Henry Waxman

Mr. WAXMAN

Mr. WAXMAN. Point of order, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. WAXMAN. Mr. Speaker, I cannot understand how a gentleman can ask another gentleman a question and not give him a moment to answer it.

Mr. WAXMAN

Mr. WAXMAN. Mr. Speaker, I ask my colleagues to join me in paying tribute to Mr. and Mrs. Eugene C. Berchin, who will celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary on July 20, 1997. The Berchins are an extraordinary couple whose love and support for one another has continued to grow over the past 50 years. Though they have celebrated many happy events and milestones throughout their marriage, they were faced with an overwhelming challenge when Marjorie Helene suffered an unfortunate and disabling stroke a few years ago. Fully facing this challenge, Eugene has devoted himself to caring for Marjorie Helene in every way, seeing that she is comfortable and receiving the best care possible. Eugene and Marjorie Helene met shortly after Eugene's discharge from the U.S. Army, where he was a captain stationed overseas with the 89th Infantry Division. After their marriage, Marjorie Helene graduated from UCLA obtained her teaching credential, and taught life sciences at Polytechnic High School. During that time, she was the primary source of income as Eugene attended dental school at USC and later attended law school. The Berchins have two children, a son, Joel Mitchell, and a daughter, Sondra Ellen. Joel is a physician who practices in the San Diego area and Sondra is a lawyer who attended UCLA School of Law. She was a law clerk for both Justice Thurgood Marshall and Second Federal District Justice Oaks. The Berchins are also the proud grandparents of Kyle Taylor and Caitalin Lee. Eugene and Marjorie Helene Berchin are a living tribute of the greatest strengths of the institution of marriage and the American family. They having continually loved and supported one another, their children, and their grandchildren in each event of their lives, whether joyous or sorrowful. Eugene very proudly expresses that Marjorie Helene is a beautiful today as the day he met her and that she still enjoys the music of the Big Band Era. I ask my colleagues to join me in congratulating the Berchins as they celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary and in wishing them and their family every happiness in the years to come.

Mr. WAXMAN

Mr. WAXMAN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding time to me. Mr. Speaker, I will put a longer statement in the Record on the health aspects of this budget reconciliation bill, but I do want to point out that we are missing an opportunity to cover children as fully as we might in the most certain and effective way we can. What we have in the bill is a good start. What we have in the budget is $16 billion, but it would be most effective if we were certain that the money would be spent to buy guaranteed coverage with the benefits that children need. We have a model for this and it works. It is called Medicaid. We ought to help States do a better job with that program, and with the block grant money, we ought to be sure it is spent on what we intend, to buy health insurance coverage for uninsured children. It is not supposed to be a pot of money for States to refinance their own health services facilities. It is not supposed to be a replacement for DSH, it is supposed to help kids. We can do better. In Medicaid and Medicare, while there are some positive steps, it seems to me on balance I cannot endorse this legislation. Mr. Speaker, we are missing an opportunity today to assure that we are extending coverage to millions of uninsured children in the most certain and effective way we can. We have $16 billion to spend here. This is not enough to cover all the uninsured children, but it is a good start. And it will be most effective if we are certain that the money is being spent to buy guaranteed coverage, with the benefits that children need. We've got a model for this--and it works. It's called Medicaid. We ought to help States do a better job with that program. And with the block grant money, we ought to be sure it's spent on what we intend: to buy health insurance coverage for uninsured children. It's not supposed to be a pot of funds for States to refinance their own health service facilities. It's not supposed to be a replacement for DSH. It's supposed to help kids. We can do better. And the changes this bill makes in Medicaid and Medicare are not acceptable. I recognize that these provisions are dramatically improved from those brought before this House in the last Congress. But being better than something that was totally unacceptable is not good enough. I also recognize that there are some things in this bill, particularly related to Medicare, that are very positive. The preventive care benefits added to Medicare are long overdue, and will be very helpful to Medicare beneficiaries. But on balance, I cannot endorse this legislation. I cannot vote in support of the establishment of medical savings accounts [MSA's] in the Medicare Program. I know this is a demonstration--but it is a massive one. And it is a bad one. MSA's cost Medicare money. They cost $2 billion. This is money that should be left in the Medicare Trust Fund or spent on benefits that all Medicare beneficiaries need. Instead, we're spending $2 billion to benefit people who are healthier and wealthier. They leave the many Medicare beneficiaries of moderate income, the ones whose health is more precarious, bearing the cost. That is wrong. The changes in how managed care organizations will be paid by Medicare are also extreme. They will cause severe problems in higher cost urban areas. An initial attempt to rationalize payments became a free-for-all in which HMO's in urban areas, and the beneficiaries who are enrolled in them, are the losers. And while this bill is better as a result of the amendment approved by rules in its protection for low-income Medicare beneficiaries, it does not meet the budget agreement terms of full payment of the Medicare premium for people below 150 percent of poverty. Many of the changes this bill makes in Medicaid are also not ones I can support. Put simply, the cuts in the disproportionate share program are too large, and they are not designed to protect either the hospitals that serve very large populations of low-income people, or States which have spent all of their DSH moneys on these kinds of hospitals. I cannot vote for a proposal that will result in a 20 percent cut of DSH dollars in my own State of California by 2002. I cannot endorse a policy that leaves large public hospitals, children's hospitals and hospitals with low-income utilization rates of 25 percent or 30 percent without first call on the funds available. I cannot support legislation that undermines a poor woman's right to choose. Finally, I look at the bill currently being debated by our colleagues in the Senate, and I see a number of provisions that will be brought into conference that would make this bill considerably worse. It is not good enough now. It should be made better. It must be made better before it will have my support.

