John Spratt

Mr. SPRATT

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Chairman, I would like to state once again that the gentleman begins with a premise that I do not contest. I do not know to what extent we give validity to it, but we will stipulate for purposes of this argument that Russia is not doing all they should be doing in terminating, bringing to an end, their CBW, chemical-biological weapons program. No contest there. The issue here is, Mr. Chairman, what do we do about it. The proposal before us in the Dornan amendment would say ``Let us take the Nunn-Lugar money,'' a program that has been slow to start, but now gathering momentum and showing real results, ``Let us take it and stop it,'' as a punitive measure towards the Russians until we can get certification from the President that they are doing everything they can and should be doing to terminate this program.'' Here is what is wrong with that. This program, the Nunn-Lugar program, sometimes called the Cooperative Threat Reduction Program, has taken thus far all nuclear weapons out of the State of Kazakhstan, as of the end of April. By the end of next summer, 1996, it will have removed, deactivated and removed, all nuclear weapons out of Ukraine and Belarus. When the FSU, the former Soviet Union, or the Soviet Union dissolved, there suddenly appeared on the world stage 4 new nuclear powers, or 3 nuclear powers, in place of or in addition to the one former Soviet Union. Now we will go back to having just one. 2,800 missiles have been removed so far. 750 have been removed from their launchers. We are building a storage facility in Tomsk, Siberia, using the money for the Nunn-Lugar program. It has taken 3 to 4 years to get this building off the ground. We have finally broken ground for it. What does it provide? An opportunity to properly store plutonium pits, critical components in any nuclear weapon, and once they are stored there, they [[Page H5873]] have strict verification and accountability of those. Finally, and this is not the least significant by any means, we have used Nunn-Lugar money to create an international science and technology center where former weapons scientists, nuclear scientists, and conventional weapons scientists are able to work in non-military programs. If we stop the money, those scientists will now divert their attention and their efforts in Russia and elsewhere, becoming potential proliferators themselves. Why would we want to stop all of these things which are in our interest? Why do we want to hurt ourselves, undercut our own national security in order to strike back at the Russians? Why do we want to punish the Kazakhstani, the Ukrainians, and the Belarussians for something the Russians may be doing wrong with respect to their CBW program? I share the gentleman's concern about their CBW program, but he is going about the punitive reaction to it in the wrong way. Vote to keep Nunn-Lugar intact. Vote against the Dornan amendment.

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Chairman, I would ask, do I have 2 minutes remaining?

Mr. SPRATT. I would tell the gentleman I am it, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from California [Ms. Harman]. (Ms. HARMAN asked and was given permission to revise and extend her remarks.)

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the balance of our time. Mr. Chairman, this amendment begins with a legitimate grievance, as the gentleman has just stated. We are not satisfied with all the Russians are doing and should be doing to end and get rid of their chemical and biological weapons program. However, having begun with that premise, it moves to the wrong conclusion. It, in effect, says we should punish ourselves and the Russians at the [[Page H5870]] same time. Why is that? Because if we stop the Nunn-Lugar program, due to the fact that we are dissatisfied with their progress in stopping their chemical-biological program, then we will stop ourselves from achieving a highly significant goal, the removal of all nuclear weapons from Kazakhstan and Belarus by next summer. I think the gentleman who just spoke, the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Weldon], my good friend, would agree that is a worthy objective. That is an objective that serves our national security interests. Why do we want to cut off our noses to spite our face? Can we actually say that the weapons are being dismantled, that the warheads are being dismantled? We will take a step closer to being satisfied of that fact. Once we have completed the facility in Tomsk that we have finally begun to fund, finally broken ground upon, using Nunn-Lugar money, and if we stop the money now, we put that facility, which is a critical component, towards certification and verification in jeopardy. I simply say, in trying to punish the Russians, we are punishing the Kazakhstanis, we are functioning the Belarusans, and we are punishing ourselves, and that does not make sense.

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Chairman, could the Chair advise me how much time remains on our side?

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. Meehan].

