Providing for Consideration of the Senate Amendment to H.R. TSCA Modernization Act of and Providing for Consideration of H.R. Reducing Regulatory Burdens Act of 2015

Floor Speech

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Mr. POLIS. I thank the gentleman for yielding me the customary 30 minutes. I yield myself such time as I may consume.

My friend from Georgia mentioned a Web site a couple times. I want to make sure that you are aware, Mr. Speaker, of democrats.rules.house.gov. That is the Web site that tells what is really going on in the Committee on Rules and in the House.

Democrats.rules.house.gov talks about the fact that there are more closed rules in this Congress than any Congress that precedes it. What does that mean? It means that Republicans have chosen to allow fewer amendments and have had more rules that allow more bills with no amendments than in any prior Congress. That is the kind of facts, Mr. Speaker, that we want to bring to your attention on democrats.rules.house.gov, an excellent Web site.

Mr. Speaker, I also want to rise today--this is the last rule that I will have the opportunity to manage in conjunction with our current Democratic staff director, Miles Lackey, who, after 25 years of public service, will be leaving at the end of this week.

As a member of the Committee on Rules, I have deeply enjoyed the opportunity to work with Mr. Lackey these last several years. Really, there are few who know the institution and its rules as well as Miles Lackey, and I personally will miss him.

Mr. Lackey is a graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He joined the House of Representatives staff back in 1987. In addition to his work in the House, he has been chief of staff to two United States Senators and a senior official in the Clinton White House. He has contributed to many pieces of landmark legislation over the last three decades.

I join my colleagues in wishing him well as he begins his new adventure on the staff at the historic Trinity Church, an Episcopal parish in New York City.

I want to express my profound gratitude, Mr. Speaker, for having had the opportunity to work with somebody of Mr. Lackey's caliber, as I join my colleagues in wishing him well in his future adventures.

Mr. Speaker, I also rise in opposition to the rule and the first of the two underlying bills, the Zika Vector Control Act, H.R. 897. It has changed its name. It is now called the Reducing Regulatory Burdens Act of 2015.

What it should be called, perhaps, is the Pesticide Trojan Horse Act, which would be a more apt name for what this bill actually does, which I will talk about in a minute.

The second bill that is covered under this rule is the TSCA Modernization Act, which is the product of years of negotiations. It certainly has both bipartisan support as well as bipartisan opposition.

It has problems especially regarding State preemption, which I will talk about, as well as several important attributes that have solved issues that have been facing our country with regard to chemical regulation for some time.

Now, first, with the first bill, we have a bill that, apparently, the Republicans thought they could change the name of and then bring to the floor again. They figured, presumably, that with ``Zika'' in the title it would be harder to vote against.

In reality, this bill has very little to do with the Zika epidemic. It is really another attack on the Environmental Protection Agency and the Clean Water Act. It is really just a pesticide industry Trojan horse bill.

I am very disappointed that we are considering a rule on this bill when there is a very real threat of Zika on our shores. There are already many Americans who have encountered Zika abroad, been infected, and have returned to our country. It is only a matter of time, Mr. Speaker, especially with the changing climate, that Zika will be endemic and will be spread in our own country by mosquitoes.

I had the opportunity to visit the Centers for Disease Control facility in Fort Collins, Colorado, in my district. In the CDC facility in Fort Collins, they conduct all of the vector-borne illness research for the CDC. That is the nexus of vector-borne illness.

What does that mean? It means diseases that are spread by ticks and mosquitoes and fleas, everything from Lyme disease to Rocky Mountain spotted fever, in this case, Zika.

The CDC had been tracking Zika for some time. For close to a decade they knew that Zika existed. However, when it spread in South America and the link was recently made to birth defects, it jumped to the top of their agenda.

Unfortunately, they lack the abilities they need and the resources they need to try to find an effective way to eradicate Zika and provide a vaccination against Zika that would then be made globally available.

That is the kind of Zika bill the Democrats would like to bring forward. It is the kind of Zika bill that Americans expect from a public health perspective. It is the kind of Zika bill that will save lives and prevent a public health catastrophe.

