[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 31, Number 32 (Monday, August 14, 1995)]
[Pages 1393-1397]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks on Environmental Protection in Baltimore, Maryland

August 8, 1995

    Thank you very much. As you can tell, the Vice President really has 
no strong convictions about this issue. [Laughter] That's the darnedest 
stump speech I've heard in a long time. I thought for a minute he was a 
write-in candidate for mayor here. [Laughter] It was a great speech, and 
thank you for what you said.
    Thank you, Doris McGuigan, and thank you to all of your allies here 
for reminding us what's really behind all these issues. One of the 
biggest problems we have in Washington, even though it's very close to 
Baltimore--one of the biggest problems we have is having people there 
remember that the de- 

[[Page 1394]]

cisions they make there affect how you live here and then making sure 
that people who live here understand the impact of the decisions that 
are made there. You have helped us, every one of you--Doris, for what 
you've done and all of you, for coming out here today--you have helped 
us to reestablish that critical link between the American people and 
their Government, so you can decide what you're for and what you're 
against and how it's going to affect your children and your future. 
Thank you, Lieutenant Governor Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, for coming. 
Thank you, Congressman Gilchrest, for your outstanding support of the 
environment. And I want to thank all of my friends who are State 
officials and city officials. And Senator Miller, thank you for coming. 
And I want to say a special word of appreciation, too, to the first 
person who spoke, our EPA Administrator, Carol Browner, who has done a 
magnificent job in her work.
    I want to deliver a pretty simple message today. Every office I have 
ever held of the public trust, from being attorney general of my State 
to being Governor to being President, required me to swear an oath to 
protect the people I was elected to serve, to give people the security 
they need to live up to the most of their God-given potential. Central 
to that security is the right to know that the air we breathe and the 
food we eat and the water we drink will be safe and the right to know if 
there's any risk to those things.
    This basic security really is in jeopardy today. There are people 
who want to strip away decades of public health protection. I intend to 
fight them every step of the way. As I said, the battle over 
environmental protection is being fought in Washington, but here in 
communities like this one all across America, big and small, you see 
what is really at stake. Most hard-working families have enough on their 
minds without having to worry about an environmental hazard in their 
neighborhood.
    Most people have enough trouble just trying to educate their kids 
and pay their bills and keep body and soul together and deal with all 
the changes in the global economy and how they bear down on community 
after community and business after business and job after job. Most 
people have enough to deal with without having to worry about their 
food, their air, and their water. But at least they have a right to know 
what is in it and whether something else is about to be put in it. 
That's what this Community Right-to-Know Act was all about. You heard 
the Vice President say it was passed almost a decade ago now, signed by 
President Reagan, strengthened by President Bush, strongly supported by 
this administration.
    This is an issue that's very personal with me. I've dealt with the 
whole issue of right-to-know around chemicals for nearly 20 years now, 
since I was a young attorney general and a train loaded with chemicals 
in car after car blew up in a small southern town in the southern part 
of my State where a relative of mine was the sheriff. And it was just a 
God's miracle that we didn't have hundreds and hundreds of people killed 
in this little town. And the first thing that occurred to everybody is: 
Who knew what about what was on the train? Who knew what about how 
safely it was being carried? Who knew what about what kind of precaution 
should have been taken when the train pulled into the station?
    That was almost 20 years ago. And I have seen this issue catch on 
now like wildfire as people in American communities all across our 
country have demanded the right to have some basic control over their 
own lives and their futures. The right-to-know law now requires 
manufacturers to tell the public how much they pollute. And if you want 
to know what's coming out of the smokestacks across the water, for 
example, all you have to do now is call your local library or the EPA 
and the information is there for you.
    The Community Right-to-Know Act does not tell companies what they 
can and can't produce. It doesn't require massive bureaucracy. It 
doesn't affect every company, just those in certain industries. It's 
carefully focused on a list of 650 specific dangerous toxins. About 300 
of those have been added since this administration came into office, I 
might add. And over 100 of them are known to cause cancer. This law 
works, as you have heard.
    You have had particular success here because you've had such a good 
grassroots com- 

