Don Nickles

Mr. NICKLES

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that final passage occur on S. 219, as amended, at 10:45 a.m. on Wednesday, March 29, and that paragraph 4 of rule XII be waived.

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, I wish to thank my friend and colleague, Senator Reid. I wish to thank him and the Senator from Michigan and the Senator from Ohio, Senator Glenn, for their leadership and cooperation in enabling us to come to final passage. I will remind my colleagues, for those who have not been following this, that we will have final vote tomorrow at 10:45. We were discussing 11, but it has been requested that the vote be at 10:45 a.m.

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays on the amendment.

Mr. NICKLES

Mr. NICKLES. I yield the Senator such time as he desires.

Mr. NICKLES. Would the Senator like a response?

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, I rise today to talk about Federal regulations. We are going to be on Senate bill S. 219. I want to compliment Senator Roth and the Governmental Affairs Committee for reporting this bill out. I also want to compliment the House of Representatives for their move in trying to make some progress on reining in the cost of excessive regulations. Federal regulations are estimated to cost about $581 billion, by some sources. It is hard to figure what that means, but per household, that is over $6,000-- actually $6,100 per household for the cost of Federal regulations. That increases the cost of everything we buy. Whether you are talking about your automobile or your home or your electric bill or the price that you pay for gasoline, regulations are involved in all these and have inflated the costs on every single thing that we buy. Many of us feel these regulations have been excessive and they have not been well thought out, or in some cases they are too expensive. I might mention, I guess almost all are probably well intended, and I do not fault anyone's intentions, whether it be the people who passed the legislation authorizing the regulations or the regulators. They may be well intended, but in many cases, the regulations have gone too far and they are far too expensive. So we have several measures that are working their way through this body and through the Congress to try to limit excessive regulations. The House passed a couple of measures. One was a measure called regulation moratorium. A similar bill was reported out of the Governmental Affairs Committee. That is the bill we have on the floor of the Senate today. I, along with my colleague and friend from Nevada, Senator Reid, will be offering an amendment in the form of a substitute to that bill. I will discuss that in a moment. Also the Governmental Affairs Committee has reported out a comprehensive bill dealing with regulation overhaul. I compliment them for that effort. I think it is a giant step in the right direction. Senator Dole, myself, and others have introduced a very comprehensive bill. Likewise, I believe there is a markup scheduled in the Judiciary Committee on that bill as well. I compliment Senator Dole for his leadership because I think it makes sense. We should have regulations where the benefits exceed the costs. We should make sure we use real science. That is the purpose of both Senator Roth's bill and Senator Dole's bill that we will be considering on the floor my guess is sometime after the April recess. But the bill we have before us many people support--the regulation moratorium bill, S. 219. I am a sponsor of that bill. I believe we have 36 sponsors. This is a bill that people have labeled a ``moratorium.'' I even have heard some people mislabel it, including the President, who said it was a ``moratorium on all regulations,'' good and bad regulations. I take issue with that because we had a lot of exceptions for good regulations and we had a lot of exceptions for regulations which people felt were necessary to go forward with, those regulations that dealt with imminent health and safety and regulations that dealt with ordinary administrative practices. The committee added more exceptions. The Committee on Governmental Affairs limited it to significant regulations. So we reduced the scope substantially. Why was that bill introduced? That bill was introduced because on November 14, the administration announced or published in the Federal Register that they were working on 4,300 different regulations that were in progress and that would be finalized in the year 1995 and beyond. Many of us were concerned. That looked like an explosion of regulations. Many of those regulations had been held up during the previous year. It happened to be an election year, and they were held up and published in the Federal Register on November 14. So we wanted to stop those or at least we wanted to have a chance to introduced with a lot of sponsors. It eventually passed the House with a lot of exceptions, came through the Senate, was marked up in the Governmental Affairs Committee, which added more exceptions