Mr. SPRATT

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time. Mr. Chairman, we have a tall order before us, $1.2 trillion in spending reductions to get to 2002 in a balanced budget. with is it adds $400 billion to that problem. It makes tough choices even tougher, $70 billion more for defense and $350 billion more out of revenues. Second, these spending increases in defense are going into effect right now. They will be fully implemented in 2 fiscal years. We are marking up the defense budget $9 billion now. Tax cuts will be implemented, but what do we do? We get spending out of Medicare and Medicaid. If there is any lesson learned from the fiscal history of the last several years it is we have found these goals of reducing Federal health care entitlements very elusive, and if we do not reach those goals, this will make the deficit worse, not better. So Kasich is not a disciplined resolution. It is dangerous. The disciplined, doable resolution is the one before us, and we should all support it. We have before us a tall order: according to CBO, we will need $1,210 trillion in spending reduction to get to a balanced budget by 2002. This calls for tough choices, tougher than we have ever attempted in our efforts to get rid of the deficit. The first problem I have with the Republican budget resolution is that it makes these choices even tougher. Over 7 years, the Kasich resolution adds $70 billion to defense spending and takes $350 billion away from revenues. So, instead of having to dig $1,210 billion into spending, we have to dig deeper. We have to make $1,600 billion in spending cuts over the next 7 years. That's my first problem with the Kasich resolution. Here is the next. The tax cuts the Kasich resolution supports go into the Tax Code this year. The capital gains tax cut dates back to January 1, 1995, for example. The revenue losses are backloaded; and grow exponentially over time, but they begin immediately, in fiscal year 1995. The plus-up in defense spending also begins immediately. Indeed, it goes into the defense authorization bill we are marking up right now, increasing defense spending $9.5 billion beyond what the Pentagon sought for fiscal year 1996, and $15.9 billion beyond what is programmed for fiscal year 1997. With the $70 billion plus-up in defense spending and the $350 billion in tax cuts in the Kasich resolution, the deficit becomes worse and the solution gets harder. Stenholm-Orton is more likely to reach the target, because it forgoes tax cuts and holds the line on defense spending. Stenholm-Orton is the conservative choice because it follows the lessons of history. If there is any lesson to be learned from history of the budget, it's that our efforts to cut or contain entitlement spending always fall far short of the goal. And here the Kasich budget resolution is bolder--some would say rasher--than anything anyone has ever proposed: $288 billion in Medicare cuts, $187 billion in Medicaid cuts. Can cuts on this order be achieved? Who knows? All we have before us are the numbers, not the policies. If these huge numerical goals are not reached, what happens? Well, first of all, it will take 2 to 3 years to realize that the entitlement numbers are not tracking; and by that time, the defense spending increases will be in place, and the tax cuts will be buried in the code. Both will be hard to root out and reverse. And the deficit--the deficit will be worse, not better. That's the near-term risk, as I see it, with the Kasich resolution. Stenholm-Orton lowers that risk greatly by forgoing tax cuts, by holding the line on defense spending, and by targeting far more conservative savings on Medicare and Medicaid. So, Stenholm-Orton is better, because it's more likely to succeed. There is a longer term problem with Kasich that has hardly been mentioned in this debate. Assuming the unlikely, assuming that in 2002, the budget is in balance, under the Kasich resolution, it does not stay in balance. It is not in equilibrium. That's because the tax cuts are back-loaded, and the wedge they take out of revenues keeps getting wider and wider in the out-years. In 2003, 2004, 2005, the revenue losses increase by over $300 billion. So, under Kasich, when we get to 2002, we are not home-free, even if the budget that year is in balance; we have to got to keep on cutting Medicare and Medicaid and student loans, and so on, by another $300-400 billion to make up for the additional revenue losses. That is why Kasich is not a disciplined resolution; it's a dangerous resolution. It could lead us down the path to deeper deficits. Stenholm-Orton is not perfect, but it is disciplined and doable, and should be supported by all us.