[[Page 1395]]

munity effort with your 74 percent reduction. But you need to know that 
nationwide, every place in the country since the Community Right-to-Know 
Act has been on the books reported reductions in toxic emissions, or 
about 43 percent for the whole country. Now, that is a law worth 
passing--no new bureaucracy, just power to the people through basic 
knowledge.
    This has kept millions of pounds of chemicals out of our lives. It's 
helped people to stay healthy and live longer. And as you have already 
heard, it's also helped to spur innovation to help businesses work 
smarter and cleaner and become more profitable, not less profitable.
    Our environmental progress, from the community right-to-know law to 
the Clean Air Act to so many others, has been the source of bipartisan 
pride, as has been mentioned. Therefore, it has been something of a 
surprise to many of us--and I think some in the Republican Party as well 
as most of us in the Democratic Party--to see what is happening in the 
Congress now, to see this dramatic departure from the bipartisan efforts 
of the last 25 years.
    The House voted to gut environmental and public health protections 
last week under the pressure of lobbyists for those who have a vested 
financial interest in seeing that happen. The budget bill they passed 
would cut environmental enforcement by 50 percent. It would virtually 
bring to a halt the Federal enforcement of the Clean Water Act and toxic 
waste cleanups--a terrible mistake, a terrible mistake.
    In a brazen display of the power of these special interest groups, 
the House added 18 separate loopholes, giveaways, and stop-in-your-
tracks orders, stripping away very specific public safeguards to benefit 
very specific interest groups. One provision allows oil refineries to 
spew benzene, a cancer-causing chemical, without stringent safeguards. 
Another would allow factories to dump 15 million pounds of toxic 
chemicals into our Nation's rivers, lakes, and streams next year alone--
one year. Another permits cement kilns and other incinerators to burn 
cancer-causing chemicals without effective control. The House majority 
also voted to gut community right-to-know, literally rolling back 
protections that are already on the books.
    And if you ask them why they did this, they say, ``Oh, well, we 
regret it, but there are all these crazy Federal regulators that are 
bringing to a halt the American economy.'' The problem is, there is no 
evidence that environmental protection has hurt our economy at all--
none. And furthermore, this administration and this EPA Administrator 
have done more than anybody in 25 years to try to streamline regulation, 
reduce the burden of excessive regulation, get rid of dumb rules that 
don't make sense. Carol Browner has committed to reduce by 25 percent 
the amount of time businesses have to spend filling out forms, but not 
to destroy the standards, the rules, the regulation, and the community 
empowerment that are keeping our environment clean. And I am telling 
you, we can fix bureaucratic problems, but we cannot fix--we cannot 
fix--the environmental damage that would be done if they tore up the 
progress of the last 25 years.
    If the environmental laws have been so terrible for this country, 
you tell me how our economy has produced 7 million jobs in the last 2\1/
2\ years, 1\1/2\ million new businesses, 2\1/2\ million new homeowners. 
Why is the stock market at 4,700 if the environment is so bad? We've got 
some problems. We have stagnant middle class incomes. We've got to get 
more money for people who are out there doing America's work. But the 
economy is doing well, and the people who own these businesses are doing 
well. And our country is moving forward in every single measure except 
raising middle class incomes. That is the problem. But the environment 
is not causing that, and there is no evidence for this. This is a big 
mistake. It is a terrible mistake. And I will not let our country make 
it. There is no evidence to support it.
    I think all of you know, and I have already said, that the minute 
these anti-environmental measures hit my desk they will be dead. But I 
intend to do more than that. I want to use the authority of my office to 
ensure the right of parents to know what chemicals their children are 
being exposed to. I want more communities to be able to proudly 
introduce people like Doris and say we've reduced our chemical emissions 
by 74 per- 