Mr. WAXMAN

Mr. WAXMAN. Mr. Speaker, today I am introducing a noncontroversial bill which will make it much easier for States to comply with the Safe Drinking Water Act. Under the Safe Drinking Water Act amendments Congress considered last year, States are required to conduct source water assessments. These source water assessments delineate and assess sources of drinking water within each State. They are an important part of our efforts to protect the public's drinking water. When Congress passed the Safe Drinking Water Act Amendments of 1996, there was the expectation that States could get their drinking water State revolving funds [DWSRF] up and running within a year. Accordingly, States have had the discretion to use up to 10 percent of their Federal capitalization grants for fiscal years 1996 and 1997 to conduct source water assessments. However, this short timeframe for funding has turned out to be problematic for the States. In fact, some States may not even have grant applications submitted during fiscal year 1997. This bill would amend the Safe Drinking Water Act to fix this problem by giving States the discretion to fund source water assessments with their capitalization grants for 1 additional year. This bill would not make any new authorizations. It would place no new requirements on States, nor would it require funds to be spent on source water assessments. This bill simply gives States discretion in how they use funds they have already been granted. When Speaker Gingrich proposed Corrections Day in the last Congress, he said that it should be used only for noncontroversial legislation of a limited scope. I have actively participated in the corrections advisory group for the last 2 years and believe that this proposal is the ideal candidate for the Corrections Day calendar. I have consulted with the Office of Drinking Water at the Environmental Protection Agency who have raised no objections. In fact, there is no known opposition to the bill at all. This bill is supported by the State drinking water administrators, the water supply industry, and the environmental groups. The Association of State Drinking Water Administrators, the American Water Works Association, the Association of Metropolitan Water Agencies, the Association of California Water Agencies, Clean Water Action, and the Natural Resources Defense Council all support this bill. Mr. Speaker, I urge every Member to support this noncontroversial bill. Congress should act quickly to send this to the President to become law.

Mr. WAXMAN

Mr. WAXMAN. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. WAXMAN. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I rise in support of the reauthorization of the JFK Assassination Review Board. The board has performed a valuable service to the public in guiding the release of over a million pages of information relating to the assassination of President Kennedy. Unfortunately, the work is not complete. This bill will give the review board an additional year to finish the task, and the board has assured us that 1 year is sufficient. Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to support this legislation.

Mr. WAXMAN

Mr. WAXMAN. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I thought that having this bill up today would be a useless exercise, but I think it is quite valuable in light of the comments that the gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. Frank] has made about how we need to cut back on spending in areas where we are spending too much. I also want to point out that if we look at some of those higher income Americans who are going to get a huge tax break, rather than find July 3 as their tax independence day, some of them are going to celebrate on Valentine's Day, because at that point they will have paid all they are going to pay in for the Government funding for all of these different services, while a lot of hard-working Americans, especially middle-income Americans, will continue to pay on into the months to the summertime. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. WAXMAN. Mr. Speaker, we have no further requests for time. I yield myself such time as I may consume only to point out that this resolution does not save a dime of taxpayers' money. It simply tells the American people we feel your pain, and we are spending a little bit more money to process a resolution on the House floor to tell you that. I do not know what other purpose it serves, and I have no other point to make. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. WAXMAN. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I want to point out as a public service that when we talk about the cost of Government, we are talking about the salary of the gentleman from Texas [Mr. DeLay] and the cost of his staff, but we are also talking about protecting our national defense and supporting the brave men and women who are on duty for that purpose; we are talking about the cost to pay for our Social Security system, which has done more to stop the poverty rates among the elderly than anything else, as well as with the Medicare Program. We are talking about the expenditures to protect the environment, help students go to college; all of the things that people would have to pay for on their own if they could afford it. If we did not have these Government services, a lot of people would not be able to afford it, and we would find that large numbers of people would be denied the benefits that they look to Government to provide. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from the State of Massachusetts [Mr. Frank].

