Lloyd Doggett

Mr. DOGGETT

Mr. DOGGETT. I ask, Do you mean to tell me that you can get 2 years of hard time right now for doing what this piece of legislation now authorizes and approves as a conflict of interest, a conflict of interest that, I gather from your remarks, is mandated by this statute?

Mr. DOGGETT. Mr. Chairman, I ask the gentleman, ``Do you think that's why they call this the job creation and wage enhancement act? Is this a full employment act for lobbyists to serve on peer review committees in those rare times when we're not meeting?''

Mr. DOGGETT. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. DOGGETT. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words, and I rise in support of the Markey amendment. This reduces the danger of conflict of interest that is inherent in this bill. The concept of peer review, of having a jury of one's peers, in this case scientific peers, to review the work and ensure we have good science is a very good concept. But what we have here is not true peer review but, as the gentleman from Massachusetts has pointed out, phony peer review. Because we are going to ensure that lobbyists, when they finish their work in this great Capital, can go out and sign up for the peer review committee. I know the gentleman from Massachusetts had some further words on that subject.

Mr. DOGGETT. Certainly that paragraph, which was read by the distinguished chair of the committee last night in suggesting that I had misrepresented what this legislation does, [[Page H2342]] which I certainly had not, is the kind of general claim for a lack of bias in these panels. But we cannot just read that one section. We have to move down to the next section, and that is where we tell each one of these agencies that they cannot keep a lobbyist off of these peer review committees. They have to put them on. It is not a may or a maybe. It is a shall not. It is a commandment to every one of these regulatory agencies that they cannot keep off these panels lobbyists. As the distinguished former chair of the Committee on Commerce indicated, while there may have to be balance, there is nothing in this legislation that prevents an agency from having every single member on the panel being someone who has a financial interest. They may have somebody who is a consumer, but they may still have a financial interest in this.

Mr. DOGGETT. I yield to the gentleman from Massachusetts.

Mr. DOGGETT. Mr. Chairman, this is like saying we are going to have a jury of our peers for the O.J. trial, and we will have a fair cross section of peers for that, but we are also going to let the lawyers for one side or the other serve on the jury panel. What we want is good science, not good advocacy. I could not disagree more with the gentleman earlier who said, well, we have got all these paid experts in court going back and forth. It will not be any different than that. That is the problem. In too many of these cases, you get whatever degree of expertise you pay for. We are not interested in paid science. We are not interested in advocacy. We are interested in balance and in keeping those who have an axe to grind off of these peer review committees. That is what the amendment of the gentleman from Massachusetts is designed to accomplish and why I rise in support of his amendment.

Mr. DOGGETT. Mr. Chairman, I agree, we have a little expertise among the lobbyists, but some of them are scientists, and some do come here on bills like this and offer their testimony.

Mr. DOGGETT. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman do us the courtesy by just taking away that argument completely by excluding lobbyists from these peer review panels?

Mr. DOGGETT. Will the gentleman yield, Mr. Chairman?

Mr. DOGGETT. I thought the best example on conflict of interest was the last one the gentleman had with the silly regulation about covering the net over the house, because there are a lot of Members here on both sides of aisles that are concerned about eliminating silly regulations. But under the bill as you propose it, OSHA has to have somebody from the net manufacturer on the peer review committee to decide whether it is reasonable to put a net over the house. That is what the gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. Markey] is trying to prevent.

Mr. DOGGETT. I yield to the gentleman from Wisconsin.

Mr. DOGGETT. I yield to the gentleman from Massachusetts.

Mr. DOGGETT. I yield to the gentleman from Massachusetts.

Mr. DOGGETT. I yield to the gentleman from Texas.