Mr. SPRATT

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding. I would like to rise in support of the Saxton-Boehlert-Roemer substitute. I support amending section 404 of the Clean Water Act. The district I represent is largely rural, and farmers in my district have real concerns about the way in which agricultural wetlands have been regulated, and I understand that because I own a farm myself and it has about 200 or 300 acres of bottom lands on it. I understand farmers' concerns about being overridden by the Corps of Engineers. At the same time, in my State in particular, the gentleman who was just in the well referred to the State of South Carolina. We adopted a Beachfront Management Act to control the development of our beachfront. We have a Coastal Zone Management Act because we recognize the benefits of wetlands to one of the largest industries in our State, the tourism industry, a large and growing part of our economy, and our environment will benefit and what wetlands yield for water quality helps tourism, home owners, and farmers alike. Title VIII, section 8 contains the language that is essentially the same as that the gentleman who just spoke offered in H.R. 1330 in the last Congress. I did not cosponsor it then. I do not cosponsor it now. I do not support it now because I think a national classification system as mandated in the bill is not workable. It mandates a national system for classifying it. The Corps is instructed to classify the land of any property owner who requests it and is required to get it done in 10 years' time. Not one single organization or person that I have heard has explained how the Corps, already overburdened, will be able to classify every single wetland in 10 years. Nor have I heard why all of a sudden property owners want to welcome the Corps of Engineers onto their land to decide whether or not it contains wetlands. Mr. Chairman, the Saxton-Boehlert-Roemer substitute is a good piece of work. It is reform without going too far. I wholeheartedly support it and urge others to do likewise. I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Mr. SPRATT

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, tomorrow the Republicans in the House will celebrate the completion or at least the passage through the House of their Contract With America. I do not like to rain on anybody's parade, but I have to predict, as the parts of this contract which were passed separately are pieced together, I am afraid we are going to find that all the pieces do not fit. Particularly I think there is going to be a misfit when it comes to fitting together revenues and expenditures, the budget, and fulfilling the prediction of a balanced budget by the year 2002. I say that because yesterday in the final act of this contract we adopted a bill called H.R. 1215, which will reduce the tax revenues that flow into the Government by $189 billion over the next 5 years and by $630 billion over the next 10 years. I think it is fair to ask here in the Congress, out in the country, how do we do that? How do we cut taxes by $630 billion and increase defense spending as the contract seems to promise or at least hold defense spending constant and at the same time bring the budget into balance by the year 2002? Well, one way the bill proposed yesterday and passed yesterday offers is to lower what we call the cap on discretionary spending, nonentitlement spending by $100 billion cumulatively over the next 5 years. Before the vote yesterday, the chairman of the Committee on the Budget, Mr. Kasich, sent to us an illustrative list of domestic spending cuts that totaled $100 billion showing how we could get $100 billion out of discretionary spending over the next 5 fiscal years. None of these cuts has been voted on yet, and it would be miraculous to me if half of them were ever approved. But let's take the list that Mr. Kasich proposed at face value and note this about it. It very conveniently ignored or failed to note anything at all. It was silent on the issue of defense spending, and yet defense spending constitutes fully half of discretionary spending. Discretionary spending is right now about $545 billion. Defense spending is about $270 billion. Mr. Kasich has said elsewhere that he would like to see defense spending frozen at its current level of about $270 billion a year. What I would like to do tonight is just explore the consequences of that. Let's put the other sphere on the first sphere, defense spending and discretionary spending, domestic discretionary spending together and see what happens. If we combine the lower caps, that $100 billion lower cap, which are provided for by H.R. 1215 with a constant outlay stream of $270 billion for defense every year, an outlay freeze, we see from this first chart which I have here that we will need to make $41.4 billion in budgetary cuts, in nondefense discretionary programs in fiscal year 1996. And that begins, in effect, next month because that is when we begin the budget for fiscal 1996. As you can see on this chart, these cuts in nondefense programs would have to rise to $66 billion in fiscal year 1998, and that constitutes a 23.5-percent cut below the current budget level of expenditure, 23.5 percent of student loans, 23.5 percent of Head Start, 23.5 percent of ag programs, job training, the Drug Enforcement Agency, the FBI and the Federal court system. Over the course of this year we would have to take off 23.5 percent and over the course of 5 fiscal years the cuts in nondefense spending required by holding defense spending constant at this year's level would add up to $187 billion, which is $87 billion more than the chairman of the Committee on the Budget spelled out in the illustrative list that he sent out to us yesterday. There is a second chart I have here that depicts the same story, only in a different way. You can see from this chart, the blue line at the top is the proposed level of discretionary spending for domestic programs, nondefense programs, and President Clinton's budget. It runs from $260 to $280 billion, and it is roughly flat between $275 and $280 for 5 fiscal years. But if we make these changes I am talking about it drops immediately from $260 to $220 and from $280 down to about $220, a $60 billion cut, very severe reductions. The term defense freeze sounds sort of noncontroversial, benign, uneventful, but the purpose of these charts is to show you that it will trigger deep nondefense spending cuts because of the linkage between something we call budget authority and outlays. Budget authority are what we budget, what we pass around here every year. Outlays are what the government actually spends. And there is a difference between the two because we have to put up lots of budget authority, particularly for defense programs, and yet it takes the Department of Defense years in building a carrier to spend out all of that budget authority. There is a difference between the two. Because discretionary outlay is a cap, an increase in defense budget authority requires a 1-to-1 decrease in the budget authority of nondispensed accounts. Anything you put in defense, you have to take out of nondefense. An outlay freeze seems to say, well, we just hold things like they are. But a defense outlay freeze means anything but the status quo for a nondefense program. The cuts I have just gone over assume a hard freeze, that is, a flat freeze on defense spending. It would not be adjusted up or down except for inflation.