Mr. WAXMAN. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, this resolution has had no hearings before our committee. It was just introduced last Friday. The whole idea of it is that we should not have a waste of taxpayer's money because taxes are too high. Well, this is a pretty silly bill, and, if anything, it is wasting some taxpayers' money by even having it processed. I would not argue against the bill because there is no harm, I suppose, that could be seen in this legislation. It will have very little impact. So on our side of the aisle, representing the Democrats on the committee, we never had this before the committee, and this is more a political statement by the Republicans on how they do not want to waste money. To me, it is an ineffective bill that is wasting taxpayers' money to even bring it before us. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. WAXMAN

Mr. WAXMAN. Mr. Speaker, not a single Democrat is against investigating the campaign finance abuses of the 1996 campaign. That is not what this debate is all about. It is about whether a chairman ought to be given the power unilaterally to issue subpoenas. It has never happened before. No chairman has ever issued subpoenas unilaterally in the House, the Senate, Democrat or Republican. This is the first time that we have seen such an activity. This is about wasting money. I was impressed over and over again by the points made by the gentleman from California [Mr. Condit]. He has worked on a bipartisan basis on fiscally conservative measures to save taxpayer's funds, and what he suggested is that we ought to coordinate our investigation with the Senate and not waste this money through duplication. We ought to defeat the amendment that is before us, defeat the previous question, so that we can offer the amendment that the gentleman from California [Mr. Condit] offered in committee, to simply have coordination and saving of taxpayers' dollars in a reasonable campaign finance investigation process so that we can return to the precedents of this House and this Congress, that all investigations will be determined by the members of a committee, even if the majority of the members want to vote on a party line basis, the members conduct the investigation, not one single person who happens to be chairman. Giving that kind of power to one person invites abuse, and we ought not to let that happen.

Mr. WAXMAN. Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong opposition to this resolution. The majority is establishing procedures for the House campaign finance investigation that have no precedent. Those procedures allow the gentleman from Indiana [Mr. Burton] to act unilaterally, and they ensure that the minority will have no real voice in the committee's work. The gentleman from Indiana [Mr. Burton] alone is being given the authority to subpoena any document he wants or any witness he chooses to depose. He can make those decisions without any committee debate or any committee vote. These procedures deny the minority even the chance of debating or appealing the decisions of Chairman Burton to the other 23 Republican members of the committee. And when the minority wants to issue a subpoena of its own, it can only ask Chairman Burton to do so. If he says no, there is no opportunity for the minority to debate the issue or take it to a committee vote. That is all the minority is asking for, an opportunity for the committee, and not just the chairman, to decide important questions. That is why in committee we offered the Clinger language adopted by the Republican majority in 1996, when the Committee on Government Reform and Oversight used subpoena power for depositions for the very first time in its history. That precedent, which Chairman Clinger wrote, memorializes the long- standing practice of this committee to seek a consensus on the issuance of a subpoena, provided that subpoenas for depositions would only be issued if the minority concurred or if the committee voted to issue one. Last year, that language was proposed by a Republican chairman, ratified by the Republican majority in committee and in the House, and implemented without any problem during the travel office investigation. This year, we told Chairman Burton that we would support his request for subpoena power if he followed that common-sense process. It did not give the minority a veto, it only gave us a chance to be heard. That is why the House has always conducted its investigations in this manner. As this chart indicates, from 1971 to 1994, no Democratic chairman ever issued a unilateral subpoena, never. But since February, Chairman Burton has issued 156 unilateral subpoenas for documents. And he is now threatening to issue hundreds and hundreds of subpoenas without any debate or committee approval for depositions. No Member of Congress, no American has ever had that breadth of power. It is a terrible idea even if it were being handled responsibly. But it is not. The record of these past 4 months proves that it is being used as a raw partisan tool. The second chart, this one over here, shows that Chairman Burton has sent over 280 subpoenas and letters seeking information to Democratic targets. Only 10 Republican targets have received subpoenas or letters seeking information. The third chart, over at the end here, shows the Democratic targets have submitted over 320,000 pages of documents to the committee. Republican targets, as my colleagues can see from that chart, have given us a total of 15 pages. There is not even a pretense of fairness. If there were, our request to subpoena Haley Barbour would have been granted weeks ago. Instead, it was refused by the chairman. So this is what we have. The chairman finds the Clinger precedent set just 1 year ago too personally confining. He has decided to contend that longstanding practice Chairman Clinger articulated no longer exists, and he is refusing to allow any debate or votes on his subpoena decision. This multi-million-dollar partisan crusade has no legitimacy. I urge my colleagues to follow their conscience, follow the House precedence, follow ordinary fairness, and defeat this resolution. Mr. Speaker, I insert for the Record the following: The number of subpoenas issued unilaterally by Democratic chairmen, 0--1971-1994. The number of subpoenas issued unilaterally by Chairman Dan Burton, 156--February-June 1997.

