[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 148 (2002), Part 8]
[Senate]
[Pages 11099-11100]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                       DECLINE IN QUALITY OF LIFE

  Mrs. BOXER. Madam President, I take to the floor today to call 
attention to an alarming trend that I see happening in this country. It 
is a decline in the quality of life for our people in this country. It 
is beginning. I am concerned it will continue.
  Clearly, I am not talking today about the tragedy that hit on 9-11. 
Of course, that had an impact across the board in terms of worrying 
about our children and concern for our communities. I am setting that 
aside. What I really want to talk about is the business of this 
Government that is keeping our people safe from a couple of things. One 
is crime in the streets. The other is the quality of our air, our 
water, our neighborhoods in terms of this environment that we so 
cherish.
  I am very concerned we are beginning to see fallout from policies 
that are occurring in this administration that has been in power now 
for 17 months. We first get the alarming news that after 9 years of 
decline, there is a very large change in the crime rate. We see 
increases in the murder rate. We learn of increases across the board 
from reading the newspaper. We have an expert, Patrick Murphy, who 
basically worries that we have eliminated the COPS program because this 
administration does not support it. It has put 100,000 police on the 
beat. We need to do more. That is having an impact.
  Also, we are seeing cuts in aid to States and localities in the 
criminal justice area. We are seeing these cuts because this 
administration just does not have that as a priority. They have as a 
priority cutting taxes for people who earn over $1 million a year. That 
is the truth. It costs money to put a policeman on the beat, to protect 
a neighborhood, a street, a school. If it is more important to give tax 
breaks to people who do not need it, that is the price we are going to 
pay. It is beginning to come home to roost.
  Another area where we are beginning to see decline is in the quality 
of life in the environment. We already know this administration is 
cutting in half the Superfund sites that are going to be cleaned up. I 
have a chart that shows the number of cleanups we did under the Clinton 
administration, and the number of cleanups that are now being proposed 
by the Bush administration.
  In the red here, the average number for the last 4 years of the 
Clinton administration was 86 sites cleaned up each and every year. 
That means 86 neighborhoods reclaiming an area that was so toxic and 
polluted there could be no economic development. Those sites were 
cleaned up.
  When the Bush administration came in, they promised they would clean 
up 75 sites. We were not happy about that--we saw that was a reduction 
of 10 sites and that would mean 10 communities in trouble, property 
values declining, quality of life declining, children's health 
declining, and so on--but listen to what happened. After we adjusted to 
the fact that we were going to see 11 sites fewer cleaned up, we now 
see their proposal is to actually go to 47 sites.
  They are cutting in half the number of Superfund sites to be cleaned. 
Why? Because it is not a priority. It is more important to them to give 
money to people who earn over $1 million. That is the bottom line. 
There is not enough money to put cops on the beat, not enough money to 
clean up these sites. It is a very troubling trend. These communities 
were counting on these cleanups, and they are not going to happen.
  These sites are not isolated. In my own State of California, 40 
percent of the people live within 4 miles of a Superfund site. So we 
are talking about a real problem. But more than that, there are many 
other problems that we see.
  I urge people who may be listening to go to a Web site that we have 
set up, on our side, to detail the various rollbacks that we are seeing 
in terms of the environment.
  Go to this Web site: democrats.senate.gov/environment, and, you can 
see what we are talking about. We are going to show you the sites that 
have been abandoned, the rollbacks of this administration because there 
are so many I cannot fit them on one chart.
  I will show two charts that detail the various rollbacks and broken 
promises of this administration. You can see it is just impossible to 
take the time because there are 100 rollbacks in clean air, clean 
water, and safety and health for our people. It causes a lot of 
concern.
  Senator Jim Jeffords, who is the chair of the Environment Committee 
on which I serve, is highly upset about the Superfund situation and 
highly upset at the fact that there are rollbacks now being proposed on 
the Clean Air Act.
  Madam President, you have two beautiful young children. You know when 
they breathe dirty air, the impact on their lungs is far greater than 
when you and I breathe that same air. The bottom line is by rolling 
back the Clean Air Act, as they plan to do, our children are going to 
suffer.
  We have a situation where the President has now proposed a rollback 
of the

[[Page 11100]]

Clean Air Act. Senator Jeffords is trying to learn on what they based 
this decision. He has asked the EPA for information similar to the 
information I asked them for on the Superfund sites. I want to be able 
to tell you which of your constituencies are not going to have their 
Superfund sites cleaned up. I want to be able to tell the same to my 
Republican colleagues and Democratic colleagues. I cannot get the 
information. Things have gotten so bad that we have had to ask, at the 
time, the inspector general to help us get this information on 
Superfund, and Senator Jeffords is going to have to call together our 
committee and issue a subpoena to get information in terms of the 
rollback of the Clean Air Act.
  Let me sum up this way: I am concerned the priorities of this 
administration are leaving our people vulnerable, vulnerable to high 
crime rates, vulnerable to dirty air and dirty water. I think the 
chickens are coming home to roost. Maybe it is all theoretical, except 
when you find out it is not somebody else's Superfund site that is not 
being cleaned up but it is yours.
  Let me show you the sites across the country. Every single State 
except North Dakota has a Superfund site, and the purple reflects the 
Superfund sites. These are the most toxic, most dangerous sites.
  I am here today as the chair of our environmental team. I am proud 
Senator Daschle has appointed me. I have a very good team of Democratic 
Senators with whom I am working, and I will come to the floor again to 
bring you up to date on this issue.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Tennessee.

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