Mr. DOGGETT

Mr. DOGGETT. Mr. Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. DOGGETT. Mr. Speaker, this is a short amendment, 13 words, and it is a short presentation on it after a lengthy debate in which one Member after another has attempted to clean up this bill. Mr. Speaker, throughout the course of this lengthy debate, one Member after another has sought to clean up this bill and has been thwarted at every turn. There is one recurring theme throughout the debate, and, that is, whether we are going to turn the public's business over to special interests and their lobbyists. All this very simple motion to recommit does is to send the bill back to recommit it to the committee to put in a conflict of interest provision instead of committing it and our Government to special interests. That is what the American people want. They are tired of special interests coming to this House and getting special treatment while the hardworking families across this Nation get only the leftovers. Mr. Speaker, this is supposed to be a bill about science, about risk assessment. But it has not really worked out that way. Because what this bill has ended up being is a matter of placing the risk on ordinary Americans as far as their health and safety and placing the benefits in the hands of a few. One of the things we can do about it is to try to sever the ties that bind the special interests to this bill and give us not good science but good special treatment for the few. That is what this conflict of interest amendment is about. The House needs to know that a vote against this motion to recommit is a vote to mandate that registered lobbyists will rule, perhaps with a veto power, in these peer review committees. I thought that perhaps the gentleman from Pennsylvania was going to do something about this. He talked about the possibility of doing something about it during the course of the amendment offered by the gentleman from Massachusetts this afternoon, but we have had plenty of time. We had some time in committee, and nothing has been done about it. This bill as written for the first time will mandate that an agency of this Federal Government charged with protecting public health and safety cannot, shall not, indeed, exclude a lobbyist for a special interest group from serving on a peer review committee, exercising a potential veto power over regulations to protect the public health and safety. I do not believe there has been a day recently that I have not received a letter from some lobbyist promoting this bill. They can salivate over the prospects under this bill. Every one of these letters has begun by telling me about the desire for good science, but when all was said and done, all they really wanted was delay and reduction of regulations. That is why I am sure, Mr. Speaker, that the distinguished Republican Senator from Rhode Island, Senator Chafee, has described this bill in its current form as a prescription for gridlock and indeed it is. What we can do at least is clean it up through this motion to recommit so that there is not this kind of blatant conflict of interest. That is all this one-sentence amendment and a new title on conflict of interest will do. With this recommittal and the amendment, we will see that the peer review process is not converted from being an objective scientific process into only the best science that money can buy, and we will not let the special interests capture the whole regulatory process. Think about what that means and take the practical example of tobacco. Two or three decades after we first heard about the dangers of tobacco and [[Page H2371]] cancer, we still cannot find a single tobacco company study that shows there is any link. They have had some of the best scientists that money can buy but when they are asked whether there is any link between tobacco and cancer, you can see them, they are just scratching their heads again, saying, ``Well, there might be, but not until my retirement vests.'' That is the kind of scientists that this bill mandates have to be on peer review panels across this country, and it is wrong. We began with a desire for good science, good science over good politics, good science over silly regulations, some of which have come out under Democratic administrations and some of which have come out in 12 of the last 14 years under Republican administrations. What we have gotten is not good science but good protection for special interests. We can do something about that. We can rewrite this bill to attack special interests, to attack silly regulations, all in the same process. If you believe that we ought not to turn over our Government to special interests, vote in favor of this motion to recommit and do something about it with a strong conflict of interest provision.

Mr. DOGGETT. I am, most definitely, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. DOGGETT. Mr. Speaker, I offer a motion to recommit.

Mr. DOGGETT

Mr. DOGGETT. Mr. Chairman, will the gentlewoman yield?

Mr. DOGGETT. Mr. Chairman, will the gentlewoman yield?

Mr. DOGGETT. What is at stake here is not cost-benefit analysis, but a weird kind of system to gum up the whole regulatory process, not to analyze the cost or benefits, but to ensure that no regulation on the public health and safety will ever get out of a regulatory agency unless it has been so watered-down until we have the least of the least of the common denominators and something is put out in the name of protecting the public health and safety, which probably only serves to protect the vested interests that want it in there in the first place. Let me give you an example of just one provision in this bill which the wise gentleman from California had the bad judgment to try to reason with. And that is the provision concerning conflict of interest. Because perhaps for the first time in the history of this country, instead of trying to prevent conflict of interest, this piece of legislation that we debate tonight does not prevent it; it says we have got to have it. It says we need conflict of interest. We have got to mandate that when we have peer review of each of these new regulations, that the people who have an economic interest, that have a financial interest, they are not excluded. No, if they have got an ax to grind, the regulatory agency cannot exclude them. They have got to be included. Think about what that means. It means if we are trying to do something, as another distinguished Member of this body from California has struggled so ably to deal with, the problem of tobacco, that when an issue concerning tobacco is before a regulatory agency it is essential that they have tobacco company scientists, people bought and paid for by the tobacco companies, to be there, to advise on whether it is good science. This is not putting science ahead of politics. It is putting lobbyists and people who are bought and paid for by vested interests ahead of both. And that is wrong.

Mr. DOGGETT. Mr. Chairman, will the gentlewoman yield?

Mr. DOGGETT. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. DOGGETT. Mr. Chairman, to be entirely fair about it, I cannot exactly say that this bill was rushed through our committee, because as the distinguished chairman indicated, we had a whole 2 hours, a whole 2 hours to consider the substitute. So there was time to reason about risk benefit. In fact, there was so much reasoning that during much of the questioning of the general counsel of our committee to explain this bill, he had to continue to turn around and whisper and talk to the lobbyist that were behind him to provide the answers to answer the members of the committee. That is the problem with these peer review committees, as we have set them up, because we are going to have those agencies turning around and whispering to whatever special interest is out there that wants to block the protection of the public health and welfare. The American people may not understand very much about this bill. It is a lot of gobbledygook about risk benefit and science this and that. But there is one thing they can understand. That is that this bill mandates a conflict of interest, and I say it is a pretty sad time in the history of this country, a tragic time, at a time that there are a lot of things going on around this House and around this city about conflict of interest, about ethics problems, and this is rushed piece of legislation and we mandate and demand a conflict of interest be included in the way our regulations are set. I say to the gentleman from California, I appreciate the fact that he is on this matter and he continues to demand that we approach things in moderation instead of giving in to the special interests that think they can write everything up here.