claim that the bill is a fair balance
between the environment and the economy, but the bill encourages our
continued dependence on fossil fuels; drilling in the Arctic, the
National Wildlife Refuge, and other ecologically sensitive areas; and
it fails to create a comprehensive plan for renewable alternatives. My
goodness.
And last year, as my colleagues know, California faced blackouts and
price gouging. My constituents faced energy bills that rose upwards of
300 percent in a short 4-year span.
This bill that is being proposed will provide very little relief for
the constituents that I represent, and I do not think it is a fair and
balanced approach, and I believe that the Republicans claim that they
are supporting development and advancement of technology. At least that
is what they are representing. Yet the bill is loaded, loaded, with
subsidies to the oil and gas industry, subsidies that do not
necessarily require research and development, subsidies that reward
pollution instead of innovation and technology and efficiency. These
industries that the Republicans are subsidizing often put their plants
in the center of districts like mine, in low-income, economically
underprivileged communities. And I know that, because they believe that
our community is not paying attention and that they can get away with
planning and siting projects that are harmful to our water, to our air,
to the environment, and to the people that we represent.
This is the case in the San Gabriel Valley, and I say that because
many of these folks come into our district promising jobs,
redevelopment, cleaning up the blight, giving jobs to poor people, and
then they leave us with a blank check, nothing there, no jobs,
pollution, and, in my district, four Superfund sites and little
enforcement by EPA at this point to really do a better job of cleaning
up the environment.
So I have a lot of questions about the message that the other side is
using to say that they are now on the side of the consumer and the
population about cleaning up the environment.
One last item I would like to talk about also is on the budget.
Another example of effective messaging and lax policy is the Bush
budget. The President and his supporters claim that the budget will
create a ``safer'' and ``cleaner'' and ``healthier'' Nation. However,
the budget uses creative accounting to raid the Land and Water
Conservation Fund, a fund that has impacted hundreds of communities as
they try to protect their natural resources through restoration and
cleanup projects, projects that are directly linked to the health of
our families, because we are talking about the very water that they
drink.
And President Bush claims that he ``preserves and protects'' the
environment; however, his budget request for the environment is slated
for a $1.6 billion reduction compared to fiscal year 2002, falling from
$29.6 billion to $28 billion.
Projects on the chopping block, for example, are dealing with
environmental education like lead-poisoning prevention, a serious
concern in our district where many young children are affected by this
particular additive that is very harmful to the development and puts
many children, millions of children younger than 6 years of age, at
risk for intelligence, behavior, and physical disparities that they
will be affected by if they are exposed to lead. And we all know that
but we are not doing enough to help address this. We are actually
cutting back in that area.
And I say that it is time to do a better job. It is time to look at
why water quality investments are also falling short. For example, in
this budget, $2.7 billion in FY 2002 to only $1.8 billion in 2004, a
loss of $861 million, or more than a 32 percent cut. What in the world
are the Republicans really saying? We want to protect the environment,
we want to protect families and consumers, but at the same time they
keep chopping, chopping, chopping.
So that is what the message, I think, tonight has to be, Mr. Speaker;
that we clarify what our agenda is and whom we are standing up for. And
I am very proud to represent the district that I come from, the San
Gabriel Valley, where now people are having hardships. We have
unemployment rates upwards of 11 percent, and this has gone on for more
than 2 years.
People want clean drinking water. They do not want to be notified in
the mail that their drinking wells have to be closed because they found
rocket fuel in their water. We need to have more tools to do the
cleanup. We need to go after the responsible parties, and we cannot
afford to let people off the hook who are the polluters. That is what
the Superfund law was all about, and that is what we should be here to
enforce tonight and every single day that we are here fighting for our
communities.
I would just say, lastly, that it is a privilege to be here as a
Member of the House advocating for environmental issues, in particular
environmental justice activities that affect not just my area but many
corners of our country. And people need to better understand that
environmental justice issues are issues of better health care, better
education, and an opportunity to begin to clean up their communities
and enhance economic development in a positive way so that everybody
can grow and prosper, and children, whether they are rich or poor, can
live in a clean environment.
I thank the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Blumenauer) for the
opportunity to speak tonight on this very important message regarding
the truth about the environment and who is sticking up for
environmental justice.