Mr. SPRATT

Mr. SPRATT. I thank the gentleman for yielding this time to me. Mr. Chairman, I have listened to Members from across the aisle insist the tax cuts in tax bill are paid for. In truth, they are not paid for. That is why this tax bill is so reckless. I have time to talk about just one reason why the revenue losses entailed by this bill are not replenished or offset by spending cuts. That is that the lower spending cap, $100 billion, for reduction in discretionary spending, is spurious, just more smoke and mirrors. Now, I know that the chairman of the Budget Committee sent us an illustrative list of spending cuts that total $100 billion. None of these cuts has been voted on yet. It would be miraculous, in my opinion, if even half of them were ever approved. And if we take this tax list sent to us by the chairman at its face value we ought to know that there is one peculiar discrepancy to it. That is that it is silent, altogether silent on defense spending, which constitutes half of all discretionary spending. The chairman also said lately that he would like to freeze defense spending at the current level of outlays, which is $270 billion. Now, let us bring defense, the other half of discretionary spending into the picture and see what happens. I have a chart here that is not about class warfare, it is about budget reality, which deals with that particular half of spending. If we take the lower caps, $100 billion reduction in the spending caps called for by this bill with constant defense outlays of $270 billion, that is an outlay freeze on defense, we see from this tax chart that we will have to cut $41 billion out of budget authority from nondefense programs for fiscal 1996, which is next month. As you can see from those charts, those cuts in nondefense budget authority will rise to $66 billion in fiscal year 1998, a 23.5-percent reduction off current levels of spending for those programs. That is 23.5 percent off of NASA, Drug Enforcement Agency, programs for the elderly, you name it, everything in discretionary spending. Altogether, over 5 fiscal years the cuts in nondefense spending will add up to $187 billion, which is $87 billion more than the chairman of the Budget Committee has laid out in his illustrative list. Now, there are lots of things in this tax bill I would like to vote for and support. This would deal a death blow to deficit reduction, and that is why I am voting against it and urge others to do the same.

