John Chafee

Mr. CHAFEE

Mr. CHAFEE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. CHAFEE. Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote by which the amendment was agreed to.

Mr. CHAFEE. Mr. President, I send an amendment to the desk and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. CHAFEE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. CHAFEE. Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote by which the amendment was agreed to.

Mr. CHAFEE. I thank the Senator from Massachusetts. If he wants to proceed, this is a good time to do it.

Mr. CHAFEE

Mr. CHAFEE. Yes, Mr. President, we have a couple of amendments we would like to have accepted, then the Senator is free to continue.

Mr. CHAFEE

Mr. CHAFEE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. CHAFEE

Mr. CHAFEE. Mr. President, I wonder if we could agree to give the Senator from New Hampshire 2 minutes?

Mr. CHAFEE. Mr. President, I ask if we could give 30 seconds or 1 minute to the Senator from Alaska to make a statement, and then if I could have the floor again, we will return to Senator Dorgan's amendment.

Mr. CHAFEE

Mr. CHAFEE. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. CHAFEE

Mr. CHAFEE. Mr. President, in March of this year, just 2 months ago, this Senate considered a bill that would have imposed an across-the- board moratorium on the issuance of new major regulations. That across- the-board moratorium would have extended from last November's election up until the end of this year, the end of 1995. It would have encompassed all of 1995 and the last several months of 1994. That bill came up before the Senate, and it was overwhelmingly rejected by this Senate. Instead, on this across-the-board moratorium, the Senate adopted a substitute amendment which was offered by the Senator from Oklahoma and the Senator from Nevada. And that provided for a 45-day review of major new rules coming up before the new rules by the Congress. This 45-day review was agreed to by this Senate 100-0. Any time you can get a vote of 100-0, it is considered favorable; overwhelming is an understatement. Before that bill was sent over to the House and to the conference of House and Senate Members, many of us here in the Senate made clear that if the conference report came back with an across-the-board moratorium, we would oppose it. We do not want these across the board moratoriums. We wanted the situation that was proposed by the Senator from Oklahoma which, principally, was for a 45-day review. I want the Senate to know, as I indicated during the earlier debate, that I will oppose the conference report if it includes provisions of the type that I outlined, namely the restoration of these broad moratoriums that this bill had. Now, yesterday, a Member of the House released a list of the rules that they have targeted in the House. They are not satisfied with a 45- day review. They have targeted some 30 rules--12 of them are EPA rules; 4 of them are worker safety rules to be issued by OSHA; 10 of the rules relate to food and drug safety. Almost all of the rules on the list that are targeted by the House are there to protect public health, worker safety, and the environment. I notice that the occupant of the chair is the distinguished Senator from Minnesota. One of the rules that is targeted deals with the Great Lakes clean water quality guidance. I do not know the position of the occupant of the Chair on this. I suspect that most of the Senators from those States--Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin--are interested in the quality of the water in those Great Lakes. The EPA has proposed an initiative dealing with that situation. The EPA has estimated a proposal that could cost from $80 to $500 million annually. This has to do with the cleanliness of those lakes. This is one of the rules that has been targeted by the House Members, one that would be subject to an extensive moratorium. There are a host of others, Mr. President. One of them I will describe. It is a rule promulgated under the Safe Drinking Water Act. It would reduce the levels of so-called disinfection byproducts in drinking water. These are the chemicals that form when water is chlorinated, as is done in most communities. It is chlorinated to kill bacteria and other organisms. The chlorine, in some instances, combines with other substances in the water to form new chemicals, such as chloroform, that may cause significant cancer risks for those using the water. A recent article in the American Journal of Public Health indicated that up to 10,000--not 1,000, but 10,000--cases of cancer per year may be attributable to these chemicals in our water. EPA has been working on a rule to reduce this health risk. bureaucrats sitting down at EPA headquarters? This is what they did. They convened a regulatory negotiation involving all of the parties that had an interest. The drinking water suppliers, the States, the cities, public health organizations--a very broad group worked for 2 years on this rule. With one exception, this broad range of interests all signed an agreement at the end of the process supporting the proposed rule. The proposed rule reflects a significant consensus across virtually the entire community of interests involved in drinking water. Now, under the House proposal this would be targeted; it would be suspended, you could not have the rule. You could not have the rule until some indefinite period--until certainly perhaps the end of this calendar year, and probably into the future likewise. Why should they do that? I am opposed to that type of action by the House of Representatives. A second item on the list is a petition that EPA approved last December. It was a petition submitted by 13 States from the northeast-- my State involved likewise--asking that cars with pollution controls such as those used in California also be sold in the Northeast to reduce our air pollution problems. This was not an EPA proposal. In fact, EPA was reluctant to approve this petition. It was required by the Clean Air Act because 13 States had made the request. I was under the impression that many of those who support these regulatory reform efforts want to return more responsibility to the States. They say, ``We believe in the States and States rights.'' Here we have a proposal that was made by the States that is targeted on this House list as being suspended. Now, a third item on this list is the Federal implementation plan for California that was promulgated in February. EPA was ordered by the courts to produce this plan when California failed to come up with its own program. The EPA program has been controversial in California and Governor Wilson has asked that it be suspended. And this list would target it for suspension. But this EPA clean air plan for California has already been overturned. The supplemental appropriation for the Defense Department enacted earlier this year already repealed the California plan, including this item on this list of 30 rules to be killed must be an error, because Congress has already acted to repeal this rule. I bring this item to the attention of the Senate to make that point. Where specific measures, including rules that are required by the courts because of laws enacted by the Congress, go too far, we should take action to correct the excess. We have done that in several cases. We do not need an across-the-board moratorium, as mandated by the House in the legislation it passed and suggested for this conference. Another item on this list is also from the Clean Air Act. It is the employee trip reduction program that requires large employers in most severe nonattainment areas to work with their employees to reduce the number of vehicle trips each day. In other words, this is a way, in nonattainment areas of the country where they have not attained the clean air requirements, goals, that large employers would work with their employees to reduce the number of vehicle trips. Six hundred employees, six hundred cars--is that necessary, or is there another way of doing it? EPA has not issued, nor is it about to, any rule implementing this requirement of the act. So there is no rule to suspend. This is a requirement of the Clean Air Act that guides States in the development of their own implementation plans. It is carried out by the States without Federal regulation. This is an example where a mechanism called a regulatory moratorium, such as the House is suggesting, is being used to reach into the Clean Air Act and knock out a specific policy that some in the House apparently do not like. I am not here to defend the employee trip reduction program. In fact, earlier this year I asked EPA Administrator Carol Browner to look for other approaches to the problem of the increasing number of vehicle trips and miles that are traveled that we might substitute for this measure in the Clean Air Act. I am not arguing policy grounds one way or the other. My point is that in the guise of regulatory moratorium, some in the House are seeking to repeal the provision of the Clean Air Act that is not even implemented through Federal rulemaking. This proposal is not to freeze a rule. There is no rule to freeze. This is a proposal to change the law. This list reflects an attack on 30 specific policies that some Members of the House would like to see reversed. These policies are intended to protect public health, worker safety, and the environment. I am familiar with the rules on the list that would come from EPA. They cannot be characterized as rules written by out-of-control bureaucrats without regard for cost or risk reduction. To the extent that rulemakings are actually involved, they have all been subject to cost- benefit analysis under existing regulatory review requirements. In some cases the rules have either been painstakingly developed in consultation with State or local governments are actually written by the States themselves. Mr. President, the House is no longer proposing a regulatory moratorium. What we have here is a fishing expedition. They have thrown out a long list of policies they want killed to see how many the Senate will take in the name of compromise to get a bill. I hope our Senate conferees will not engage the House in this discussion. Mr. President, the Senate voted overwhelmingly to reject an across- the-board moratorium on new rules. I trust the Senate conferees will not allow the conference to produce a bill that makes 30 specific changes in law without hearings, without debate in either body on the specific policies, and without the opportunity for Members to exercise their rights to offer amendments and have votes on the substantive questions at stake. That would be an extraordinary abuse of the standards that are to be observed by a conference committee between the House and the Senate. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. CHAFEE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. CHAFEE. Mr. President, I send an amendment to the desk on behalf of Senator McConnell and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. CHAFEE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. CHAFEE. Mr. President, I congratulate Senator McConnell for the work he has done in connection with solid waste. It is a subject he has been interested in for a good number of years. Kentucky is a State that has established one of the most comprehensive solid waste reduction plans of any State and the Senator was very conscious of that in his dealing with the legislation before us. Mr. President, I again congratulate the distinguished Senator from Kentucky, Senator McConnell, for the work he has done.