[[Page H2925]]
Mr. BLUMENAUER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from California
(Ms. Solis). I appreciate her zeroing in on the notion of how to
interpret, read between the lines. We have joked a little bit about
having a decoder ring so that people can understand what is being
offered, and her points about the disconnect between the budget, which
really is a tangible expression of priorities; that is, a budget
submission that is antienvironmental and has actually been made worse
by the Republican budget resolution; the simple notion accepted by the
American public to aid environmental cleanup by having the polluter pay
that has been suspended, and abandoning the Superfund, making it very
difficult to be able to continue the notion of environmental justice
where we have put such a burden on people who often have no
alternatives, who are unaware of what is happening, and how the
administration is suggesting that we not initiate new activities but,
in fact, we pull back from what we are doing now that is, in fact,
inadequate. I appreciate her forthright expression of that.
I think it is important that we work together to have that decoder
ring to understand. I hope that we are able to deal with the advice
that Mr. Luntz has given to the Republicans. I think it is important
that he points out that scientific consensus is against them, that the
public is suspicious, but we hope that instead of trying to deal with
semantics, rhetorical cover-up, that we can encourage people to go back
to what we started with in terms of the Clean Water Act, which was
actually from the Nixon Administration, to have an opportunity where
people are embracing environmental values.
{time} 2000
We have been joined this evening by the distinguished gentleman from
New Mexico (Mr. Udall). I have been pleased to work with the gentleman
on the floor of this House. I have been very impressed in my visits to
his district, as the gentleman reflects the strong environmental values
of the people of New Mexico, and we are honored the gentleman will join
us this evening to join in this discussion.
Mr. UDALL of New Mexico. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman very much
and thank the gentleman from Oregon for that very kind introduction.
Let me also say about our colleague, the gentlewoman from California
(Ms. Solis), who has been a real champion on environmental issues in
California, she served in the California legislature and I think has
been at one point written up as a Profile in Courage on environmental
issues because she took on an environmental racism issue in her
community and fought it for a number of years and passed a significant
piece of environmental legislation. So what the gentlewoman says about
these issues, I think she has lived and walked the walk.
The gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Blumenauer) has also been a key
environmental leader on many, many issues here in the Congress,
including energy, which we are talking about tonight. The gentleman has
pushed for livable communities. The gentleman has tried to make sure
that the Federal Government does everything it can to be a good partner
in communities.
One of the things we see is the Federal Government owns a lot of the
landscape; and because of one of the gentleman's pieces of legislation,
we are trying to make sure that the Federal Government in fact is a
good neighbor, and when they locate buildings or relocate buildings,
that they visit with the locals in addition to going through the normal
planning processes.
The gentleman has been to my community. I know many of the people
very much appreciate the gentleman's efforts in terms of transportation
and trying to make sure that we develop sensible transportation
alternatives in our communities: allow people to bike to work, have
mass transit, have alternatives that make sense from the perspective of
energy, which is one of our big topics tonight.
I know that the gentleman mentioned earlier the Arctic National
Wildlife Refuge. Rather than go directly into my comments, I wanted to
say a few things about what the gentleman was talking about, because
the gentleman said he has been there.
I have also been there. I just wanted to talk a little bit about how
that is a very special place, and I think anybody that is going to vote
in this body on this issue ought to take the opportunity to try to go
up and visit it. When I say go up and visit it, I do not mean go to
Kaktovik, the little village up on the very upper end, which is a
community that has a lot of problems but does not represent at all the
environment in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
What I did was I spent a week in this whole area, floating on a river
by the name of the Hula Hula River, named after the whalers that came
in the area hunting down whales, Hawaiian whalers; and they called the
river the Hula Hula. In the course of floating out of this river, it
floats out of the Brooks Range. It is probably one of the clearest,
most pristine streams you have ever seen. We took the opportunity to
stop and fish in the Hula Hula River for Arctic char. We saw a variety
of wildlife. We saw grizzly bears, musk oxen, herds of caribou.
Coming back from that trip, and after experiencing that and camping
in this area, I cannot think of any area that is more deserving of
being a wilderness area than the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
The argument is that we need to raid the oil that is there. In fact,
what the situation is on the whole coastal area in Alaska is that 97
percent, 97 percent of that coast is open to exploration, is open to
oil production, and just a little part of it we are trying to preserve
as a wildlife refuge.