Mr. WAXMAN

Mr. WAXMAN. Mr. Speaker, I ask my colleagues to join me in congratulating Los Angeles Chapter No. 3 of the National Association of Retired Federal Employees [NARFE] on its 50th anniversary. Los Angeles Chapter No. 3 of NARFE was originally chartered in June 1947. Since that time, it has been dedicated to promoting and protecting the interests of civilian individuals and families who have retired from Federal service. With a membership of half-million retirees nationwide, NARFE provides a vital service for the dedicated individuals who have chosen a career in public service. As Los Angeles Chapter No. 3 celebrates its achievements over the last 50 years, I ask my colleagues to join me in commending it for its substantial contributions on behalf of Federal retirees and for working to improve their quality of life.

Mr. WAXMAN

Mr. WAXMAN. Mr. Speaker, the negotiations that are going on at the present time with the tobacco industry, they are requesting that they be excused from punitive damages. I want to point out to my colleagues that the tobacco industry for 4 decades has misled and deceived the American people about their product. They have lied to the Congress, and they have kept documents secret. Last week we revealed documents that had not been public before from the Liggett Tobacco Co. where they had an attorney-client privilege to try to keep these documents from the public where they knew about a safer cigarette but did not want to make a safer cigarette because their lawyers said that would mean that the cigarette they were already making was unsafe and they would be presumably admitting that. They refused to turn over to medical people information about the harm from cigarettes because they were fearful of the liability that might attach to them. Now those documents are simply the tip of the iceberg. There are over 150,000 documents that have claimed to be attorney client privilege. The attorney client privilege will not shield documents if there is fraud or criminal conduct involved, and I believe that if these documents become public, they may well lead to criminal charges being brought. One of the reasons the tobacco industry is so anxious for a settlement is that one of the terms of their settlement is that these documents would be kept secret forever. Now if these documents became public, we would know whether there ought to be punitive damages in some of these lawsuits. How can we agree in any negotiation to excuse the tobacco industry from punitive damages without knowing all the facts? So I would hope that those people that are sitting down and discussing what might be a recommendation to the Congress for settlement of a lot of these issues regarding tobacco will not recommend to us to excuse and forgive the tobacco companies for any actions they may have undertaken that would amount to punitive damages before we know fully what actions they have been engaged in. What we do know is that for four decades they have acted in a way that we would never accept from any other business or corporation in this country. They have manufactured a product and sold it knowing it is harmful and claiming the contrary to be true. They have sold a product that is addictive, and they knew that to be the case, and they denied it. They were targeting our kids, and then they denied it. What are punitive damages all about except to punish people who have acted wrongly? And if the tobacco industry has not acted wrongly in these last four decades, what industry could possibly be accused of acting more wrongly? I hope they do not come back and recommend to us that we forgive the tobacco industry for their wrongdoing and not hold them accountable if in fact punitive damages are warranted.

Mr. WAXMAN

Mr. WAXMAN. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to join my colleague, Jim Greenwood, in sponsoring H.R. 1727, the Better Pharmaceuticals for Children Act. I support this bill because it focuses on a serious but little known problem in our children's health care, and can provide some additional tools to address it. While dramatic progress has been made in the treatment and cure of diseases and chronic illnesses, it cannot be said today that our children have fully benefited from this innovation. As increasingly sophisticated medicines are developed, the knowledge needed to optimally treat children with these medicines has not kept pace. In crucial ways, our understanding of how to use these drugs for children is simply inadequate. According to the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Food and Drug Administration [FDA] only a minority of prescription drugs in the United States with potential pediatric uses are actually labeled for use by children. Since 1962, 80 percent of all drugs have been approved for adult use with an explicit disclaimer that they are not approved for use by children. This is because the research necessary to prove the safety and efficacy of these pediatrics uses is not being done, either before or after the drugs are marketed. Despite widespread recognition in Government, industry, and academia of this problem, little progress has been made to correct it. I firmly believe that the FDA has been remiss in not taking action to conclusively remedy this situation. The agency has statutory authority to encourage and require the performance of pediatric clinical studies. It should exercise that authority and take every possible step to ensure that new drugs with potential pediatric uses are approved on the basis of data demonstrating safety and efficacy in both adults and children. The Government's failure to act in this manner is unacceptable and we pay for such a failure in our children's health. It is also imperative to recognize that prescription drug manufacturers already have significant incentives to pursue research, development, and regulatory approval in the form of patent protection and other forms of market exclusivity. Much of the responsibility for the absence of adequate pediatric drug information today can be laid at their feet. However, I recognize that limited additional incentives may be appropriate in some instances to promote pediatric drug research, such as for some drugs which are currently marketed. It is my hope, however, that such incentives are only necessary in supplementing the FDA's use of existing statutory authority to ensure that adequate information is available about pediatric drug uses. H.R. 1727 would help improve and increase the information available about pediatric drug uses by providing additional market exclusivity as an incentive to prescription drug manufacturers in limited situations. Under the bill, the Secretary of Health and Human Services would determine whether a new drug might provide health benefits for pediatric populations, and have the authority to request that pediatric studies be conducted by the manufacturer to establish these benefits. Upon completion of these studies and their acceptance by the Secretary, the manufacturer would be granted an additional 6 months of market exclusivity. I am sure that many parents would be disturbed to learn that, when their infants and children receive a prescription medicine, there may not be clinical studies establishing the safety and efficacy of that treatment in children. In conjunction with independent and decisive steps by the Food and Drug Administration [FDA], I believe the Congress can change this situation for the better. H.R. 1727 can help do that, and that is why I am cosponsoring it today.