Mr. SPRATT

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

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, in the waning minutes of debate on H.R. 1022, the Risk Assessment and Cost-Benefit Analysis Act, Mr. Walker offered a final amendment which was barely considered at all because we had run out of time. The Walker amendment then passed on a voice vote. This amendment expands the scope of H.R. 1022 far beyond what I think most Members appreciated, because there was no time to explain it when it came before us. Basically, this Walker amendment provides that when any Federal agency approves or rejects any environmental cleanup plan, and the costs of the clean up plan will exceed $5 million, then the Risk Assessment Cost-Benefit Act is triggered. What in turn that means is that a full-blown risk assessment and cost-benefit analysis is required before the agency can move forward with the plan. If the benefits do not exceed the costs under the act, then the plan cannot be carried forward. What is the environmental cleanup plan, a $5 million cleanup plan? First of all, the amendment says an environmental cleanup plan is any corrective action taken under CERCLA, the Superfund Act, or under the Solid Waste Disposal Act. That is the first application of it. Mr. Speaker, I think we all agree that CERCLA or Superfund has taken too much time and involved too many lawyers. If we allow this amendment to stand in this bill, then we have just found another way to take more time and involve more lawyers, and I do not think that is the direction we want to move in. That is enough of a problem with the amendment. But it goes beyond that, because it also says an environmental clean up decision is ``any other environmental restoration and waste management carried out on behalf of a Federal agency with respect to any substance other than municipal waste.'' So this amendment applies to any environmental restoration decision taken with respect to a Federal facility and any waste management decision. That is Clean Water Act disposal, even Clean Air Act disposal problems. What does this mean? All DOE facilities, Department of Energy facilities scattered across 17 States, from Savannah River to Oak Ridge, TN to Rocky Flats, to Hanford, WA, there is an enormous array of cleanup problems that could cost billions upon billions of approximate dollars, approximate, that have been accumulated over 50 years, toxic waste, hazardous waste, and very, very dangerous radioactive waste. This amendment means that the Department of Energy does not have to deal with these nuclear and toxic waste problems if the cost-benefit analysis does not show the benefits will exceed costs. This means that these problems, which have been overlooked and delayed for 50 years, will have to go through further delay because before DOE can do anything with respect to them, they have to put them through risk assessment and cost-benefit analysis. And this means that the risk assessment/cost-benefit analysis track becomes preempted. Each one of these 17 sites now in the DOE complex now has a complicated, difficult negotiation ongoing with the State regulatory authorities, and most of them have compliance agreements. The States are no longer involved. what rules is risk assessment and cost-benefit analysis. At Hanford, at Rocky Flats, at Savannah River, all across the country. The Department of Defense also has major cleanup decisions to make with respect to all the bases it closes. In fact, when we adopted the Base Closing Act, we said you cannot close a base and leave it and turn it over to local communities or new developers until you have resolved all the environmental cleanup problems. delays it is already experiencing the additional burden of doing cost- benefit analysis. If the cost-benefit analysis does not show the benefits will exceed the costs, then DOD will simply leave those problems unattended. They have been immunized by this bill if the benefits do not exceed the costs, leave them unattended, turn them over to a local community, and then guess what? The next landowner inherits the property with the sites there, but without immunity. If that is not enough, this also applies to waste management. The word ``waste management'' is used. Waste management does not mean environmental problems that have accumulated through neglect or ignorance of the law over the past years. It means management of ongoing waste streams, waste water emissions into streams. This means DOD, DOE, and others that discharge in a waste management scheme, do not have to comply with waste management decisions unless the benefits can be proven to exceed the costs. Now, we do not know all the ramifications of this provision, but think a few things are clear. This is not good law; it was made too hastily, it is ill-considered, ill-conceived, and should be stricken from the bill. Let us start over.

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

Mr. SPRATT. In its present form I am, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. SPRATT