It has been a wildlife refuge, it was put in many years ago under a
Republican President, and we do not see that bipartisanship today on
the environment, by the way. So I think the gentleman's remarks are
right on point when it comes to the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
I also would like to say a few words about the energy bill that we
are going to start debating this week, the Energy Policy Act of 2003.
During the last Congress, the House spent countless hours debating a
similar bill.
Unfortunately, one of the major provisions in the last energy bill on
which Members could not agree was renewable energy. As my colleague,
the gentleman from Oregon, has said earlier, the Republicans are
putting off dealing with our Nation's energy dependence problem and
leaving it to legislators of a future generation. Their theme seems to
be, ``Why do today what we can leave for the next generation to deal
with in the future?''
Last month I introduced legislation that establishes a Federal
renewable energy portfolio and establishes standards in that area for
certain retail electric utilities. There are some who say that a long-
term sustainable energy plan is impossible, or that renewable energy
and energy efficiency are just dreams and that the U.S. will never be
able to break its reliance on traditional energy sources, like oil and
coal.
I disagree, and I know the gentleman from Oregon disagrees; and now,
in the post-September 11 world, as we are in the midst of a war with
Iraq, the renewed conflict in the Middle East shows us that we cannot
continue to rely on imported oil from that region.
When my father, Stewart Udall, was Secretary of the Interior, and
this shows the dramatic change in our society, what happened in the
last generation, the U.S. imported when he was Secretary of the
Interior in the 60s 20 percent of its oil. My father argued that we
should not import more than 20 percent because this was a national
security issue if we were relying too much on one area of the world.
Our people may not know it, but today we import 53 percent of our
oil, 47 percent which comes from the OPEC countries; and by 2020, the
United States will import 62 percent of its oil unless we change the
way we are doing business here in the United States.
Even more concerning, world oil production is expected to peak
sometime in the next few decades, even some say as early as 2007. That
means as energy demand increases more and more rapidly, the world's oil
supply will be proportionately diminished.
Energy production has brought tremendous prosperity and allowed us to
grow our economy at unprecedented rates. However, nonrenewable forms of
energy are responsible for many of the greatest environmental threats
to America's well-being.
[[Page H2926]]
For these reasons, I am particularly interested in a renewable
portfolio standard. I believe that an RPS paves the road for
development and investment in clean energy technologies and local
economic development. RPS, in my mind, clearly serves as a model for
tomorrow's small and medium businesses to draw a profit from their own
environmental responsibility.
As a Nation of what I call ``petroholics,'' we claim only 2 percent
of our electricity is generated by nontraditional sources of power,
such as wind, solar and geothermal energy. Instead of pushing for the
exploration of oil development and contributing to this country's
addiction to oil, we should be pushing for the exploration of renewable
energy development. I believe this bill goes a long way to develop a
strategy for putting renewable energy into place.
With that, let me just say to the gentleman from Oregon that I think
we need to focus as a country on renewable energy. We obviously need a
strong domestic industry, the production of oil. But as many of us
know, that peaked in the 1970s; and we are headed down. The rest of the
country and the rest of the world, in particular the rest of the world,
are going to be going after more and more limited supplies of oil. So
the further we can get ahead of that curve, the better off we are going
to be.
Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Oregon for providing
leadership on this, for being on the floor and fighting for these
issues; and I hope that on some of these battles we can be victorious
in the coming weeks.
Mr. BLUMENAUER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his comments.
I am pleased to be a cosponsor of the gentleman's, I think, really far-
seeing bill on renewable energy; and I am hopeful that the leadership
in this Congress will have the foresight to allow it to come to the
floor and to allow a spirited debate. I am convinced that if we put it
to the Congress and to the American public that that legislation will
pass.
As I was listening to the gentleman describe the experience we both
have shared in the Arctic wilderness, I had in the back of my mind, I
think I said Teddy Roosevelt designated it. It was another Republican
President, President Eisenhower, who made the designation.
If I said Roosevelt, I was there dealing with the pristine jewel,
Yellowstone, which was the creation of then-President Teddy Roosevelt,
which we are now seeing under assault, where the administration is
proposing that the place in America with the worst air, not L.A., not
Houston, it is in Yellowstone Park, where we see park rangers forced to
wear gas masks because of the pollution, and we see the rule on
restricting the use of snowmobiles being rescinded. I guess I got a
little ahead of myself. I apologize if I said that.