Mr. WAXMAN

Mr. WAXMAN. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to introduce today H.R. 1636, the Children's Environmental Protection and Right to Know Act of 1997. This bipartisan legislation--which has over ninety original cosponsors--builds on longstanding state and federal public disclosure programs. If enacted, this legislation will guarantee the public's right to know about the toxic chemicals in their homes and communities, and give parents the information they need to protect their children from toxic chemical hazards. H.R. 1636 means parents will have the tools to be smart consumers, whether they are buying household products or moving to new neighborhoods. Because children have greater sensitivities to contaminants in our food and air, they are especially vulnerable to environmental hazards. And when they crawl on the floor or play in the dirt, they are exposed to environmental contaminants in ways that adults seldom are. The Children's Environmental Protection and Right to Know Act is supported by the Children's Health Environmental Coalition, the Alliance To End Childhood Lead Poisoning, Physicians for Social Responsibility, the International Association of Firefighters, the American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations, the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers, the National Council of Churches, the U.S. Public Interest Research Group, the Environmental Information Center, the Sierra Club, the Sierra Club Legal Defense, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Environmental Defense Fund, Citizen Action, the Environmental Working Group, OMB Watch, Friends of the Earth, and Public Citizen. I want to summarize a few of the legislation's most important provisions. The Federal Hazardous Substances Act [FHSA], administered by the Consumer Product Safety Commission [CPSC], addresses toxic threats and safety hazards by banning hazardous children's products and requiring warning labels on hazardous adult products. However, while CPSC can usually tell whether a toy, a crib, or other consumer product presents a safety hazard, CPSC often has little way of knowing whether toxic ingredients exist in a given household product. The Children's Environmental Protection and Right to Know Act of 1997 will improve the Federal Hazardous Substances Act by drawing from the successes of California's ``Prop 65'' law. Over the past ten years, Prop 65's public disclosure requirements have resulted in manufacturers removing lead from dishes and faucets, carcinogens from diaper pail deodorizers and shoe polish, and reproductive toxins from nail polish. And for every such example we know about, dozens of other businesses are quietly finding ways to make their products safer. Under the proposal we are introducing today, manufacturers and importers of consumer products with toxic ingredients will publicly disclose the presence of the toxic ingredients to the CPSC without any new labeling requirements. In addition, our proposal will allow citizen enforcement of our consumer product safety laws. The experience with Prop 65 in California is that few such suits are ever brought. While I expect few lawsuits will similarly result from this legislation, citizen suits create a real incentive for businesses to voluntarily eliminate the toxic ingredients in the products they sell. The act will also build on a second successful Federal program, the Toxics Release Inventory. The Toxics Release Inventory was created in 1986 in the wake of the toxic chemical disasters in Bhopal, India, and Institute, WV and was aimed at giving people more information about the toxic chemicals routinely released into their communities. The law's done that, and it's also resulted in a 40 percent reduction in the release of toxic chemicals. The Children's Environmental Protection and Right to Know Act of 1997 will expand the Toxics Release Inventory to disclose the amount of toxic chemicals shipped in and out of a facility, stored on-site, and otherwise used. This will create incentives to prevent the accidents that accompany such use. According to reports by the National Environmental Law Center and the state Public Interest Research Groups, from 1993 to 1995, 23,000 accident reports involving toxic chemicals were reported nationwide--an average of 21 each day. Worse still, 1 out of 20 of those accidents resulted in immediate injury, evacuation or death. The chemical plant fire last week in Arkansas, in which three firefighters died, was but one recent tragic example. These statistics are only the tip of the iceberg, since they neither account for under-reporting of accidents nor the chronic health effects due to the accidental releases. Under the proposal, businesses will also disclose their employees' exposure to toxic chemicals, creating an incentive to reduce those exposures. We have statutes regulating chemical transportation and management, and occupational exposure to toxic chemicals to set minimum safety standards. But public disclosure will create the incentive to go beyond the minimum. In New Jersey, where public disclosure of toxic chemical use has been in place for 10 years, production-related wastes have been declining steadily since 1990, while staying steady for the nation as a whole. In Massachusetts, a survey of businesses required by State law to report their toxic chemical use shows that 60 percent decreased their use of toxic chemicals per unit of total production since 1990. In addition, 67 percent of businesses that reported implementing toxics use reduction said they actually saw direct cost savings and 66 percent reported improvements in worker health and safety. The economic benefits of focusing on toxic chemical use were apparently anticipated by industry during the passage of the New Jersey and Massachusetts laws. The New Jersey Pollution Prevention Act was supported by industry and actually signed into law at two New Jersey chemical plants. The Massachusetts law passed both houses unanimously because industry, as well as environmentalists, supported the law. In drafting this legislation, I have worked Mr. Saxton, Mr. Pallone, Mr. Markey, and Mr. Andrews to ensure that legitimate industry concerns were addressed. Under this act, for instance, business could withhold from public disclosure legitimate trade secrets regarding their toxic chemical use. Second, this proposal includes provisions to ensure that public disclosure is not unduly burdensome. The Children's Environmental Protection and Right to Know Act of 1997 will require EPA to consolidate all Federal environmental reporting--including air, waste, and water reporting and the reporting required by this proposal--eliminating hours of business effort to find and interpret the applicable reporting requirements. In closing, Mr. Speaker, the Children's Environmental Protection and Right to Know Act of 1997 will give parents information they need to protect their children from toxic hazards, provide businesses an incentive to voluntarily reduce their use and waste of toxic chemicals, protect legitimate trade secrets, and reduce the administrative burdens associated with environmental reporting. It will be good for our health and good for our economy. I ask for the support of all Members in passing this important piece of legislation.

