Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Bill

Floor Speech

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Mr. MARKEY. Mr. President, I also wish to spend a couple of minutes talking about another issue that is a relic of the Cold War era, and that is TSCA, the legislation that deals with toxic chemicals within our country.

There was a law passed 40 years ago to deal with toxic chemicals in our country, but ultimately that law never worked. When we look back, it is like a political, environmental Edsel, still sitting in the garage 40 years later but not useful in protecting American families from the chemicals in our society--asbestos and hundreds and thousands of others. It is just not usable.

Congress stands ready right now, thank God, to reform the last of the ``core four'' environmental statutes that have yet to be modernized. I hope we will do so with a stronger bipartisan vote than on any major environmental statute in recent American history, and that we do so soon.

This historic vote to comprehensively reform the Toxic Substances Control Act comes after years of hard work by many Senators on both sides of the aisle. We worked for some months to reconcile the two bills, and all of us were driven by the same reason. Since it was written four decades ago, TSCA has sat there untouched. It is a statute that simply does not work to protect anyone. Ever since industries successfully challenged EPA's proposed asbestos ban, EPA has not been able to effectively use the authority Congress intended it to have.

In conference, we truly did take the best of both bills. We made sure EPA will have industry fees to do its chemical safety work. We made sure there will be enforceable deadlines for EPA to write chemical safety rules and for industry to comply with them. We fixed the legal problems in the law that caused the asbestos ban to be overturned and that paralyzed EPA and prevented them from regulating some extremely toxic chemicals. We ensured that when EPA studies a chemical, it considers only the environmental or health effects of that chemical, and that it only considers the potential cost of regulation when it is writing a rule to regulate it. We made sure that EPA would act more quickly to regulate the most dangerous chemicals, and that vulnerable subpopulations, such as children, pregnant women, and workers would be protected. We made sure the industry could not continue to improperly keep information about dangerous chemicals secret any longer.

In some of the last negotiations that I helped to lead, we made sure that States could continue with the work they are already doing to protect their residents. I am particularly proud that I was able to protect Massachusetts's pending flame-retardant law in these last few key changes to the bill that were agreed to in the last few days.

The fact that we have a bill that has the Humane Society and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce both urging a ``yes'' vote tells you something. The fact that the bill is supported by the EPA, the chemical industry, many environmental stakeholders, and the trial lawyers tells you something about this bill.

This is like a political Halley's Comet. When you have Jim Inhofe and David Vitter agreeing with Ed Markey on a piece of legislation, you should take note of that moment in the history of passing legislation. That is where we are. We have something that is historic. The environmental bill of a generation is about to pass.

The fact that 403 Members of the House of Representatives voted yes-- 403 voted in support of this bill--tells you something. It tells you we rolled up our sleeves and we worked together on a bipartisan, bicameral basis to compromise in the way that Americans expect us to.

I thank all of my colleagues on both sides of the aisle and both sides of the Capitol, and I look forward to watching the President sign this important legislation to protect the health and well-being of all Americans. This is a bill that does protect us from the dangers that Americans are exposed to--whether they are Democrats or Republicans, liberals or conservatives.

This is the way the Chamber should operate. This is the way we should also consider nuclear warfighting policy. We should have the same kind of attention, the same kind of respect for the consequences for generations to come in our country. We should give it the same kind of respectful, bipartisan, bicameral attention that the public can understand.

I thank the Chair for this opportunity.

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