I appreciate the gentleman focusing on the opportunity to truly make
us energy independent, dealing with renewable energy sources,
particularly the nontraditional: the fuel cells, wind, geothermal. As
we look at how these will be treated in the energy bill that will find
its way to the floor, we will find that there is but a tiny fraction of
the attention, the resources, to be able to accelerate those
developments. Again, it is a disconnect between the ``green'' rhetoric
that is being couched by the Republican pollsters and pundits and what
could have been actual accomplishment.
The bill will fall terribly short, as the gentleman mentions, in
terms of environmental stewardship. It will fall short in terms of our
meeting our international obligations and opportunities, and it will be
a fiscal disaster. It is interesting, the Taxpayers for Common Sense
and others in the Green Scissors Coalition are going to come forward to
point out how this is a lost opportunity that is going to cost the
American taxpayers billions and billions of dollars.
It is sad that a country with less than 3 percent of the recoverable
supply of the world's oil, and as we have talked about, much of it in
ecologically important areas, we are going to be focusing on trying to
extract every last drop and avoiding things that will put us in a
positive position.
I would like to acknowledge that we have one of our other colleagues
who is with us here this evening. Time is winding down, but we could
not not acknowledge the leadership and advocacy of our colleague, the
gentleman from the Puget Sound area of Washington (Mr. Inslee), from
the Seattle area, a gentleman with whom I was pleased to take a tour of
the Arctic, as we saw what was on the line.
I say to the gentleman, welcome. I would yield to the gentleman for
some comments about this critical area that I know the gentleman has
spent so much time and effort to provide better alternatives for the
people on this floor.
Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to briefly talk
about the Arctic, because we were on the banks of the Ivishak a couple
summers ago. I have been to Yellowstone, I have been to Glacier, I have
been to the Grand Canyon; and this area is the most biologically
dynamic place I have ever been, one of the most beautiful places I have
ever been in my life, and certainly it will not solve our energy needs.
People sort of feel about the Arctic the way they feel about the Mona
Lisa. They may not get to see the Mona Lisa. The advocates of drilling
are saying it is going to be a small footprint, just a relatively small
oil production facility. I think that is a little bit like putting a
small mustache on the Mona Lisa.
{time} 2015
It is small, but it is still disfiguring, and Americans do not want
it.
I hope that we will have an opportunity to offer a new approach to
energy in this year's debate that is akin to a new Apollo energy
project for America that will be as bold as the Apollo project that
John F. Kennedy stood in this Chamber in 1961 and challenged America to
go to the Moon in 10 years. We think the U.S. Congress ought to be
challenging America to go to a future of self-reliance in energy to
break our addiction on Middle Eastern oil, to adopt and embrace a goal
of reducing our global warming gas emissions and, in fact, grow jobs in
America.
That is what we need, a visionary, bold, creative energy policy; not
one that relies just on the technologies of the past, but one that
will, in fact, engage the American talent and that can-do spirit.
We know that Americans have the most creative talent in the world. We
have created most of the technologies of the last century. Now it is
time for us to create the energy technologies of the next century. We
know the world will beat a path to the door of the country that does
this. We do not think we should give these markets of wind turbines to
Denmark, or the market for fuel-efficient vehicles to Japan, or the
market of solar power to Germany. We believe those jobs should be right
here in the United States.
So we hope to offer, and in fact, we will be going to the Committee
on Rules tomorrow, to offer America a new Apollo energy project which
will, in fact, attempt to use all of our sectors in a creative way; to
do research on coal to see if we can find a way to sequester the
climate-changing gases of coal emissions; to help both consumers in the
auto industry to get more fuel-efficient cars; to help our local
domestic auto manufacturers with tax breaks for the retooling expenses
they are going to need to make fuel-efficient vehicles; to help improve
some of the productivity of some of our oil wells in our domestic
facilities now. Because we believe that America ought to adopt the can-
do spirit of a new vision of energy, rather than simply relying on the
old, the old types of technologies that we have used.
So I appreciate the opportunity to talk with the gentleman. In fact,
we may be back tonight or tomorrow to talk some more about that.