I think there is a better way to do business on the floor of the House of Representatives. It wasn't too long ago that our new Speaker was touting dedication to regular order, but here we are again dealing with secretive, smoky backroom deals with very little time given to open, transparent discussion or amendments.

As you can see at democrats.rules.house.gov, there have been a record number of closed bills in this Congress. Last night in the Committee on Rules, we had a partisan vote where the Democrats sought to open up this rule for amendments and the majority unanimously--the Republicans all sided together--shot down any chances for real discussion. Unfortunately, the Republicans are preventing an open discussion of ideas.

They also know the Reducing Regulatory Burdens Act--that is the pesticide bill or the Zika bill, whatever you call it--won't become law, but they are deciding to bring up yet another partisan attack on the Environmental Protection Agency, somehow saying that actions to keep us safe from harmful pesticides is what has anything to do with Zika or public health.

In fact, the EPA is acting to protect public health by regulating toxic pesticides that not only can hurt humans, but can damage our environment.

I am glad to see we are finally having a busy week on the floor of the House. But the fact is one of these bills was already defeated on suspension last week, and we have so much work to do. There are only 24 days of business in the House of Representatives before Congress gets sent home for a summer break. It shows me that we can use our time better. We can pass immigration reform, we can address our Nation's infrastructure, we can prevent the tax incentives that encourage corporations to offshore jobs, and we can reform our broken tax system.

There is a lot that we could be doing during these limited 24 days besides passing a Trojan horse for the pesticide industry. We have a list of must-do items before July, as well. Congress has to pass an FAA reauthorization. We need to pass comprehensive immigration reform. It won't get any better if Congress doesn't act. We need to address the student debt crisis and make college more affordable.

Mr. Speaker, I--and I believe the American people--would like to see all of these things happen before Congress gets another day or week or 2 months off, as Congress is expected to get in just 24 days.

TSCA reform is long overdue. The law is 40 years old. It has never really been updated, frankly, throughout its history. It has failed at controlling toxic substances, as the title has indicated it was supposed to do.

I am glad to see that a bipartisan, bicameral compromise was struck, which, for the most part, will strengthen the reform in a way that will protect our communities and public health.

There is a broad range of support for the bill, from supporters in the environmental community to labor, to the EPA, to industry groups. However, there are some serious concerns that I think we should take into account, particularly around an issue very near and dear to my heart: State preemption.

For the last 40 years, the EPA has had their hands tied in trying to regulate chemicals, which is why TSCA is considered to be the least effective environmental law out there. This bill will make it more effective and give it some more teeth. But to get any improvement on this law wouldn't take much raising of the bar, as it was the least effective environmental law out there.

The current law requires a cost-benefit analysis by the EPA which is far too high a bar to meet when it comes to protecting our children's safety. When we are talking about chemicals, we need to focus on health. And that is what this bill does. It requires that a minimum safety threshold be met by new chemicals before they are able to enter the marketplace. It makes sense.

It specifically focuses on the health of vulnerable populations like children and pregnant women who are at elevated risk of chemical exposure, which the current law does not.

Most astonishing about the current law is it actually grandfathered in over 60,000 chemicals in 1976. Today they are joined by hundreds of thousands of additional chemicals and many household products and industrial uses. This legislation would require safety reviews for all chemicals currently in use that people are exposed to.

As an example of how ludicrous the current system is, of the 62,000 chemicals on store shelves before 1976, the EPA only has studies on a few hundred. That means there are over 61,000 chemicals currently on store shelves that the EPA has not done any study on their environmental impact or human health impacts.

Even more ridiculous, the EPA's attempted ban on asbestos was struck down in 1991, due to the EPA having such a high standard for unreasonable risk. Yet we know asbestos has killed 107,000 people. It couldn't be banned under the current law, even when the EPA tried. This law will make the burden lower and, consequently, our make communities safer by reviewing far more chemicals.

I should add that the asbestos issue has largely been dealt with by liability and litigation--court cases that have lasted decades. If we could have a regulatory system that prevents unsafe chemicals from being brought to the market and sold, it will also save hundreds of millions of dollars in legal fees and awards that would ensue if the chemicals were brought to market and actually harmed people.

So in addition to preventing the harm, these types of safety regulations can actually save both plaintiffs and defendants, both companies and consumers, significant amounts of resources.

