[Congressional Record Volume 157, Number 143 (Friday, September 23, 2011)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1721-E1722]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




  TRANSPARENCY IN REGULATORY ANALYSIS OF IMPACTS ON THE NATION ACT OF 
                                  2011

                                 ______
                                 

                               speech of

                        HON. DENNIS J. KUCINICH

                                of ohio

                    in the house of representatives

                      Thursday, September 22, 2011

       The House in Committee of the Whole House on the state of 
     the Union had under consideration the bill (H.R. 2401) to 
     require analyses of the cumulative and incremental impacts of 
     certain rules and actions of the Environmental Protection 
     Agency, and for other purposes:

  Mr. KUCINICH. Mr. Chair, I rise in strong opposition to H.R. 2401, 
The TRAIN Act. This bill would continue the subordination of public 
health and common sense to the narrow, temporary and misguided pursuit 
of profits for the few. It endeavors to kill essential environmental 
and public health protections by imposing the exact kind of redtape my 
colleagues so emphatically claim to oppose.
  The TRAIN Act slams the brakes on essential public health 
initiatives, first by burdening

[[Page E1722]]

the initiatives with unnecessary and redundant study. These regulations 
include efforts to reduce airborne ozone, nitrogen dioxide, sulfur 
dioxide, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, toxic metals like mercury, 
arsenic and chromium, and any effort to stem greenhouse gases, the 
single biggest threat to our way of life and our very existence in 
recorded history. The TRAIN Act also tries to overtly stop two 
essential rules. It indefinitely blocks EPA's Mercury and Air Toxics 
standards and Cross-State Air Pollution Rule by eliminating any legal 
deadline for EPA action. It prevents EPA from adopting the Cross-State 
Air Pollution Rule for a minimum of 19 months, and the Mercury and Air 
Toxics standards for at least 15 months.
  Each year the Cross-State Air Pollution rule is delayed brings about 
up to 34,000 premature deaths, 19,000 emergency room visits for 
respiratory and cardiovascular disease, and about 400,000 cases of 
aggravated asthma. The pollution reductions under the rule are 
estimated to create health benefits of $59 billion to $140 billion per 
year; 5 to 13 times its costs.
  Each year the Mercury and Air Toxics rule is delayed brings about 
17,000 additional premature deaths, 12,200 emergency room visits for 
respiratory and cardiovascular disease, and about 120,000 cases of 
aggravated asthma. Enacting the rule would bring about health benefits 
of $120 to $280 billion per year; 150 to 350 times its costs.
  If I told you Washington, DC were to incur an act of terrorism that 
would cost over 50,000 lives over the next year, I guarantee you this 
Congress would launch a multibillion dollar effort to save those lives. 
If an explosion at a nuclear power plant killed a baseball stadium's 
worth of people, you can bet we would spend billions of dollars 
figuring out what went wrong, conducting cleanup, performing oversight, 
and so much more. If a massive flood caused an outbreak of an enigmatic 
infectious disease that killed 34,000 people over 12 months, you can be 
certain we would mobilize all levels of government and the private 
sector to stop it. There would be clearly identifiable victims. There 
would be heroes. Not so in the field of public health where the victims 
are harder to identify and the cause of their death, less grandiose.
  We have an opportunity here to prevent the deaths of tens of 
thousands of innocent Americans for far less money than it would cost 
to relaunch a war on terror, to clean up after a nuclear catastrophe, 
or to stop the spread of a flood-borne emerging infectious disease. 
There are many environmental issues demanding our attention which will 
require remedies that are simply not cost-effective, in the narrowly 
defined economic sense of the term. The regulations at issue today do 
not fall into that category. This bill is a true test of fiscal 
rectitude. I urge my colleagues to reject it.

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