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Chairman, there is transuranic nuclear waste stored in temporary storage, stacked up at a dozen or more sites from Washington State at Hanford to INEL in Idaho to Rocky Flats in Colorado, down to the Savannah River site and over to Oak Ridge, probably a dozen sites altogether. There is also a permanent resting place for the permanent storage of this waste, built and completed. It is called the Waste Isolation Pilot Project, at Carlsbad, NM. Here, 2,250 feet below ground, in a salt dome, is the Nation's first nuclear waste permanent depository. It took more than 5 years to pass the bill that authorized WIPP to begin receiving nuclear waste for testing purposes, to prove in a series of rigorous steps that this facility will be adequate for thousands of years to come, to seal off and safely contain this transuranic waste. But these tests at WIPP can go forward only if EPA regulations concerned with the disposal of nuclear wastes are finally implemented. EPA, in the early 1980's issued regulations for this purpose. They were enjoined by the Federal circuit court. And when we passed WIPP several years ago, we directed EPA to issue a new set of regulations so that the tests could be completed. EPA finally complied. But this regulatory moratorium, if passed, will suspend the effectiveness of these regulations, and that means that this testing at WIPP cannot go forward and that waste will remain in Washington State, in South Carolina and Oak Ridge, TN, INEL and Rocky in Carlsbad, NM, unable to finally begin to accomplish the purpose for which it was designed. This bill does not clearly exempt those regulations. That is because DOE, as I said, simply cannot say that this waste constitutes an imminent threat to health or safety that is likely to cause people to die during the period of the moratorium. If we want to see this waste disposed of properly, we should vote for this amendment.

Mr. SPRATT. The Department of Energy could not say that the waste, nuclear waste, transuranic waste, stored at INFL in Idaho, for example, constitutes an imminent threat to health or safety that is likely to cause serious illness or death during the moratorium, the very words of section 7 you have there on the chart. They are not going to say that. They cannot say it. No. 2, they would not want to raise that kind of an alarm about the status of that waste disposal at these particular sites, some dozen or more across the country. Nevertheless, this is an urgent problem that needs to be dealt with.

Mr. SPRATT. The problem is the definition which says ``imminent threat to health and safety.'' The Department of Energy cannot say there is going to be a substantial danger to human health causing severe illness or death Washington State, South Carolina, and Tennessee. They are not going to raise a red flag like that. They cannot say that. It is a danger, a chronic danger. It could endanger the water supply in these areas, for example. But it is not something likely to happen during this moratorium. Nevertheless, these regulations need to go into effect so that the disposal of this waste can finally be accomplished.

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

Mr. SPRATT

Mr. SPRATT. I thank the gentlewoman for yielding this time to me. Mr. Chairman, the problem we had in committee with this is the language of the bill itself. The imminent threat to health or safety exclusion falls under section 5, which is emergency exceptions. So the context of this is there must be an emergency and there must be an imminent threat. We tried to rewrite this language so it would clearly apply to cases of food health and safety, to no avail. So I ask the other side, and yield the time necessary to get an answer: Is the bill, is the regulation which deals with E-coli, with salmonella and other food pathogens, is that sort of regulation sufficient to come under this exclusion? Will they state for the record whether or not this sort of regulation would be excluded under this language, since they seem to imply that it already is? Is that what they are saying, that the regulation is already excluded? Or are they saying this kind of regulation dealing with food-borne pathogens, E- coli, salmonella, are they saying it is so excluded that it is unnecessary to have this amendment?