To review these chemicals, the EPA will need funding. This bill collects a fee for new and existing chemicals, which is important to make the program work. The implementation of this new framework will be extremely important for TSCA to work.

There are several other positive aspects of the bill, but the other significant one I want to mention is that it reduces the use of animals for chemical testing, which is why I am proud to say the Humane Society has endorsed the bill.

Unfortunately, however, it is not all good news. There are some negative aspects to the bill that I was hoping we would have the opportunity to address through amendment, but due to this very closed process, we have not.

There are problems with provisions limiting the States' ability to act in an aggressive and proactive manner. There are many States around the country that have or are working to enact strong provisions to protect their residents from exposure to dangerous chemicals.

So, again, in the absence of a meaningful Federal system, many States have taken it upon themselves to protect their citizens from harmful chemicals.

The argument here is, now that the Federal Government does it, we can have some kind of preemption. I personally would like to see the ability of State governments to go above and beyond the Federal regulations without being cumbered by this issue of preemption. Now, it is a nuanced preemption. I am going to talk a little about it.

There have been some improvements to the State preemption language over the last few weeks and compromises written. As drafted, States will not have has much flexibility to protect their residents from unsafe chemicals as they do today. And that is absolutely true, and it is very unfortunate.

This so-called preemption pause period means that States seeking to protect the public from unsafe chemicals may have to wait up to 3 years for the EPA to finish its review. There are also concerns with the ability of the EPA to regulate imported products.

So I believe there was an opportunity to do even more to protect the health of American people and our environment under this bill.

With regard to State preemption standards, the bill can actually take us backward by preventing thoughtful health and safety standards at the State level. But in other ways, by empowering the Federal Government and finally putting teeth in TSCA, it is a good step forward.

So I urge Members to balance the important new authority the EPA is receiving with the negative parts of the bill around State law preemption. I know this bill will have both bipartisan support and opposition.

Mr. Speaker, the gentleman from Georgia's remarks have very little to do with anybody who is denigrating the institution. I think he profoundly misunderstands the reason that the American people think that Congress isn't doing its job.

Let's talk about what Congress is doing. Today it is great. We are working. We are debating. We will probably be here until midnight.

Well, guess what?

After 3 more days of work, on Thursday, Congress will actually go on an 11-day vacation. It is working until Thursday, and then an 11-day vacation. We then come back in June, and I think Congress works for 12 days. Of course, in July, I think Congress works an amazing 8 or 9 days out of the entire month. August, zero days.

So what the American people expect is for us to be here hammering away at these issues 5 days a week, 6 days a week, and, if necessary, 7 days a week. That is the kind of work ethic that I brought to the companies that I worked for. When I was starting companies, I was working hard. Whether it was 5 days a week or 6 days a week, we worked as long as we needed to to get the job done. And that is the opposite of the work ethic of this Congress, because there are enormous tasks that this Congress is not doing.

This Congress hasn't worked at all towards balancing the budget. There are deficits of close to half a trillion dollars, thanks to the Republican tax-and-spend Congress. This Congress hasn't done a thing to fix our broken immigration system. Not a thing. It hasn't passed a single immigration bill in the entire Congress.

Let's stay here rather than go on vacation for 11 days. Let's make college more affordable for American families. Let's reduce the deficit. Let's fix our broken immigration system and secure our borders.

Those are the kinds of things I would be proud of as a Member of a Congress. I would be proud to be here 5 days a week working hard on those issues. I would be proud to compromise and work with my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to create a work product that the American people would be confident with and, of course, would increase the confidence of the American people in this institution and both the Republicans and Democrats who have the honor to serve in it.

Mr. Speaker, I want to talk a little bit about the worst of these two bills that we are considering under this rule, a bill that has very little or even perhaps no Democratic support, a bill that nearly 150 health, environmental, and fishing groups have made their opposition to. That is the Reducing Regulatory Burdens Act.

It came up last week and failed. They had rebranded it last week as the Zika Vector Control Act. Now they are removing the pretense that somehow this deals with Zika and are just renaming it the Reducing Regulatory Burdens Act. This is the insecticide Trojan horse bill.