and limited it to significant regulations. That was a moratorium. The amendment that Senator Reid, myself, Senator Bond, and Senator Hutchison are offering is a different approach. One, the moratorium that passed out of the Governmental Affairs Committee is a temporary moratorium. It expires when we pass comprehensive legislation, or it expires at the end of the year. So it was only a temporary moratorium. The legislation we are introducing today provides for 45-day congressional review of regulations. During that time, Congress will be authorized to review and potentially to reject regulations through a resolution of disapproval before they become final. This alternative provides an opportunity to move forward on the critical issue of regulatory reform in a bipartisan manner. I think that is vitally important. This amendment will allow the authors of legislation in Congress to review and to ensure that Federal agencies are properly carrying out congressional intent. All too often agencies issue regulations which go beyond their intended purpose. For future significant rules, the alternative provides a 45-day period following publication of the final rule before that rule can become effective. Under the current law, most rules are already delayed by 30 days pending the filing of an appeal. This delay in the effectiveness would only apply to significant regulations which the amendment defines as final rules that meet one of four criteria set by the administration under Executive Order 12866. For all other future nonsignificant rules, the regulation of disapproval is in order, but the final rule is not suspended during the 45-day period. The alternative also provides an opportunity to review and reject significant rules which became final on or after November 20, 1994, and prior to the date of enactment. Such rules would not be suspended during the review period. Final regulations addressing threats to imminent health and safety or other emergencies, criminal law enforcement or matters of national security, could be exempted by Executive order from the postponement of the effective date provided for in this bill. However, a joint resolution of disapproval will still be eligible for fast-track consideration. The expedited floor procedure has in it consideration of base closure legislation as well as consideration of Federal Election Commission regulations. Congress will have 45 calendar days to review final rules and consider a resolution of disapproval. All final rules that are published less than 60 days before Congress adjourns sine die or that are published during sine die adjournment shall be eligible for review and fast-track disapproval procedures for 45 days beginning on the 15th day after a new Congress convenes. A joint resolution may be introduced by any Member of Congress, and the fast-track process for moving the joint resolution of disapproval to the calendar is enabled under two conditions; First, if the authorizing committee reports out the resolution; or, second, if following the resolution's introduction the committee does not act, the majority leader of either House discharges the committee from further consideration of the resolution and places the resolution of disapproval directly on the calendar. The motion to proceed to consideration of the resolution is privileged and is nondebatable. I would like to note that last Thursday the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee reported out the comprehensive reform bill which includes this 45-day review proposal. However, it did not contain a look back to past regulations. Once the Senate has moved to proceed to the resolution of disapproval, the debate on the resolution is limited to 10 hours equally divided with no motions other than a motion to further limit debate or amendments being in order. If the resolution passes one body, it is eligible for immediate consideration on the floor of the other body. The joint resolution, if passed by both Houses, would be subject to a Presidential veto and in turn a possible veto override. By providing the mechanism to hold Federal agencies accountable before it is too late, this alternative makes an important contribution to the critical regulatory reform effort. I hope that my colleagues will join me in this effort. Mr. President, I would like to at this time mention and thank my friend and colleague, Senator Reid, from Nevada for his support in offering and working with me to offer this alternative or substitute to the regulation moratorium. I have had the pleasure of working with Senator Reid for many, many years now. We worked together on the measures that we called the Economic and Employment Impact Statement, a measure which is becoming law I guess as part of the unfunded mandate bill. He has been a real leader in trying to reform and limit the cost of excessive regulations. I compliment him for that successful effort in the past, and I look forward to a successful effort on this bill as well. Mr. President, I yield the floor. Mr. BURNS addressed the Chair.