[[Page 1396]]

cent. That's what I want. I want to see more people doing their own work 
for their own people and their own future. So just before I left for 
Baltimore, I signed an Executive order which says any manufacturer who 
wants to do business with the Federal Government must tell its neighbors 
what dangerous chemicals it puts into the air, the earth, and the water. 
No disclosure; no contract. [Applause] Thank you. And I am directing our 
agencies to take the next steps to act quickly and openly to continue to 
strengthen community right-to-know; if appropriate, to extend it to more 
industries and thousands more communities; to require companies to 
disclose more complete information.
    Let me say this: There is an orderly process for this now. It is an 
orderly, open, fair process where we say what we're thinking about doing 
through the EPA. Then all the interests affected--people like you all 
across America and the industries, too, and the businesses--they get to 
come in and say what they feel. And if there are mistakes or if the 
Government is going too far, if everybody admits something doesn't need 
to be done, it can all be changed. That is the orderly way this should 
be done. And that is precisely what Congress--at least some in 
Congress--are trying to stop us from doing, this orderly, neighborly, 
open, honest process in which we arrive at these kind of standards.
    I want to continue to strengthen the right to know through that kind 
of open and fair process. But I want you to know something else. If 
Congress passes a law to block this kind of process in future right-to-
know issues, then I will issue another Executive order to finish that 
job as well.
    The message here is clear. Congress can go right on with its plan to 
undermine America's antipollution laws, but it will go nowhere fast. 
Community right-to-know is here to stay. I want more neighborhoods like 
this one all across America. And I want America to see you tonight on 
the evening news and hear about you tomorrow in the newspapers and on 
the radio stations so people know what they can do if they work together 
with the law.
    Let me just say there is more here than a single law at stake. 
Democracies always have depended upon the free flow of information to 
ordinary citizens. Our democracy in this age, which has been heralded 
the information age, is being regaled constantly with the dreams of all 
the television channels we're going to be able to get, all the different 
radio stations, all the different magazines we can read. We are going to 
be awash in information. Wouldn't it be tragic if, in the information 
age, the single most significant thing to come out of this Congress was 
blocking information that you need to know about the most basic health 
and safety requirements of your families, your children, and your 
community? That's not my idea of the 21st century information society. I 
want you to know more, not less. And I think you do, too.
    And if you need any evidence of that, just look what happened when 
the former Soviet Union and the whole Communist empire in Eastern Europe 
broke up. We saw some of the awfulest environmental problems anywhere in 
the world because there was development there without democracy, because 
today's economics took the place of the health and safety of their 
people and, in the end, helped to undermine their economy. If we needed 
any other evidence, that alone ought to be enough.
    So I just want to close by asking you when you walk away from here 
to think about what your ordinary day is like. Think about the 
information that keeps you and your family safe and healthy. Think about 
what your child might see that might change his or her behavior: a stop 
sign, a label that tells you what's in the food you buy for your family, 
the warning on a pack of cigarettes. This and other things are simple 
things that we take for granted because their cost is minimal. But their 
value is priceless. The silent threat posed by pollution is as real and 
dangerous as the threat of a speeding car to a walking child. We've 
known for a long time that what we can't see can hurt us.
    Our health and safety laws, they're our line of defense against 
these dangers. We're not about to abandon them, not about to abandon 
them, because of people like you. You know, there's a couple of lines in 
the Bible that say, if your child asks for bread, would you give him a 
stone; if he asked for fish, would you give him a serpent; if he asked

[[Page 1397]]

for an egg would you give him a scorpion? Today we must ask, if our 
child asked about the future, will we give him or her dirty air, poison 
water; would we keep them from knowing what chemicals are being released 
into their neighborhoods and keep their parents from protecting them? We 
all know what the answer is. It's no.
    It seems simple here in this wonderful neighborhood. Why don't you 
help us make it simple in Washington, DC?
    Thank you very much.

Note: The President spoke at 1:10 p.m. at Fort Armistead Park. In his 
remarks, he referred to Doris McGuigan, environmental activist in the 
Brooklyn-Curtis Bay community of Baltimore, and Thomas V. ``Mike'' 
Miller, Jr., president of the Maryland Senate.