This is really a changing game where it is the same bill week after week. It failed last week, and they are bringing it back under a different procedure this week.

Last week, apparently, they tried to use the threat that the Zika virus has posed to attack a very important law that actually protects our health and the health of our environment.

Now, of course, vector control, mosquito control, tick control, et cetera, is a very important part of managing any health crisis. But this bill really isn't about that. It is a thinly veiled ploy to undermine the Clean Water Act.

Certain pesticides are considered by the EPA to be pollutants because they are. They kill fish. They kill birds. They hurt people.

This bill would eliminate the regulatory step of requiring a permit to use these dangerous pesticides near water, effectively undercutting our primary means of protecting our water system.

Once again, if you want to use a pesticide that is considered by the EPA to be a pollutant near a water source--a river or a lake--you have to apply for a special permit. As part of that procedure, you talk about what precautions are made to make sure that it doesn't contaminate the water supply.

Under this bill, were it to become law, you would no longer have to receive a permit and it endangers the water supply.

Coming from the great State of Colorado, we always like to say that water is for fighting over. We value our precious water resources for agriculture, for our residents, and for our environment.

Anything that risks contaminating it is absolutely detrimental to our interests as a State. That is why so many sportsmen and fishermen have also come out against this bill. Zika is the enemy, not the Environmental Protection Agency. We have our priorities all mixed up.

The Centers for Disease Control is not asking for this bill. The entity charged with battling Zika is not. This is just a backdoor attack on the EPA. Public health experts are not asking for this bill.

This bill removes the EPA's ability to regulate pesticide application that is intended to protect water supply when pesticides can, in fact, be one of the worst threats to a community's water, especially for vulnerable mothers and newborns.

Instead of wasting our time with red herrings like this bill, we should be talking about how we can support the world-class research and doctors we have and need to tackle the threat that Zika poses.

So far, Zika has been found in 30 countries throughout the Western Hemisphere. As we head into the summer months, the number of Zika cases will only increase.

Evidence has indicated Zika is linked to microcephaly, which causes a baby's head to develop smaller than normal, which is going to have devastating implications for potentially an entire generation in countries that have been hit hardest by Zika. And, of course, we fear when it reaches our shores.

There are already cases in the U.S. The CDC is monitoring almost 300 pregnant women for cases of microcephaly. We need to prepare for the eventuality that, unless we act, which this bill does not do, there will be more people infected with Zika.

We need to work quickly and aggressively to mitigate the lasting effect. The President has a proposal to do that. The President has requested $1.9 billion to address Zika.

I am offering an amendment to bring up legislation that would provide this funding if we defeat the previous question.

Mr. Speaker, if we defeat the previous question, I will offer an amendment to the rule to bring up legislation that fully funds the administration's effort to mount a robust response to the growing Zika crisis instead of just paying lip service to this public health epidemic through cleverly named bills that keep changing their names and very short-term funding commitments.

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Mr. POLIS. Mr. Speaker, I hope that we defeat the previous question. That will allow the President's proposal to actually defeat Zika to come forward for a vote.

This month I had the opportunity to visit the Division of Vector- Borne Diseases at the Centers for Disease Control in Fort Collins. Now, the Division of Vector-Borne Diseases is an HHS-funded laboratory that studies vector-borne diseases, including Zika.

They are an important part of the fight against Zika. We should be supporting their efforts, not wasting precious floor time on a bill that literally endangers our waters, our environment, and our health. Adequate preparation for and, ultimately, a vaccination for Zika will save lives.

The House needs to act. We need to defeat this previous question. That is why we should be voting on comprehensive Zika legislation, not legislation that is a Trojan horse for the insecticide industry that undermines clean water and the health of our children.

Whether it is the impact on the water ecosystem or the fact that water treatment plants spend millions of dollars to clean up surface water from pesticides, Congress has an obligation to fight to keep our waters clean so that pregnant women, children, and all Americans can be healthy.

That is why we need to vote this bill down. That is why we need to defeat the previous question, to actually bring up a real Zika bill to address this public health crisis before more families are affected.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' and defeat the previous question and vote ``no'' on the rule.

I yield back the balance of my time.

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Mr. POLIS. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

The yeas and nays were ordered.

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