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, I wish to thank my friend and colleague from Montana for his support for our amendment, and also thank him for his statement. I also wish to compliment the Senator from Montana, because he did something that many of us have not been doing. He has held some oversight hearings. He has had some of those people, many times we call them faceless bureaucrats, but he has had them come into his State and talk about some of the problems, whether it be in logging or forestry, and let them talk and actually meet those that they regulate. I believe the Senator said--correct me if I am wrong. The OSHA official who was writing the regs had not actually been involved in the logging industry but yet was writing rules and regulations dealing with everything from trucks to boots, and he has not actually met some of the people whom he was regulating. Is that correct?

Mr. NICKLES. I appreciate my colleague having the hearing. My guess is that meeting would not have transpired had it not been for the Senator from Montana and his insisting on that meeting. The fact is that those regulations or proposed regulations will probably be changed and improved dramatically because of the insistence of the Senator from Montana on having face-to-face meetings with people who are making the regulations and making the rules to meet with people that are directly impacted. One of the real positive things which I hope will come out of this is that Congress will become more active in oversight, just as the Senator from Montana proved that it can make a difference, certainly in his State. Again, I compliment him for it, and I thank him again for his statement. Mr. REID addressed the Chair.

Mr. NICKLES. I apologize. I was in another conference. But if the thrust of the Senator's question was would I object to having a unanimous consent request that we