Mr. CHAFEE. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. CHAFEE

Mr. CHAFEE. Mr. President, I send an amendment to the desk and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. CHAFEE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. CHAFEE. Mr. President, this managers' amendment that I have sent to the desk is the result of laborious and lengthy negotiations involving the distinguished Senator from Indiana, who spent so much time in connection with this legislation, and the distinguished Senator from New York, and many other Senators who have an interest in this legislation. So I urge its adoption.

Mr. CHAFEE

Mr. CHAFEE. Mr. President, we are ending the long, long trail toward passage of S. 534. In order to accomplish crossing that goal line, I ask unanimous consent that, except for the following amendments, no other first- degree amendments be in order after the close of subject to relevant second-degree amendments and limited to one-half of the time allocated for each first-degree amendment. The excepted amendments are: Murray-Gorton, Feinstein, Levin, Domenici, and Kempthorne. I further ask unanimous consent that when the Senate resumes the bill on Tuesday at 9:30 a.m., Senator Murray be recognized to offer an amendment on which there will be a time limit of 1 hour to be equally divided in the usual form.

Mr. CHAFEE. Mr. President, I further ask unanimous consent that following the disposition of the Murray amendment, Senator Feinstein be recognized to offer her amendment on which there be 30 minutes to be equally divided in the usual form.

Mr. CHAFEE. Mr. President, I further ask unanimous consent that following the disposition of the Feinstein amendment, Senator Levin be recognized to offer an amendment, relative to expansion, on which there be 30 minutes for debate to be equally divided in the usual form.

Mr. CHAFEE. Mr. President, I further ask unanimous consent that following the disposition of the Levin amendment, Senator Domenici be recognized to offer an amendment relative to title III, on which there be 30 minutes for debate to be equally divided in the usual form.

Mr. CHAFEE. Mr. President, I further ask unanimous consent that following the disposition of the Domenici amendment, Senator Kempthorne be recognized to offer an amendment, which is clarifying in nature, on which there be 30 minutes for debate to be equally divided in the usual form.