Mr. BLUMENAUER. Mr. Speaker, I hope we are able to. I appreciate the
gentleman focusing on the fact that we have had a tremendous
technological series of advances in this country, and it is time, first
of all, to make sure that we do not lose control of some of those, and
that we blaze a trail for the future. It is stunning to me that we have
an opportunity to give a little nudge to some of the promising
technologies, some of the fledgling enterprises, all across the
country. And I know the gentleman has been visited by people from our
own Pacific Northwest who are on the cutting edge of
[[Page H2927]]
being able to give a little bit of a push, a little bit of incentive,
to have the government step up and lead by example.
Our Department of Defense, for instance. I had been talking earlier
about my personal dismay that this administration is bent on somehow
exempting the Department of Defense, the largest manager of
infrastructure in the world, and, sadly, the source of some of the most
serious pollution. Rather than encouraging, rather than giving the
resources to clean up after themselves, they are talking about
exempting from the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act. I know the
gentleman from Washington has given thought to the notion of what will
happen if we gave a little bit of the money we are giving now to the
Department of Defense, almost $1 million a minute, if a little of that
were devoted to making sure that we had the most energy-efficient
military in the world.
Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will yield for a minute, I
am glad he brought this point up, because we out in Washington State
think the administration's effort to essentially gut, and it really is
gutting, five major environmental bills for the Department of Defense
activities is seriously misguided. The reason I say that is out in
Washington, we have a whole host of military establishments. We have
the Akamai Firing Center in eastern Washington. In my district we have
the Bangor Nuclear Submarine Facility. We have the Puget Sound Naval
Shipyard. And at every single one of those sites, we have had the
Department of Defense work with our local communities and we have
solved some of the environmental challenges without any great failure
of training or security.
The Department of Defense has worked with these local communities to
solve a problem with the sage grouse at the Akamai, to solve the
problem of water quality in the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard, to solve a
salmon habitat issue at the Bangor facility. And this proposal to gut
these environmental protections is really a solution looking for a
problem, because the Department of Defense in the State of Washington,
one of the most heavily defense-oriented places in the country, has not
experienced any particular qualm or difficulty in solving this problem.
Mr. BLUMENAUER. Mr. Speaker, I think that is telling. There is
already, as the gentleman well knows but unfortunately the public is
not aware, there are opportunities in the case of national defense
exigency for the suspension of this legislation. But the gentlemen
raises a point that mirrors my experience time and time again. The
characteristics, the leadership, the training, the commitment, that
makes our men and women in the Armed Forces the finest fighting force
in the world also makes them uniquely qualified to solve problems. And
when they are given an opportunity, whether it is building a green
building, whether it is solving an environmentally difficult problem,
if we give them the order, the resources, the clearance, I am stunned
at the progress that can be made.
I am likewise troubled, and the gentleman comes from the State that
probably more than any in the country bears the scars of past shortcuts
environmentally. We could talk about an area the gentleman is well
aware of in terms of the Hanford Nuclear Reservation where we were in a
rush to develop nuclear weapons before the Nazis, but now we are
spending billions of dollars a year to clean it up.
Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will yield, that is true.
And the Hanford site, this is going to be a 50-year recovery effort.
But some of the problems in the State of Washington, perhaps less
known, but every bit as concerning, are water quality issues now, of
some of the toxic chemicals that have been, by necessity, associated
with the Department of Defense sites. And I can say without hesitation
that the people of Tacoma and Federal Way and Paulsville, Washington do
not believe it is necessary to allow a degradation of their drinking
water standards in their kids' drinking water in order to have the most
secure Nation we have. And the reason they are confident of that is
they have seen the dedicated men and women of the Army and Navy work
with these communities to solve these problems.
So they cannot understand why this administration would come in for
what appears to be simply idealogical reasons and gut the protections
that have assured citizens that their Federal Government is not going
to let tetrachloride or some of these other heavy metals get into their
drinking water. It just does not make any sense to them when we have
been able to solve these problems because of the flexibility that the
gentleman alluded to.
So we hope that this effort will be beaten back and that the common
sense that has been used, both by the Department of Defense and our
local towns around this country, will prevail.
Mr. BLUMENAUER. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman raises very important
points from his own experience.
I had been working on areas of military toxins and unexploded
ordnance, and have been frankly amazed at the breadth of the problem,
in every State in the Union, coast to coast, areas right here in the
District of Columbia. Eighty-five years after the conclusion of World
War I, there are still cleanup operations taking place on the American
University campus, which was the site of American chemical weapons
production and testing during World War I. We have yet to clean that
up, not because the men and women in the military do not know how to do
it, but it has been a failure of commitment on behalf of several
administrations, including this one. Congress has been missing in
action. At the rate we are going right now, it is going to take
potentially 500 to 1,000 years or more to clean up from the problems of
the past.