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, I thank my friend and colleague, Senator Reid from Nevada, for his comments, and I would like to respond briefly to some of the statements that were made by my friend and colleague from Ohio, Senator Glenn. I think the thrust of what I heard in his comments was that he was afraid, if we pass this and go to conference, that we might have that terrible House bill. Let me just state it is my intention, if we are successful in passing this bill--and I expect that we will be successful in passing this bill--to do everything I can do to get the House to concur with the Senate position. I think the Senate bill, I tell my friend from Ohio--I was a sponsor of both--that this substitute is preferable to the moratorium legislation reported by the Governmental Affairs Committee. I think substitute is a better approach. Let me tell my friend and colleague from Ohio that, one, the substitute is permanent. The House bill and the Senate bill, the one that was reported out of the Governmental Affairs Committee, are temporary moratoriums. Those will expire as soon as we pass a comprehensive regulatory reform bill. That may be a couple of months. So the temporary moratorium bill has received a lot of attention and a lot of partisan bickering, and there may be a very short period of time that it would be in effect, even if it did pass and even if it survived a Presidential veto, both of which are in doubt somewhat. The President indicated he would veto it. The House did not have quite the votes to override the veto. I do not think we would have the votes to override the veto in the Senate. I do not mind sending the bill to the President and letting him veto it. However, that is not my intention. I would like to pass significant regulatory relief regulation this year and have the President sign it. I think the substitute that Senator Reid and I are proposing will do that. I think the President will sign it. I see no reason why he will not sign it. I am interested in passing the bill that Senator Reid and I are offering, the 45-day congressional review substitute which will be permanent law. So, whereas the temporary moratorium may succeed, if it were successful, in delaying some regulations for a few months, that time period would soon be gone and you would have nothing. This would be permanent law. This would be a significant response. This would give real energy, I think, for Members of Congress to review the regulators and to hold them accountable. So I tell my friend and colleague from Ohio that, if I should be appointed a conferee, I would work very energetically to see that the Senate's position would prevail. I am very familiar with both pieces of legislation. I have heard my colleague from Ohio mention the underlying bill, the one reported out of the Governmental Affairs Committee, and he also referred to the House bill as a terrible bill and one that would throw out all regulations and cut out all of these rules and regulations whether they are good or bad. I disagree with that interpretation. Looking at the bill as reported, S. 219, it has all kinds exemptions. One of the reasons I am not as excited about S. 219 as reported is because we have so many exemptions. I question how effective it would be. There are many regulations that will be covered by these exemptions. We have exemptions for imminent threat to human health and safety and other emergencies. I have heard E. coli mentioned. I have heard problems about drinking water. I have heard of air traffic problems or flight safety. I think that the President, under the bill reported out of the Governmental Affairs Committee and also by the House, could exempt all of the rules mentioned previously by my colleague from Ohio. However, again, I am not here to debate S. 219 as reported. I am offering a substitute to it. But I think it is important to show for the record that a lot of the scare tactics used against the House-passed bill and the Senate bill that passed the Governmental Affairs Committee are not as egregious, not as outlandish, and not as heartless as some people would indicate. S. 219 as reported out of committee also has exemptions for a regulation which has as its purpose the enforcement of criminal law or a regulation that has as its principal effect fostering economic growth, repealing, narrowing, streamlining the regulation and administrative process or otherwise reducing regulatory burdens. I have heard some people, including the President of the United States, say the moratorium bill would throw out all regulations, good ones and bad ones. As I have stated, there are clearly exceptions for good regulations. We also have an exception for routine administrative actions and regulations related to public property, loans, grants, benefits, or contracts. I mention that one because the President of the United States said that if this moratorium bill is adopted, we will not be able to bury people in Arlington National Cemetery or that we would not be able to have duck hunting, both of which are routine administrative actions. I just mention that. I am not here to defend this bill. I look at all these eight exemptions. The committee added a couple of others. My point being there are lots of exemptions. The President would probably exempt a great number of regulations under these. In addition, he would probably veto the moratorium legislation. So my thought is why not do something that we can pass? Why not do something that the President can sign? Why not do something that would not be temporary? Why not do something that would have, I believe, a long-lasting impact in reducing the impact of expensive, unnecessary regulations? There are thousands of potential regulations. How many would Congress move on? On how many would Congress pass a resolution of disapproval? Probably only a few. But at least it would make Congress responsible. I wonder how many Members of Congress have said, well, we passed the law--for example the Americans With some other very well-intentioned bill--and then a Member of Congress is flabbergasted to find out, that a city in your State is no longer in compliance with the Clean Air Act, and therefore the city is not able to accept a new plant or new factory because of clean air constraints. The member would say I did not know. Where did this happen? The Member would be told it happened as a result of the Clean Air Act. How did that happen? It happened as a result of regulations that were just issued and, therefore, the city in your State is in nonattainment. Well, it came from regulations implementing the clean air bill. On and on, people kind of washing their hands. Well, the legislation was well-intended, it had good intentions, but now the regulations have become so cumbersome, so expensive, so Congress is kind of washing its hands. The regulators say, no, Congress said so. And now they are implementing hundreds and maybe thousands of pages of regulations. My point is that Congress should be more accountable. Congress should hold the regulators accountable. So of all the thousands of regulations that are in process, we are saying Congress should have a 45-day expedited procedure where we can stop them if we think they are egregious or if we disagree with their intent. I am pleased that the more comprehensive bill that Senator Glenn alluded to that passed the Governmental Affairs Committee, that will likely be taken up on the Senate floor sometime in May, did call for congressional review. But I might mention, as I understand the legislation approved by the Governmental Affairs Committee, the 45-day review provision applies only to significant regulations. Why should we limit this Congress to only review significant regulations? If we want to repeal a regulation--and under our bill it takes a majority of both Houses to pass it--we should have that opportunity. Again, of the thousands of regulations, my guess is we will only do a few, but at least we will have the opportunity to hold bureaucrats accountable whether it is a small regulation or large regulation. I think the proposal that we have, the substitute that we have is a commonsense approach. It is not outlandish. I will just again repeat to my friend and colleague, my intentions would be to try to convince our colleagues in the House that this approach achieves the same objective they are trying to achieve in the House on limiting unwarranted regulation and it is something we can pass and it is something we should pass and hopefully get the House to recede to the Senate when we go to conference. I yield the floor. Mr. GLENN addressed the Chair.

