Collin Peterson

Mr. PETERSON of Minnesota

Mr. PETERSON of Minnesota. Reclaiming my time, I would like to close by saying that we have got some problems with the wetlands act. I ask everybody to work with us to try to get at some of these issues like the type one wetlands that the gentleman from Missouri was talking about. But this legislation is something that has been needed for a long time. I, again, commend the gentleman from Louisiana [Mr. Tauzin], the gentleman from California [Mr. Condit], the gentleman from Texas [Mr. Laughlin], and all the others that have been working on this for many years. I ask support for this amendment.

Mr. PETERSON of Minnesota

Mr. PETERSON of Minnesota. Mr. Speaker, last week the House passed H.R. 450, placing a temporary hold on Government regulations until commonsense risk assessment and cost-benefit analysis is passed and signed into law. As the ranking member on the subcommittee that drafted the regulatory moratorium legislation, I believe that our current regulatory process has become unworkable most of the time. The current process is too often made up of senseless rules and regulations that cost us time and money without producing a benefit. Today we will consider and vote on H.R. 1022, a viable risk assessment bill which is the first step towards the lifting of the moratorium. H.R. 1022 is a commonsense approach to risk assessment that is essential to tangible and effective regulatory reform. Not only does H.R. 1022 make the regulatory process more reasonable by forcing Federal agencies to use sound science and practical common sense, but it also requires Government agencies to prioritize regulations, so that the most critical health and environmental risks are addressed first. I speak for several of my Democrat colleagues who support this bill, and I can firmly say we support the rule and support H.R. 1022 in it's present form. If we were in charge of writing risk assessment legislation, I can say that we may have not drafted the bill exactly as it is, however, H.R. 1022 is a good start, and we do support this basic approach to risk assessment. Some of my colleagues are arguing that enough time has not been given for adequate consideration of H.R. 1022. This is simply not the case. When we debated H.R. 450 last week, we had 1 hour less than has been given today for H.R. 1022. The time given last week for the regulatory moratorium was more than enough for thorough consideration. Furthermore, the truth of the matter is that those disputing the rule, will oppose this bill regardless of the amount of debate or with any amendments. Again, last week the House passed a moratorium on Federal regulations as a first step to achieving commonsense regulatory reform. H.R. 1022 is the next critical step to more sensible and rational regulation. This bill lays the groundwork for what the American people have requisitioned Congress to do. The American people want the Federal Government out of their lives. I urge my colleagues to support the rule and vote for final passage of H.R. 1022 without amendments.

Mr. PETERSON of Minnesota

Mr. PETERSON of Minnesota. I thank the gentleman for yielding this time to me. Mr. Chairman, I do not know how many of you have read this rule. This is the rule that is being talked about. I think everybody should take a copy of it and read it; that is, the proposed rule. You know, we need to get back to what the situation is. First of all, if the department knows how to reduce the threat to health and safety, they have the power to do that without having to go through rulemaking already. Second of all, there is nothing in the proposed rule that is going to guarantee that we are going to have--we are not sure. Some people think what is in here is going to reduce the risk, and some people are not so sure it is not going to cause more problems. So there is a difference of opinion on the issue. There are different aspects in this regulation. Some of this regulation does not go into effect for 4 or 5 years. So it is way beyond the moratorium. There are some specific issues that may do some good: The antimicrobial rinsing provisions that are in this bill where they are going to ask the companies to have that as standard operating procedure. Some folks argue that, by putting the Federal regulation in place, we are actually going to get in the way of industry. So I do not think that you can argue that holding up parts of this bill, this rule, if they are held up, which I do not think they will be, is going to make any difference. They were 3 years getting out in the first place. Lastly, we had this discussion about cryptosporidium in the committee. You know, this is a problem, and we got all the groups together, the water organizations, to discuss how to deal with this, and they all agreed what they should do. I do not believe we need a Federal rule or regulation to accomplish this. The testimony was that they all agree what needs to be done, they can go out and do it. Why do we have this mentality in this country that unless the Federal Government mandates that you regulate or that you do a rule, that it cannot be done? Clearly, this case is being taken care of with the local communities working together. We do not need a rule in that area. So this is covered in the exception, and I oppose the amendment.