We have some signature areas. The Massachusetts Military Reservation,
there is water pollution that threatens all of the water for the
Martha's Vineyard area, but it is almost every district, every single
State. Right now, we do not even know how many million acres are
polluted, for instance, with unexploded ordnance.
I think the gentleman's point is well taken. I am hopeful that we do
not suspend these five critical environmental laws. Not only will it
put the health of the American public at risk, but it also threatens
the men and women in the military who are around these areas.
And, last but not least, we face a situation now where there are some
problems of military readiness. There are fewer and fewer areas that
the military can train by going in, treating them right, cleaning them
up, solving environmental problems. It is going to save the military
problems in the long run, and it is going to extend the life of these
scarce areas where important training takes place that is critical to
military readiness.
Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will yield, he just
prompted a thought.
One of the problems on this sort of assault on environmental
protection by this administration is that it is not just one front, it
is a multifront assault on environmental protection. One that the
gentleman just alerted me to is the attempt to weaken our ability to
successfully prosecute Superfund toxic waste dump cleanups, and the
gentleman may have talked about this this evening, I do not know. But
in my district, I live right across the harbor from a site called the
Waco Creosote Plant. It was an old creosote plant, where a lot of the
lumber they brought in, in fact some I think may have gone to the
Panama Canal construction project, was created there. Creosote is
really effective at killing little bugs that might get into your
pilings, but it is very, very toxic. It has some very, very nasty
chemicals in it.
That stuff is on a point at a harbor right across the bay from where
I live on a little island just west of Seattle. That Superfund site
now, to clean it up, is costing tens of millions of dollars to
successfully clean up that creosote, because it is leaking into Puget
Sound now, and that stuff is a carcinogen and we believe it has caused
some pretty awful things to happen to the fish that a lot of people
like to eat. In fact, the shell beds, the shell beds are closed around
this area. You cannot eat the clams and oysters and the like.
But the administration, despite the ongoing demand to clean up not
this one, but thousands of toxic waste dumps around the country, has
decided not to fund those by canceling the tax that would pay for this
cleanup. That are now paid by the polluters. Before
[[Page H2928]]
we have had a policy that the polluters will pay to clean up this
pollution, rather than John Q. Citizen. This administration wants to
take the cost of the cleanup of this creosote toxic waste dump, and
there are thousands arose the country, and take it off of the polluters
who put the creosote in the ground, who should be morally, ethically,
and legally responsible for that, and put it over on the taxpayers, so
the taxpayers have to pay for this cleanup.
Well, I can tell the gentleman that my neighbors do not think it
should be their job to clean up the creosote that these companies put
in the ground, because they were not following the law for decades. And
we believe the administration is flat wrong in trying to take care of
these special interests by putting that enormous cost of these cleanup
efforts on to people who are playing by the rules, earning a paycheck,
paying their house payment, and they are now having to pay their taxes
for that Superfund cleanup.
Mr. Speaker, it is one manifestation of how special interests here in
this Chamber have got their way when they should not get their way.
These cleanups ought to be borne by the polluters. Not only is it an
equity issue, but the clear fact of the matter is that because of the
costs associated, these are billions and billions of dollars, one
little cleanup on my little island, it is about 16 acres, is going to
cost something like $20 million or $30 million, and we need to repeat
that across the country to keep this stuff out of our water. If we do
not keep that polluter-pays concept, these jobs are not going to get
done.
So this is related to the issue, and I just want to point out that it
is not the only assault that we suffer.
{time} 2030
Mr. BLUMENAUER. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the gentleman's comments. I
appreciate his leadership and look forward to working with him on
energy, on defense, and on the areas generally of making sure that we
are strengthening, not weakening, our environmental protections.
In conclusion, Mr. Speaker, I know the time is about up, I know you
will be disappointed, but I want to summarize because it is important
for us to be working with friends like the gentleman from Washington
(Mr. Inslee) and others to focus on actions, not just rhetoric.