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, I wish to thank my friend and colleague, Senator Reid from Nevada, for his statement. I hope my colleagues had a chance to listen to it because I think it is well reasoned and shows there is bipartisan support for, I think, a commonsense idea, saying Congress should have an opportunity to review regulations and, if you are talking about really significant regulations, an expedited procedure to reject those. There are thousands of regulations. My guess is that we will reject a very, very small percentage. But at least we will have the congressional oversight and Congress will be hopefully more involved, just as the Senator from Montana was in dealing with an OSHA regulation in logging. Hopefully, more of our colleagues will become involved in monitoring and reviewing and trying to limit excess regulations and maybe in oversight find out the regulation is not acceptable. Maybe we will find out that it is acceptable. The Senator from Nevada has helped make that happen, and I am delighted to work with him in this effort. I yield the floor. Mr. GLENN addressed the Chair.

Mr. NICKLES. As the Senator knows, it takes two Houses to pass anything. The House already passed one bill. If we pass this free standing, then they would have to consider another piece of legislation entirely. They went through a lot of pain to get where they are today. I think that would create a lot of hard feelings over there. I do not want to do that. I have told my friend and colleague--the Senator said I was against the House bill--I did not say that. I would like to correct my colleague. I would like to correct him on a little bit of the interpretation of the House bill. But my point is, I favor this approach. I think this is a better approach. I think the moratorium, as the Senator has alluded to, made a lot of sense when we were in January. Now, we are at the end of March. I would like to have something passed. I believe if we pass this tomorrow, hopefully we can convince the House to pass it--basically recede to the Senate--and we may have a bill on the President's desk very soon; this week, possibly. I would like to see that happen. I am afraid if we did the freestanding approach that the Senator alluded to, we may end up with nothing. And I think that would be a mistake.

Mr. NICKLES. Let me finish replying, but I will be happy to yield. The Senator from Ohio has the floor. The House has already passed the legislation. If we pass entirely new freestanding legislation, then it has not even made the first hurdle. We are ready to go to conference very soon. If we pass this in the Senate tomorrow, as I hope and expect that we will, the House could recede. Both sides have to appoint conferees. If we could convince our colleagues in the House that this is a better approach, given the fact that the year has already moved along and so on--and I might tell my friend and colleague, originally we were talking about a 100-day moratorium back in November. So time has been moving. This is more permanent, more significant. If we can convince our House colleagues of that, we could possibly have a bill on the President's desk in a short period of time.

Mr. NICKLES. I would just tell my colleague, in looking at the bill on page 9, its says ``the President finds in writing.'' The Presidents makes that determination. I might also tell my colleague that we did not have it subject to judicial review. So if the President finds, if the President determines that E. coli, or anything else, is an imminent threat to health and safety or other emergency, it would be exempted. We give that kind of discretion. I happen to think that is a very broad provision, where we would give that to the President and not try to limit it, not try to micromanage it. As the Senator knows, he alluded to the fact, there are thousands of regulations. To go through and try to enumerate which ones would qualify and which ones would not, we would be looking at a bill that would be very difficult. We were not trying to do that. Just as when the original legislation was drafted, we did not say duck hunting would be exempted because we did have a provision that said routine administrative action would be taken. And, as an author of this, we did not feel that it was necessary to go through and define 4,000 exemptions. That was not our intent. But the approach that Senator Reid and I are now taking, I think is a good one, because we do not have to get into that debate. One of the reasons I think the bill that was reported out of the Governmental Affairs Committee is not worth very much is because almost all regulations could be exempted. There are 4,300 regulations that are in process. The Governmental Affairs Committee says this bill only applies to significant regulations. That is about 900 out of the 4,500. Then all of the exemptions, apply that to those 900; Many more of the 900 would be exempted under the exemptions outlined in the bill. only applies to a few hundred regulations. The House bill is somewhat broader, but we end up with almost nothing, because I think the President could determine it as a threat to public health and safety or a routine regulation or a regulation fostering economic growth. He could drive a very broad path through these exemptions. So I am saying that the approach of Senator Reid and myself is to let the President go forward on the routine regulatory framework and, Congress, you can review those regulations, and, if we get a majority vote in both Houses of Congress for disapproval, we can try to stop them. If the President still disagrees with us, he has the veto, and we will have to override the veto. That is not an easy challenge.