Mr. PETERSON of Minnesota. Mr. Chairman, last year, the Federal Government issued over 64,000 pages of regulations in the Federal Register compared to 44,000 pages 10 years ago. Estimates are that our Government employs nearly 130,000 bureaucrats to write, interpret, and enforce those regulations. The bureaucrats responsible for issuing regulations to solve our Nation's problems, have sometimes become the problems themselves. The American public is fed up with silly rules and regulations that cost us time and money and don't accomplish anything. Something needs to be done to change the process. When I first read H.R. 450 my reaction was that this bill was unworkable and frankly unnecessary. But the more I read and heard about the bill and the regulatory process, the more convinced I am that H.R. 450 is a good idea. I speak today, Mr. Chairman, for a number of Democrats that support this bill. Do we think that everything in it is perfect? No. If we had dictatorial power we would do things differently, but basically it is workable. And I commend the chairman, the ranking member of the subcommittee, and the minority and all of the staff for working with us on this bill. One of my main concerns about the original bill was the retroactive provisions. That was until I obtained a copy of the 615 regulations issued between November 9 and December 31 of last year and read them. The more I read, the more I believed that this bill was necessary. If every Member of Congress were required to read every Federal regulation, I am convinced that all of you would have a different view of the Federal regulatory process. The longer I worked on this bill, the more convinced I was that a wholesale attitude change was necessary in the regulatory process. I became convinced that what was needed was a 2 by 4 between the eyes of the Federal regulatory bureaucracy. H.R. 450 is just that, a 2 by 4 which serves as a wake up call, putting the bureaucracy on notice that business as usual is over. This bill was crafted taking into account the failures of the Bush- imposed moratorium. It is meant to be wide in scope and to avoid narrow exclusions. H.R. 450 exempts routine regulations, it exempts regulations which reduce or streamline the regulatory process, it gives the administration the full authority to exempt regulations that are a threat to health and human safety, and is limited to those regulations that need to be looked at and reassessed. H.R. 450 places a temporary hold on regulations until common sense risk assessment and cost-benefit analysis is passed and signed into law. Furthermore, H.R. 450 gives the committees of jurisdiction time to look at regulations and lets them ask the question: Do these regulations really make sense? The bottom line is that business as usual will be over with the passage of H.R. 450. It is a message that needs to be sent to the bureaucracy. The American people want a change in our inflexible and over-burdensome regulatory rulemaking process. I'm tired of going home and hearing yet another regulatory horror story. For example, Moorhead, MN, in my district, is being forced to pay $10 million to change their municipal water system when the engineering experts and health officials admit it is a waste of money. The regulations mandating this are not sensible, but typical of well-meaning but over-intrusive Federal bureaucrats. I want to thank committee chairman Clinger and subcommittee chairman McIntosh for their hard work and willingness to make this a bipartisan effort. While this bill is not perfect, it is workable and serves as a wake up call to the bureaucracy telling them things have changed. This bill puts us on course for a regulatory change in attitude which involves risk assessment and cost-benefit analysis, and hopefully keeps the Federal Government out of the people's lives except when it is absolutely necessary.

Mr. PETERSON of Minnesota

Mr. PETERSON of Minnesota. I thank the gentleman for yielding. Mr. Chairman, the minority has reviewed the amendment, and we have no objections.

Mr. PETERSON of Minnesota. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. PETERSON of Minnesota. Mr. Chairman, will the gentlewoman yield?

Mr. PETERSON of Minnesota. Mr. Chairman, the minority has reviewed the amendment. We have no objection, and we support the amendment. We think it is a good amendment.

Mr. PETERSON of Minnesota

Mr. PETERSON of Minnesota. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment, the amendment numbered 165.

Mr. PETERSON of Minnesota. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. PETERSON of Minnesota. I yield to the gentleman from Indiana, the chairman of the Subcommittee on Government Operations, on which I serve.

Mr. PETERSON of Minnesota. Mr. Chairman, this is a straightforward amendment offered by myself, the gentleman from Kansas [Mr. Roberts], the gentleman from Indiana [Mr. Burton], the gentleman from Texas [Mr. Pete Geren], the gentleman from Oregon [Mr. Cooley], and others who worked on this and who had similar ideas. It is a straightforward amendment that lowers the threshold on private sector mandates in which CBO is required to file a report from $100 million to $50 million. Mr. Chairman, this will equalize the threshold at $50 million for both the public and the private sector. There were a number of amendments offered in this area. Some of them went lower, but we thought this made sense, to equalize the two. One of the issues was whether the lowering of this threshold would possibly cost CBO additional money. But we have checked, and CBO said the money authorized in this bill is sufficient to comply with these provisions. Mr. Chairman, in the 103d Congress, 226 of us, including myself, cosponsored the bill of the gentleman from California [Mr. Condit], which would impose a tougher standard, basically a ``no money, no mandate'' standard, which a lot of us would still like to see. But this is a good first start. What we are doing here by lowering this threshold is making sure that we have the same standards in both the public and private sector, and also that we will include more mandates in this process.

Mr. PETERSON of Minnesota

Mr. PETERSON of Minnesota. Mr. Chairman, I rise in strong support of H.R. 5. As a member of the Unfunded Mandates Caucus and a supporter of Representative Condit's bill in the last Congress, I rise today in opposition to unfunded Federal mandates and in support of H.R. 5, the Unfunded Mandate Reform Act of 1995. This bill is not perfect but it is a good start. Personally, I feel it should be tougher and should completely eliminate the practice of unfunded Federal mandates. Every dollar spent on a Federal mandate is $1 less in local budgets to fight crime, improve education, or provide public services. Just ask the city of Moorhead in my district who was mandated to spend tens of thousands of dollars building sheds to protect sand and road salt from the ice and snow; and spent hundreds of dollars to lower a public urinal less than 1 inch. Mr. Speaker, these are blatantly wasteful mandates my communities have been told to comply with. We all want clean air, clean water, safe food, and a safe working place; but let's achieve these goals in a sensible way and give our States and communities a voice in the process. Support H.R. 5 and put an end to unfunded Federal mandates.