Mr. WAXMAN

Mr. WAXMAN. Mr. Speaker, I ask my colleagues to join me in recognizing Mr. Bill Crookston, who will be honored on June 5, 1997 at the Annual Installation Ceremonies for his past year of exemplary leadership as the President of the Santa Monica Chamber of Commerce. In addition to serving as President of the Chamber of Commerce, Mr. Crookston remained active both as President of the Santa Monica Jaycees and as a member of the Rotary Club of Santa Monica, confirming his commitment to community service and leadership. During his tenure as president, Mr. Crookston maintained the delicate balance between addressing economic challenges while also providing the Chamber's membership and the community increased services, benefits, and programs. Under Mr. Crookston's leadership, the partnership between the city of Santa Monica and the Chamber of Commerce was strengthened through a number of projects, including the school to work and career education program, the homeless assistance program, health and safety programs, and environmental programs. Mr. Crookston approached his duties with a mixture of compassion and a strong business sense, encouraging cooperative efforts between the business community and community service agencies that serve Santa Monica's youth, families, seniors, and homeless populations. The members of the Chamber of Commerce and the residents of the city of Santa Monica owe Mr. Crookston a debt of gratitude for his devoted leadership. I ask my colleagues to join me in honoring Mr. Bill Crookston for his successful term as president of the Santa Monica Chamber of Commerce and in wishing him happiness and success in the future.

Mr. WAXMAN

Mr. WAXMAN. Mr. Speaker, I ask my col- leagues to join me in recognizing the distinguished career of Cantor Isaac Behar, who is retiring from Sephardic Temple Tifereth Israel after serving for 27 dedicated years. Cantor Behar was born in Shumen, Bulgaria. He studied both religion and music at the Yeshiva in Sophia, Bulgaria, and later graduated from the Musical Academy in Bucharest, Romania. In 1959 Cantor Behar moved to Israel, where he served as a music teacher and musical adviser at a school in Tel Aviv. In 1962 he was appointed as cantor of Congregation Yehuda Halevi in Mexico City, where he also served as the director of the Choir de Union Sefardi. Then in 1969 he was invited to Sephardic Temple Tifereth Israel in Los Angeles, where he served as the senior cantor until his recent retirement on December 31, 1996. During his many years at Sephardic Temple Tifereth Israel, Cantor Behar has been an inspiration to the entire congregation, but particularly to the young people. He was regarded not only as their cantor, but also as a teacher, mentor, and adviser. Cantor Behar educated and entertained his congregation with his original compositions of Sephardic sacred music and music for Shabbat and for the Yamin Noraim. His lyrical voice and knowledge of Judaism have been shared with a wider audience through his two albums, the first of which was recorded in Mexico City, and the second in Los Angeles entitled ``Songs of the Sephardic People.'' The congregation of Sephardic Temple Tifereth Israel owes a great debt of gratitude to Cantor Behar for his long and successful tenure as cantor. I ask my colleagues to join me in honoring Cantor Isaac Behar for his dedicated service and record of achievement and in wishing him great happiness and success in the future.