And one of the things that I have found most disconcerting as I have
watched what this administration has done is taking Mr. Luntz's advice
to not be rolling back regulations but, as they call it, updating
Washington's rules on the environment. Now, he has been encouraging
Republicans not to attack the principles behind environmental
protections, but to try and shift things around in terms of the
regulatory configuration. Well, the Bush administration has made
significant and far-reaching changes to environmental protections since
the President assumed office. But not through outright legislation, not
putting it before the American public and having a discussion about
what our values are, what we are trying to protect and how best to
encourage more environmental protection.
We have been having a series of late Friday afternoon rule changes
and clarifications at a time when asthma and cancer rates are on the
rise. When people in Alaska are seeing tropical insects, when we are
having roadways buckle, permafrost is disappearing, the public knows
that we should be strengthening, not weakening, environmental laws. We
are not just seeing a broad depth and breadth of changes, but we are
seeing them done under the radar screen. For example, we have seen a
series of rollbacks occurring on Friday afternoons, during the holiday
season, when Congress is not in session and when the public's attention
is diverted. For example, the EPA announced its biggest rollback of the
Clean Air Act since its inception on the afternoon before Thanksgiving
and another on New Year's Eve calculated to try and shield the action
from the public.
Three of the most egregious rollbacks occurred first earlier this
year when we had proposed changes to the Clear Water Act that will have
sweeping impacts on 20 million acres of wetlands across the country.
Now, these rules changes were in response to a Supreme Court decision
that very narrowly interpreted the Clean Water Act and brought
attention to what bodies of water the act should apply to.
Now, instead of advancing clarifying legislation that would make
clear we want to protect these precious wetlands, half of which are
gone already, some communities have lost 90 percent of their wetlands,
deteriorating the quality of water, increasing threats to flood,
instead they have proposed leaving out lots of, these appear to be de
minimis efforts, they want to talk about creeks, small streams, natural
ponds, types of wetlands like bogs, marshes, prairie potholes. These
will all be waterways no longer protected by the Clean Water Act. They
sound de minimis, but they are part of the critical green
infrastructure that has protected our communication for generations.
Now they will all be vulnerable to dredging, filling, and waste
dumping.
I mentioned earlier the confusion surrounding the snowmobiles in some
of our country's most beautiful national parks. During his Presidential
campaign, candidate Bush spoke of protecting national parks as an
ongoing responsibility and a shared commitment of the American people
and their government. The budgets, I will mention, cut funding to this
ongoing responsibility. And even though the public has spoken out again
and again in favor of banning snowmobiles from areas like Yellowstone,
the administration announced last November a proposal to increase the
number of snowmobiles in both Yellowstone and Grand Teton National
parks by 35 percent.
Now, against the wishes of the American public, the EPA, the National
Park Service, the administration has decided to jeopardize the health
of the park's ecosystem and employees in areas that President Bush in
the campaign referred to as ``silent places unworn by man.''
Finally, I want to mention, Mr. Speaker, the environmental rollback
that will have a significant impact in my community in the Pacific
Northwest, the national roadless policy. Near the end of his term,
President Clinton restricted logging and road building in almost 60
million acres of national forest. This was after the most extensive
public input process in the history of our national park system. There
were over a million and a half public comments. Over 600 public
hearings. Well, a district judge in Idaho placed an injunction on the
rule. The Bush administration did not choose to contest it. Luckily, in
one of the few victories that those of us who care about the
environment have had recently, the 9th Circuit Court has upheld the
roadless rule, which will effectively protect it for the time being.
But this reckless degradation of our Nation's air, water, forest, and
soil protection will have a severe and long-term impact on the planet,
leave a far greater legacy of environmental problems that our children,
not us, our children will be left to manage.
And I hope that the American public will focus on what Republican
consultants like Frank Luntz are suggesting, understand the significant
impacts of environmental rollbacks proposed, and understand that there
are significant opportunities, not just for the American public and the
environmental community, but significant environmental opportunities
like I mentioned this evening in terms of environmental clean up with
the Department of Defense that will save tax dollars, that will protect
the environment for generations to come, that will improve military
readiness, and not be at the expense of the health of our communities
or our men and women in the fighting forces.
I hope that instead of greenwash, instead of rhetorical flourishes,
instead of dodging the issues and obscuring the record, I hope that the
administration will join with people on both sides of the aisle who
care about the environment and give the American public what they
request in terms of livable communities, protected open space, clean
air, and clean water. It is within our grasp. It is within our budget.
I hope that it is within our will before we adjourn.
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