John Chafee

Mr. CHAFEE

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

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

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

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

Mr. CHAFEE. Mr. President, on behalf of Senators Smith, Thompson and Cohen, I send to the desk an amendment and ask for its immediate consideration.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mr. CHAFEE

Mr. CHAFEE. I ask for its first reading.

Mr. CHAFEE

Mr. CHAFEE. I will just use a couple minutes of that. Mr. President, there are a couple of points I briefly want to make. The present situation is that it is against the Constitution of the United States to do what Vermont is suggesting. So what we have done is we have crafted an amendment which will help Vermont and all the other States in the Nation that have made these financial commitments, but it still says when all is said and done, that they cannot go against the Constitution in these other areas. It is not correct to say that this is just a little something for Vermont. If this is adopted, there is no way in the world that we could keep flow control from being adopted universally across the Nation, because the Vermont case is what you might call a weak case. So, Mr. President, if this amendment is adopted, then, I suspect, the whole effort to deal with this goes down the tube and then there will be no exceptions to the Constitution as provided. So I am going to move to table the amendment, and I very much hope my colleagues will join with me. Mr. President, I yield back the remainder of my time and move to table the amendment and ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. CHAFEE. I have some time remaining; is that correct?

Mr. CHAFEE. Mr. President, is the Senator ready to conclude debate on this?

Mr. CHAFEE. I yield to the Senator whatever time I have remaining.

Mr. CHAFEE. Mr. President, why are we here? We are here because of a Supreme Court decision a year ago, just a year ago, in the so-called Carbone case. So currently, the law of the land is that there cannot be these restrictive agreements that limit the delivery of municipal solid waste to one specific point. In other words, there cannot be what is known as flow control. Now in our committee, we recognized that many communities across the States had made very, very substantial financial contributions or commitments to incinerators and to landfills, and they would be placed in a very difficult position if so-called flow control did not exist, if they were not able to tie up the entire waste from the community to go to a central point. But we said we are going to limit this. We are going to limit it to the situations where they have problems arising from debt commitment, from bonded indebtedness, or that they already had flow control on their books and were used to functioning in that fashion. In the Vermont situation, we have taken care of those communities where there is a commitment into a solid waste facility or--and they do not have incinerators for Vermont--to a landfill. They are taken care of. But the Senator is stressing that, absent us giving an exception to the situation that exists in Vermont, Vermont will not be able to continue the excellent record it has had in connection with recycling. But, Mr. President, I do not think that necessarily follows. Who knows that recycling will fail because they do not have flow control? Indeed, here is a report from the Office of Solid Waste in the EPA. The report is dated March 1995, 2 months ago. This is what the report says. There was a question. Identify the impact of flow control on the development of State and local waste management capacity and on the achievement of State and local goals for source reduction, reuse, and recycling. In other words, what flow control does for recycling. We are all for recycling. The conclusion is as follows, on page ES-5. are essential either for the development of new solid waste capacity or for the long term achievement of State and local goals for source reduction, reuse and recycling. So the Senator's point, it seems to me from the study that has taken place here, just is not valid. He may feel strongly about it, and they have had considerable success in Vermont--although I suspect there are other communities across the Nation in States that have done extremely well likewise--but, at least from the data we have here, there is not a connection between having flow control and having a better recycling record. But then we get back to the other point. Why did the Supreme Court decide the way it did? The Supreme Court decided the way it did because of the commerce clause. And what does the commerce clause do? It says that it is good for the Nation to have competition, to permit commerce to flow. And that is exactly what flow control does not do. Now, you might say, well, I argued earlier today for a situation where we had flow control. That is right. We did it, as I say, in those instances where a community made a commitment and was still involved with that commitment. But the overall thrust of this legislation is to take care of those specific situations that arose where the communities were harmed, financially harmed, as a result of the Carbone decision. But we said, enough is enough. No matter how long the indebtedness is, no matter what the particular situation as far as bonded indebtedness, at the end of 30 years this privilege that we have given these communities to go against the commerce clause ends. And so, Mr. President, for that reason, I strongly believe that the proposition from the State of Vermont, as advanced so ably by the junior Senator, is not valid in this particular situation Mr. JEFFORDS addressed the Chair.

Mr. CHAFEE. Is there any objection to that agreement?

Mr. CHAFEE. Would the Senator be willing to agree to 10 minutes on that side and no more than 10 minutes on this side?

Mr. CHAFEE. I wonder if we could enter into a time agreement?

Mr. CHAFEE. Mr. President, for my colleagues I will just outline what in my judgment will take place this evening. We will have a vote on the Jeffords amendment and I do not know how long that will take. If the Senator could give us some indication, that will be helpful. But following the Jeffords amendment there will be no more rollcall votes. However, tomorrow it is my belief we will have a series of rollcall votes. There will be a cloture vote at 10 o'clock and there will be some other votes after that. I would very much hope we could finish this bill tomorrow. I hope, with the negotiations that take place tonight, we will be able to do so. But there will be no votes after the Jeffords vote. Amendment No. 867, as Modified

Mr. CHAFEE. Mr. President?

Mr. CHAFEE. Mr. President, I move to table the Specter amendment and ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. CHAFEE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the pending amendment, which is the Jeffords amendment, be set aside.