[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 150 (2004), Part 6]
[Senate]
[Pages 7536-7537]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                          ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY

  Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, last Thursday I came to the floor to mark 
Earth Day, and I wanted to highlight the laser-like focus of the Bush 
administration in rolling back 30 years of environmental protections. 
When one looks at their record, it is literally breathtaking.
  The reason I am concerned about this is that most of our 
environmental legislation was put together by bipartisan coalitions. In 
my State of Vermont we do not think of the environment as a Republican 
or a Democratic issue. We think of it as an issue of protecting what is 
best about our country and protecting it for not only ourselves but for 
our children and our grandchildren.
  Unfortunately, this administration tends to look at the environment 
as something where they should react to their largest contributors and 
take advantage of what it may do for them today and let our children 
and our grandchildren worry about it tomorrow.
  Why do I say this? Three years into office, the Bush administration 
has taken well over 300 actions to weaken and sometimes to gut 
environmental protections to clean the air we breathe, the water we 
drink, and the food we eat. They have taken huge steps to hand over our 
public lands to timber, oil and gas companies for more drilling and 
logging.
  With this record, it is no wonder that the administration continues 
to use every page of its public playbook to downplay the effect of 
these rollbacks.
  One of their favorite tactics is announcing environmental rollbacks 
on Fridays or around holidays when they think the American public will 
not be paying attention. In fact, we all know if you have something 
good you want to announce, you do it early in the week, you do it with 
a lot of fanfare. But if you have something you don't want anybody to 
pay much attention to, you do it late on Friday.
  The administration has announced at least 40 environmental rollbacks 
on Fridays, another 20 on holidays. Actually, for them, every Friday is 
Friday the 13th: Friday, November 22, the clean air rollback; Friday, 
January 3, 2003, fast-tracked logging; Friday, January 29, 2003, clean 
water protections threatened; Friday, July 11, 2003, weakened our 
drinking water protections; Friday, October 10, 2003, changed 
environmental rules for mining waste; on Friday, October 17, 2003, 
dioxin regulation, or in this case deregulation. And on and on. These 
are just a few of the actions they have taken on Friday. They show just 
how far the administration has gone in gutting the Clean Air Act, 
ramping up logging in some of our spectacular national forests, dumping 
more mining wastes on public lands, and dumping more sewage sludge on 
private lands.
  Another favorite tactic is either ignoring or sometimes, if the 
science doesn't suit their political needs, if they cannot get away 
with ignoring the science, then they just change it. One of the most 
blatant examples of this was the White House scrubbing of an annual EPA 
air report to avoid any mention of evidence of climate change.
  Just recently, the New York Times reported on the creative White 
House fact spinning of the administration's proposed retreat from 
strong mercury controls at powerplants.
  We all recognize their favorite tactic: If you are going to gut the 
environment, then just give it a nice name. You can see the number of 
focus groups they must use in the administration to come up with these 
names. They don't say, we are going to join Polluters-R-Us, or we are 
going to give a payoff to some large polluting corporation because they 
helped out in a fundraiser. Instead, they will go to focus groups and 
find out what will sound good to people, what is a good line we can use 
and maybe they won't look behind it, maybe they will just look at the 
rhetoric and ignore the reality.
  I will give some examples. ``Clear Skies'' and ``Healthy Forests''--
these are lines they use, but they are just about as accurate as ``No 
Child Left Behind.''
  They have used all of these tactics when it comes to misleading the 
public. For example, on wetlands protections, last January--on a 
Friday, of course--the administration announced one of its most 
sweeping rollbacks to take away protections under the Clean Water Act 
for 20 million acres of wetlands. This policy created such a 
groundswell of opposition from hunters, anglers, environmental groups, 
and others that the President finally withdrew the proposed rulemaking 
last December. One of the things they found out is hunters, anglers, 
and environmentalists often include a whole lot of Republicans as well 
as a whole lot of Democrats, and that the environment is not just for 
one party. But they got such enormous objection that they withdrew it--
they had to withdraw it--but they did not tell the public they were not 
revoking the underlying instructions to Federal agencies to follow the 
same policy that leaves 20 million acres of wetlands at risk.
  That is why I found it so interesting that the President would start 
his reelection attempts to greenwash his administration's anti-
environmental

[[Page 7537]]

record by talking about wetlands. Here you have this enormous anti-
environmental record. You put at risk 20 million acres of wetlands. You 
would think the last thing in the world they would want to do is talk 
about wetlands, but that is what he started with. He had some nice 
photo-ops walking around the salt marshes and wetlands of Maine, but 
when you look between the lines of his Earth Day announcement, it 
doesn't hold water.
  While the President was touting his plan to restore 1 million acres 
of wetlands, he made no mention of his policy to revoke protection of 
20 million acres. We will give you 1, we will take back 20. He didn't 
tell the folks in Maine that he proposed to cut the funding next year 
for one of the programs, the Wetlands Reserve Program, that was 
supposed to help meet his 1 million-acre target. You take back 20 
million acres, you promise 1 million acres, but then you say, we won't 
even give you the money for the 1 million. He did not tell the folks in 
Maine that his administration has not fully funded this program since 
Congress expanded it in the last farm bill.
  Yes, as he said in Maine, the President did indeed sign the farm bill 
to expand it. That is part of his job. But it is quite a leap for the 
administration to now promote that as one of their environmental 
accomplishments. In fact, the administration has done everything it can 
to shortchange the conservation programs that are so important, not 
only to Maine and Florida but to every other State. He not only 
proposed cuts to the WRP but also to other programs that might help 
landowners and farmers conserve the resources on their land.
  When the President went down to Florida campaigning the next day, he 
also forgot to mention a few key facts, such as the fact that the Army 
Corps has allowed more than 3,800 acres of wetlands to be drained or 
filled in the Everglades. The Bush administration stood by and watched 
as the Army Corps signed off on development permits that are destroying 
the Everglades. It has also argued against Clean Water Act regulations 
of water being pumped from urban Broward County into the Everglades.
  If you go back to the 300-plus rollbacks under this administration, 
it brings up even more policies that are hurting the environment in 
Maine and Florida and Vermont. The administration's retreat from 
aggressive mercury controls on powerplants has just been the most 
recent of these all-out environmental assaults.
  It is hard to say we are family friendly when we are going to put 
more mercury into the air, the water, and the fish pregnant women eat, 
or by which the newborn children might be affected. That is not being 
family friendly, to say we have to support our polluting industries 
because they have been strong supporters of the President and it is 
tough about the newborn children.
  The President, as any President of any party, can always get nice 
photo-ops. But his record on the environment is too mired on reversals 
and rollbacks for any greenwash to last too long. Greenwash, like 
whitewash, doesn't stick too long, and despite all the public relations 
maneuvering, the public recognizes the enormous and long-term effect of 
the Bush policies on our environment and on our health. When the 
administration is done, it will mean more pollution in the rivers and 
streams, more toxins in the air, and of course a lot less natural 
resources to pass on to the next generation.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from South Dakota.
  Mr. JOHNSON. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to address the 
body for 10 minutes as in morning business.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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