Mr. NICKLES. If the Senator from Michigan will give me a couple minutes, I am not here to debate the underlying bill. But on the committee report, page 14, ``Section 5. Emergency exceptions; exclusions'': It is the committee's understanding that the President has ample authority to except from the moratorium the promulgation of rules and regulations that are necessary to make food safe from E. coli bacteria, so long as there are no accompanying extraneous requirements or arbitrary rules. Several witnesses so testified at this committee's hearing. I can read on, but I think the committee report will show the committee does think the President has that authority and would be able to make that determination. Mr. President, the point I make now and, hopefully, my colleagues will comprehend is that under the proposal of Senator Reid and myself, regulatory agencies can make their regs, they can promulgate their rules and regulations. Senator Reid and I are saying they have that authority, they can do so, and except for the big ones, they all go into effect as planned, except that we have the opportunity to have expedited procedures to rescind them or to repeal them. On the large ones, the ones that have significant impact, they would be postponed, there would be a moratorium of their effective date for 45 days to give Congress a chance to review those. That, I think, is a proper check and balance on the regulators. So if the administration came out with regulations dealing with E. coli, if nobody pushed resolutions of disapproval, they would go into effect. If the administration has regulations dealing with air traffic safety or something, they would go into effect unless both Houses passed a resolution of disapproval. So it puts the burden on Congress to select which ones are wrong. My colleague from Ohio makes a good point in saying under the previous legislation, under the legislation that was reported out of the Governmental Affairs Committee, all discretion was given to the President; the President makes the determinations, the President determines the exemptions. I think he had ample opportunity under the legislation, as passed out of the Governmental Affairs Committee, to exempt lots of regulations, maybe all regulations. He could say there is a positive health impact or threat to danger, or threat to health and safety or that they had a positive economic impact. So he could exempt anything, I think, under the bill that passed out of the Governmental Affairs Committee. That was all given to the President. The President had sole authority to make the determination on the exceptions. That was the bill that was reported out of the Governmental Affairs Committee. We are saying, no, Congress has a responsibility, Congress should be making some determinations. Congress can let these rules go into effect if we desire. Under Senator Reid's approach and mine, Congress would take the initiative, and if we did not like the rule or regulation, we have an expedited procedure to review it and possibly repeal it. So it puts some of the burden back on Congress instead of, under the bill as reported out of committee, all that burden was on the executive branch. I think it is a good approach, and I hope my colleagues will concur. Mr. LEVIN addressed the Chair.

Mr. NICKLES

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Foreign Relations be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Monday, March 27, 1995, at 2 p.m. to hold a hearing on U.S. dependence on foreign oil.

Mr. NICKLES

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

Mr. NICKLES. For the information of all my colleagues, the Senate will begin consideration of the moratorium bill tomorrow at 10 a.m. Amendments may be offered at that time, so all Members should be aware that rollcall votes are expected throughout tomorrow's session. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. NICKLES

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, if there is no further business to come before the Senate, I now ask that the Senate stand in recess under the previous order.

Mr. NICKLES

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, on behalf of the majority leader, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it stand in recess until the hour of 9 a.m. on Tuesday, March 28; that following the prayer, the Journal of proceedings be deemed approved to date, the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day, there be a period for the transaction of morning business not to extend beyond the hour of 10 a.m., with Senators permitted to speak for up to 5 minutes with the exception of the following: Senators Domenici and Biden, 10 minutes equally divided; Senator Coverdell for up to 15 minutes; Senator Thomas for up to 35 minutes. I further ask that at the hour of 10 a.m., the Senate begin consideration of S. 219, the moratorium bill, and that the Senate recess between the hours of 12:30 and 2:15 for the weekly party luncheons to meet.

