[Congressional Record Volume 157, Number 141 (Wednesday, September 21, 2011)]
[House]
[Page H6277]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  1020
                             THE TRAIN ACT

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Vermont (Mr. Welch) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. WELCH. Mr. Speaker, the House this week will take up a bill 
called the TRAIN Act. The acronym stands for Transparency and 
Regulatory Analysis of Impacts on the Nation. It is quite a mouthful, 
but what it's going to do, very specifically, is delay the 
implementation of two very important Clean Air Act standards that 
protect human health and the environment. Now, we can have a lot of 
arguments about proper regulation, which ones are good and which ones 
are bad, but can we really argue about the necessity of taking 
appropriate action to protect the air we breathe?
  The Clean Air Act has been very successful in improving air quality 
around this country. Obviously, much more needs to be done. But the two 
provisions that are under attack by the so-called TRAIN Act are:
  One regulation that regulates cross-State air pollution. Now, if you 
live in one State and there is a coal-burning plant in another State, 
the law of air motion means that the pollution is going to follow the 
path that the air travels, and people in a State that are on the 
receiving end of polluted air ought to have some protection. This has a 
significant impact on health. It is not as though you can have 
appropriate regulatory safety without having the Federal Government 
have some role, since air does travel according to the law of physics, 
not according to an act of Congress.
  A second provision is the power plant emissions of mercury 
limitation. Mercury is a known carcinogen. It is extremely dangerous to 
our health, particularly that of infants. And the success that we've 
had in limiting mercury pollution has had dramatic impacts--positive 
impacts--on our health. Why? Why would we delay the implementation of a 
mercury regulation that is going to have significant and immediate 
benefit?
  There may be some cost to this; that's true. But what about the cost 
in lives? What about the cost in health care expenditures by allowing 
pollution to occur?
  When we do something and price it cheaply by ignoring what the 
external impacts of allowing something to be theoretically cheap, in 
the terms of lives lost, in terms of health care expenses incurred, 
we're not saving anybody money. We're making some money for the owners 
of the polluting entity, but we are not making money for society, and 
we are certainly not protecting it.
  We have to have careful regulation. We should always be willing to 
look at them to get rid of things that don't make sense and aren't 
getting the job done, but we also need proper regulation. And when it 
comes to health and safety, clean air and mercury, those are two 
provisions that should not be delayed. This legislation would do that. 
It's harmful to our health, and it will be harmful to our economy.

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