Mr. WAXMAN

Mr. WAXMAN. I yield to the gentleman from California.

Mr. WAXMAN. I am not going to yield to the gentleman. I will yield back my time to the gentleman from New Jersey and hope that he will yield to the other members of the committee that are here and others on our side of the aisle who want to express their views. But I thank the gentleman for taking this opportunity on the House floor so that we can alert the public as to what is going on.

Mr. WAXMAN. Let me reclaim my time and just tell the gentleman, I hope he is incorrect, and I want us to work on our committee in a bipartisan basis and to go forward together legitimately to understand the system, find abuses, hold them out to public scrutiny, learn how to reform the system that no one, I think, can defend. I know that there are members of my committee here that have taken out this opportunity for Special Orders.

Mr. WAXMAN. I thank the gentleman for his kind words. This investigation is too important to play petty politics with. I think that the American public is thoroughly cynical about the role of special interest money and the way the candidates run after that money. We have got to reform the system. This is an opportunity for us to understand the system, where it has been abused, where illegal actions have taken place, if any. But there are a lot of legal actions, as we all know, within the campaign finance area now, particularly with the opening of loopholes for soft money and independent expenditures, that are perfectly legal. Some of the most scandalous activities, I think, are some of the most legal activities in the campaign finance area. The Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich, spoke to a group the other day, and he said that he wants a thorough investigation about whether a foreign government is trying to influence American elections. How can you have an investigation about whether foreign governments may be trying to interfere in our elections but only for the Presidency, not for the Congress? If that is an important issue, let us put it all on the table. There are other members of my committee.

Mr. WAXMAN. I thank the gentleman for yielding. Mr. Speaker, there is an important reason why the House of Representatives and the Congress ought to investigate campaign finance abuses. Such an investigation is perfectly legitimate. But the one that is about to be conducted in the House is not legitimate. That investigation by the Government Reform and Oversight Committee is now on a path to a very partisan investigation. I believe if we are going to look at campaign finance abuses, we ought to look at the whole spectrum of how this system supposedly works. We ought to find out what has been going on at the White House but we also ought to understand what has been going on here in the Congress. The scope of the investigation ought to be to look at all of these matters, because the only legitimate purpose of an investigation is to lead to campaign finance reform. It is this system that is driving Members of Congress and candidates for President to go out and raise money. They are constantly out raising money and not doing the job of representing the people. We need to understand how this system has brought us to the point where we are today. When we meet tomorrow on the Committee on Government Reform and Oversight, we are going to, for the very first time, discuss our committee's investigation. We have never had a meeting to discuss it. We are going to have a vote on the scope of that investigation. The chairman, Congressman Dan Burton, has suggested that the scope be only limited to President Clinton. Can anyone believe that that is not a blueprint for a partisan investigation, a partisan witch-hunt? There is no reason for the Congress of the United States to use millions of dollars of taxpayers' money to pursue a partisan agenda. The only legitimate investigation, in my view, is to try to lead to reform and to understand how to accomplish that reform. We have another important issue that is going to be coming up in our committee tomorrow, and that is the question of issuing subpoenas and disclosing confidential information. There has never been a committee of the Congress, to my knowledge, that has ever let one person, even the chairman, unilaterally issue subpoenas. Subpoenas have always been issued either by concurrence with the minority or a vote of the committee. The investigation is not the chairman's. The investigation is the committee's. For that reason, we are proposing that the rules under which our committee operates protect the interests and the accountability of the Members for this investigation. If we do not issue the subpoenas in that committee and it is simply the chairman, how do we answer for it? And if the chairman is issuing them alone, how do we know it is not just his staff issuing subpoenas? This is important, because when a subpoena is issued to someone, they have to go out and hire an attorney. They are facing possible criminal sanctions for violation of that subpoena. They have got to worry that they are not going to comply in a precise way. I cannot tell you how many people have told me if they are the subject of a lawsuit, they get a little knot in their stomach of anxiety. Can you imagine what it means for an ordinary citizen to be issued a subpoena by a committee of the Congress on a highly charged political investigation as we are now seeing conducted? In the Senate of the United States, there is a similar investigation on campaign finance in the committee chaired by Senator Thompson. In that committee, he is operating under a scope that will look at all campaign finance issues, and he is conducting himself under the traditional rules of all committees where the chairman issues subpoenas only with the concurrence of the minority or a vote of the committee. He is taking the same view when it comes to releasing confidential information. Yet Congressman Dan Burton, the chairman of our committee, thinks he alone should be able to release confidential information whenever he sees fit. We are talking about releasing, unilaterally, virtually all documents given to the committee. These documents were given to the committee, not to one member but to the committee itself. And we are talking about confidential financial records, trade secrets, medical histories, the identity of FBI informants, and privileged attorney-client communications. There may be times when such information should be released, but that decision should not be in the hands of one person alone, even if he is the chairman of the committee. I am using this occasion to alert the Members to the fact that a very crucial decision is going to be made by the Committee on Government Reform and Oversight tomorrow. If we accept the protocol the chairman is setting out for us, we are going to be on a path of a partisan investigation which serves no legitimate purpose. Why do we need to change the rules and let the chairman have this power? No one has explained to me why that is the case. By tomorrow, the chairman will have unilaterally issued around 100 subpoenas. Members of our committee are here today, and they are going to speak on this issue, but they are members of the committee and they have never been consulted about issuing these subpoenas. People have called me, and maybe them, asking how such a subpoena could have been issued. We do not know. And we do not think it is right. No one person should have that kind of power. Power concentrated in that way is an invitation for abuse, and I do not think we ought to give Chairman Burton that option which may be too attractive to him and to his staff for them to abuse. So when we meet tomorrow, we are going to propose a bipartisan investigation. Why should this be partisan? It ought to be something done both with the Democrats and the Republicans working together, just as in the Senate they are working together under rules that they have agreed to on a bipartisan basis to conduct this investigation that they are conducting. From my point of view, I do not see any reason why there ought to be two separate investigations. I do not know why there is a Senate investigation and a House investigation and other committees are conducting parallel investigations on parts of the campaign finance issues. Can you imagine the amount of money that is being spent, in fact wasted, when the House is paying for a separate investigation than what the Senate is doing? We had joint House-Senate investigations in the past. I think it makes a lot of sense for us to do one now. But not only is the taxpayers' money being wasted in the funding of these investigations, but when an agency gets a subpoena from the House and the Senate and different other committees, they have got to stop everything they are doing and devote staff time and resources to comply with the requests for information, and they are wasting money by the multiplicity of committees that are asking them to comply. Mr. Speaker, I alert my colleagues that now is the time, if we are going to have a fair and bipartisan investigation, to get the ground rules straight. I hope tomorrow the members of the committee will go along with the suggestions that were adopted 99 to 0 in the Senate and ought to be the blueprint for our investigation in the House.