Mr. NICKLES

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, I would like to respond just briefly to a couple of comments made by the minority leader, Senator Daschle, my friend from South Dakota. I noticed he said the GOP moratorium. We are not debating moratorium because we do have the substitute to it, but in his charts he said it would block better meat, poultry, and seafood inspection. I take issue with that because I do not think it does. I happen to be the sponsor of the moratorium bill, and, again, we are going to offer a substitute, something I think is even better. But we do have exceptions. We have exceptions for imminent threat to health or safety or other emergencies. That is determined by the President of the United States. Maybe Senator Daschle does not have any confidence in the President of the United States, but we allow the President of the United States to make that determination. It also says protection against head injuries and so on. Again, I think if the President felt that was a threat to health and human safety, he could exempt it. Or if he felt it was necessary for the enforcement of criminal laws, he could have exempted it. Or I heard some comments about the Safe Drinking Water Act, or could not differentiate between good and bad. Again, in the bill, on page 9 of the bill, it says the President could exempt a regulation if he found that the regulation has as its principal effect fostering economic growth, repealing, narrowing, streamlining rule regulation, administrative process, or otherwise reducing regulatory burdens. The President could exempt it. Senator Daschle mentioned safe drinking water. Again, if the President felt it was necessary to enact such a regulation in order to save lives--I heard the comments of hundreds of lives or something--certainly the President would have that authority. As a matter of fact, we did not have judicial review. His authority would have been accepted without court review or anything. So I just mention that. We do not have to continue debating this bill. I know Senator Daschle said the moratorium is dead and now we are looking at this more streamlined Nickles-Reid bill. Let me compare this to the moratorium. The bill that Senator Reid and myself are proposing is congressional review of all regulations. The moratorium bill that passed out of the Governmental Affairs Committee did not review all regulations. It reviewed only a small percentage and then allowed the President to exempt those. We started out with eight exemptions. The committee added another two or three and then had some exemptions on specific amendments. So there are like 10, at least 10 exemptions in the Governmental Affairs Committee but that only applied to significant regulations. So for people to say that was so draconian and so unfair and so much a terrible disaster, I would say the Nickles-Reid substitute is a lot more comprehensive because it has the potential of stopping any regulation. It says Congress can review them. It puts the burden on Congress. Granted, the bill that was reported out of the Governmental Affairs Committee had the responsibility on the executive agencies, had the responsibility on the President of the United States. The President would have to exempt those regulations, due to the following exemptions. Now it is on Congress if we are successful. Congress has the responsibility--and I want to underline the word ``responsibility,'' because Congress, in my opinion, in many cases has abdicated that responsibility. We have passed laws and then we forget about them. We are busy. We do not have time to go in and actually follow up and do congressional oversight. And so we pass the laws, and bureaucrats take over and enforce them and come up with the rules and regulations to make those things happen. Now Congress is going to have some responsibility to review those rules. Particularly those rules that have significant impact, we are going to have to find out does the rule make sense? Is it a good idea? And maybe even some of those rules that do not have significant impact--maybe they do not have to have $100 million of economic impact--we should review those rules as well, and if our constituents are telling us that these rules are far too costly or too expensive or bureaucratic or too complicated to comply with, maybe we will listen to them and maybe we will stop them. Maybe we will make the administration more accountable. And I think it is one of the reasons why President Clinton should support this legislation. I expect that he will. I expect that he will sign this legislation because this will make the bureaucrats more accountable. They will know if they come up with a regulation, they cannot hide behind the legislation. They know that Members of Congress can have them appear before the various committees and they will have to justify the regulations. If there is a serious opposition to it, they will have to justify it in such a way or else, if we can get a majority vote in both Houses, we can rescind it. We can repeal it. We can stop it. We can reject it, as we should. Mr. President, I know this chart behind me talks about the number of pages that are in the Federal Register. It shows the growth that we had basically during the Carter years in 1977, 1978, 1979, and in 1980, we reached an all-time high. We had actually 73,258 pages in the Federal Register. It declined significantly under Ronald Reagan's term, fell all the way down at the end of his first term in 1984 down to 48,000- some pages. In 1986, it reached the low point, I guess, of 44,821. In 1988, it had gone up to 50,000. At the end of 1992--and I guess that was the end of President Bush's term--we were up to 57,000. And under President Clinton's term, the first couple of years, the number of pages has increased up to almost 65,000, and seems to be continuing to increase. A lot of these regulations are good and a lot of them are not good. A lot of them are not well thought out. Some of them need congressional review. The Senator from Montana talked about having a hearing in Montana a couple weeks ago. Senator Burns talk about having a hearing dealing with logging and had somebody from OSHA there who had actually been designing the rules and regulations and having that kind of oversight. We need more of that. We need the regulators to know that they can be held accountable by Congress and, if they pass or try to implement egregious rules, that we can have the opportunity to overturn those in an expedited process. This bill has bipartisan support. I think it is a good substitute. I think it is a better substitute, frankly, than the underlying bill. I happen to be involved in both of these. And I think this one, because it is permanent, because it has, I think, a very good chance of passage and signature by the President of the United States, Mr. President, I think are very positive reasons why it should be enacted. I hope my colleagues would concur. I yield the floor.