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding time to me. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to H.R. 450, the Regulatory Transition Act of 1995, as it is now written. I share the concerns of this bill about the burdens of regulation. I believe the regulatory maze needs to be cleared out. But this bill is not the way to go. This is the all-time case of throwing out the baby with the bathwater. H.R. 450 freezes action on almost all Federal regulations issued between November 20, 1994, and December 31, 1995. Its reach is so broad that even its sponsors can't tell us exactly what it embraces. For one thing, they did not try to inventory all the regulations issued or about to be issued before they filed this bill; and they cannot foresee all of the regs that may be needed over the next 10 months. This bill reaches from health and safety rules to trade rules to rules for auctioning the radio frequencies. It includes rules I would gladly vote to suspend and rules I have worked to see implemented. It makes no distinction between regs we need and those we don't, and that's the problem with it. By reaching so far, it runs the risk of creating as much confusion as it seeks to prevent. Let me give you just a sample of the regulations this bill may block: On February 3, the USDA issued a rule to reduce illnesses caused by contaminated meat and poultry, due to E coli and salmonella. Now, you may think this rule falls under the exception in the bill for emergency regulations that deal with imminent threats to health. After all, the Centers for Disease Control estimates that 9,000 people a year die from food-borne diseases. But we debated that question in committee and came to no clear conclusion, because no one can say definitively whether the USDA rule deals with an imminent threat to health. The sponsors of the bill refused to delete the word imminent, and wouldn't accept an amendment that would settle the issue by specifying that the USDA reg is excluded, so the bill comes to the floor with a fundamental issue like this unsettled. On December 21, HUD issued rules to prevent alcoholics and drug addicts from being admitted to HUD-assisted elderly housing. That's something most of us would support. Current regulations have been construed by the courts to treat disabled persons, as elderly, and the disabled include alcohol and drug addicts. Some may think that this rule falls under the exclusion for routine administrative functions, but that too is far from clear; and so unless we make this exclusion clear, the elderly may just have to wait to get the addicts out of their housing projects. On December 2, 1994, Customs issued a rule to stiffen the penalties against illegal textile and apparel imports. Next month, Customs will issue draft rules of origin for textile and apparel imports. These rules of trade will stop Hong Kong from shipping to us under their quota goods that are actually made in China. Why suspend regs that stop fraudulent trade? On January 4, 1995, an INS rule on asylum reform became final. This rule would defer the granting of employment for persons seeking asylum. Under the prior rule, asylum seekers were granted employment authorization simply upon filing for asylum. Everyone knows that asylum processing needs reform; why pass a bill that will stop it? On January 24, 1995, the FAA issued airworthiness directives aimed at potential safety problems in aircraft. These are real safety concerns, but they may not fall within the emergency exclusion a an imminent threat, administrative functions. This is merely a sample. There are at least a hundred regulations of some significance that have been issued that I could cite; and these are the regulations already issued. What health or safety rules will be issued or needed over the next 10 months that we can't foresee now? Often during markup, when we raised a question about prospective regulations, the sponsors assured us that they probably fell under one of the exceptions of the bill. But they could not be sure, so the issue is left hanging on words like imminent and routine, which will be litigated at length over the next year if this bill is ever enacted. In committee, we did carve out a few explicit exemptions for tax and banking regulations. But why have specific exemptions only for banking and income taxes? During consideration of the bill, amendments will be offered that exclude certain regs in clusters, under a particular heading. Our object in offering these amendments is to clear up a path through the enormous gray zone created because the boundaries of this bill are so ambiguous. For example, there will be amendments that make it clear that this bill does not block the Customs Modernization Act from being implemented, that make it clear that this bill does not stop sanctions against China or against other countries that engage in certain kinds of fraudulent trade, that settle any question about food safety regulation, that deal with airline safety, mine safety, that make it clear that this bill will not stop long-awaited rules for transuranic nuclear waste disposal, so that the Waste Isolation Pilot Project can go forward, that upgrade with mammography quality standards, that deal with personal use of campaign funds, that broaden veterans benefits for Persian Gulf syndrome, and that even deal with hunting season for ducks and waterfowl. There will also be amendments that make the bill prospective only and remove one of its most problematical features--judicial review. This bill is not without merit. But it needs a lot of work before it deserves to be passed, or else we will create far more confusion than we prevent by passing it. In committee we did carve out a few explicit exceptions for tax and banking regulations. But why have specific exemptions that clarify the bill just for taxes and just for bikers? During consideration of this bill amendments will be offered that include certain regs and clusters under a particular heading. Our object in offering these amendments was a clear path through this fuzzy gray zone that is created by this bill because of boundaries of it are so ambiguous. I urge every Member to carefully consider and to vote for these clarifying amendments that will create sensible exceptions and exclusions to this piece of legislation.

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Chairman, I yield such time as she may consume to the gentlewoman from North Carolina [Mrs. Clayton]. (Mrs. CLAYTON asked and was given permission to revise and extend her remarks.)

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the ranking member of our committee, the gentlewoman from Illinois, [Mrs. Collins]. permission to revise and extend her remarks.)

Mr. SPRATT. If the gentleman will yield, it was only partially covered by the last amendment, because the last amendment went to the rules of origin which are a legally dictated rule that was imposed upon the Treasury Department by the GATT-implementing legislation when it was passed. This deals with a wider spectrum of rules and regulations that apply to fraud, evasion, circumvention, textile trade fraud, more than just the rules of origin problem.