Mr. WAXMAN

Mr. WAXMAN. Mr. Speaker, I want to address my remarks to my Republican colleagues. What we are considering today is raw and ugly but, as Dizzy Dean said, ``It ain't bragging if you can do it.'' But why do we want to do it? Let us be clear on the situation here. For the last 3 months House Democrats have repeatedly supported a broad, aggressive investigation and the immediate consideration of campaign finance reform legislation. This is not a case where the minority is trying to hamstring a majority investigation. We have been ready to step up to the plate and investigate no matter what the consequences. Yet today the Republican leadership brings to the floor a bill that funds the Committee on Government Reform and Oversight and the Burton investigation at a record level with no amendments permitted. This is an investigation where the chairman is insisting on a blatantly partisan scope, a scope limited exclusively to Democratic fund-raising practices, an investigation where the normal procedures are suspended because the chairman insists on issuing subpoenas and releasing confidential information without committee debate or vote, an investigation where the most the minority will receive is 25 percent of the committee budget. That is what your leadership is bringing to the floor today. They are asking you to approve a record $12 million budget for an investigation limited to Democratic practices and led by a chairman who insists on wielding unprecedented powers. No matter how hard you work at it, you could not make this more partisan or less fair. Have we lost all perspective? The 1997 Committee on Government Reform and Oversight budget virtually matches the combined budgets of the Committees on Commerce and Ways and Means. There was a different way for past investigations. In Watergate the majority and minority jointly hired staff. In Iran-Contra the House majority and minority staff worked in the same offices together, and yet here we have a blatantly partisan scope, procedures and funding allocation. Before it is too late, you might want to rethink what your leadership thought was a good idea last night. When the Senate faced this issue last week, Republican Senators at least had the good sense to say wait a minute before approving the investigation. Here we are rushing to a vote despite the fact that the committee has never even voted on the investigation's scope or procedures. The committee has never met on this issue. Think how this is going to look. You are jamming a funding bill through without debate or votes on the investigation's most basic foundations. Yesterday the Washington Post, which wants an investigation, an aggressive one, warned that if we do not postpone this vote, the investigation runs the risk of becoming its own cartoon, a joke and a deserved embarrassment. The only thing that I would add is that it would be a joke that cost over 6 million taxpayer dollars, and that is a high price for partisanship. What the Senate did should be our model. They set forth fair rules, and yet the House leadership asks you to vote for more money than the Senate on a narrower scope that is focused just on Democrats and extraordinary power in one Member. Mr. Speaker, there is an alternative. Vote against this bill, bring to the floor a simple extension for all committees and when we return, we can at least vote on the scope and procedures before setting the funding. If you care about campaign finance reform, if you care about an aggressive, comprehensive and fair investigation, if you care about our credibility as an institution, then you will vote against this bill.