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, I have just a couple of very brief comments. How much time remains on our side?

Mr. NICKLES. It will be my intention to yield most of that time in just a few moments. Mr. President, after listening to the long list of regulations that are so important and so effective, I wonder how we could be safer with big Government doing so many wonderful things for us and saving so many lives. When you listen to the litany of regulations affecting everything, all the way down to safety zones for America's Cup--I did not know we had regulations dealing with safety zones for America's Cup, but I am sure they will be a lot safer. But I hasten to add that the bill that was before us only applied to regulations that had significant economic impact. So the moratorium that passed out of the Governmental Affairs Committee would not have limited the regulations dealing with safety zones for America's Cup. It would have had no impact on them. As a matter of fact, most of the regulations that were mentioned would not have been impacted by the legislation that was reported out of the Governmental Affairs Committee because the committee decided to only impact significant regulations. I have heard a couple of my colleagues say the moratorium bill is dead. But I should mention that the bill that Senator Reid and I are pushing has a moratorium on significant regulations for 45 days to give Congress a chance to review them, and maybe a chance to repeal them. So there is a moratorium on significant regulations, just as there is a moratorium that passed out of the Governmental Affairs Committee. The Governmental Affairs Committee moratorium would last until we pass a comprehensive bill. We may pass a comprehensive bill in 45 days and have it signed by the President. Or it could last until the end of the year. I make mention of that. I think when people said there is no moratorium, actually we have a moratorium on significant regulations. That is what was in the bill that was passed out of the Governmental Affairs Committee. But we have it for different purposes. In the bill that passed out of the Governmental Affairs Committee, it said we would exempt the small regulations and then the President could exempt. The moratorium would only apply to significant regulations, and then the President had lots of exceptions, A through H in exceptions, that the President could determine would be exempt. My thought was that they ended up with almost no regulations covered. The substitute that Senator Reid and I will be pushing allows Congress to review all regulations. It is not just the significant ones that we are able to review for all regulations. Hopefully, Congress will do that. Hopefully, Congress will do a better job. We may even have the opportunity to review the safety zones for America's Cup. I do not know why I am intrigued by that. But I did not know the Federal Government had to be involved in making safety zones for America's Cup. You would think that they would be quite able to do that without the big hand of Federal Government. Maybe that is necessary. I am not sure. But I see my friend and colleague from Rhode Island. Mr. President, it is my intention to yield back the remainder of the time shortly after Senator Chafee's comments. I yield the floor. Mr. CHAFEE addressed the Chair.

Mr. NICKLES

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

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, what is the regular order?