Departments of Veterans Affairs and Housing and Urban Development and Independent Agencies Appropriations Act, 2004-Resumed

DEPARTMENTS OF VETERANS AFFAIRS AND HOUSING AND URBAN DEVELOPMENT AND INDEPENDENT AGENCIES APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2004-RESUMED

AMENDMENT NO. 2195

Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I send an amendment to the desk.

The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. CHAMBLISS). Without objection, the pending amendment is set aside. The clerk will report.

The legislative clerk read as follows:

The Senator from Illinois [Mr. DURBIN], for himself Ms. Snowe, Mr. Jeffords, Mrs. Boxer, Mr. Lautenberg, Ms. Cantwell, and Mr. Lieberman, proposes an amendment numbered 2195.

Mr. DURBIN. I ask unanimous consent the reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

The amendment is as follows:

At the appropriate place insert the following:

None of the funds provided in this Act may be expended to apply, in a numerical estimate of the benefits of an agency action prepared pursuant to Executive Order 12866 or section 812 of the Clean Air Act, monetary values for adult premature mortality that differ based on the age of the adult.

Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I ask the following Senators be added as cosponsors of this amendment: Senators SNOWE, JEFFORDS, BOXER, LAUTENBERG, CANTWELL, and LIEBERMAN.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

Mr. DURBIN. In 5 minutes, I will try to describe very briefly what this amendment does.

This amendment will stop the Environmental Protection Agency and other agencies funded in this bill from using the discriminatory method known as the senior death discount. Right now, heart disease, cancer, and strokes are the leading causes of death of people over 65. According to CDC, air pollution can be particularly devastating to the health of seniors.

The EPA should be creating regulations to protect everybody. However, now we are in the cost-benefit era, and that means each regulation has to be costed out. In other words, we must determine the burden regulations have on the private sector of our economy, including what will it cost them. We must also determine the benefit regulations have for all Americans.

In order to reach the proper evaluation of any regulation, you have to determine the cost of the harm that is being done. That is why this amendment is being offered.

Right now, the EPA is discounting the lives of senior citizens. You may have seen this ad in magazines and newspapers showing this forlorn senior. This lady has been told that since she is over the age of 70, she is only worth 63 percent of any other person, say someone age 69. You can understand her sadness, and a sadness that might be shared, incidentally, by some 19 Senators who are 70 years old or older. Try to tell these Senators they are worth only two-thirds of those younger, and you are in for a fight-and rightly so. Their lives are as important to them and to our Nation as anyone else's life.

We need to try to establish the cost to America in honest terms, to determine, for example, the real cost of the regulation relating to heavy diesel equipment, and not say senior citizens are worth less today than others.

I ask unanimous consent that a letter in support of my amendment from the AARP be printed in the RECORD.

There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in the RECORD, as follows:

AARP,
Washington, DC, November 14, 2003.

Hon. RICHARD J. DURBIN,
Senate Dirksen Office Building,
U.S. Senate, Washington, DC.

DEAR SENATOR DURBIN: AARP commends you for your efforts to amend H.R. 2861, the Veterans Affairs and Housing and Urban Development and Independent Agencies Appropriations bill for Fiscal Year 2004, to prohibit the use of funds to "apply numerical values for adult premature mortality that differ based on the age of the adult in a numerical estimate of the costs and benefits of an agency action. . . ." We urge that you continue your efforts as the bill is folded into an omnibus appropriations measure.

AARP submitted comments in May to the Office of Management and Budget in response to its Draft 2003 Report to Congress on the Costs and Benefits of Federal Regulations. In them, we expressed our deep concerns regarding the arbitrary 37 percent discount to the life value of adults aged 70 and over incorporated by the Environmental Protection Agency in its cost-benefit analysis of the Administration's Clear Skies Initiative. We noted that the discount lacked a sound scientific basis, and we voiced concerns regarding its ultimate impact not only on older persons, but on the rest of the population as well.

OMB's Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs subsequently called upon EPA to discontinue use of the age adjustment factor cited above, and advised other federal agency analysts that they should not use it either. At the same time, the agency appeared to encourage other methodologies that might assign monetary values for adult premature mortality that differ based on the age of the adult. Application of age-related analytical methodologies or others involving population subgroupings-particularly when monetary assessments are assigned to life value-hold great risks. We are concerned that there may be insufficient science to justify such action.

Again, AARP strongly supports your efforts as well as those of Representative Thomas Allen, to ensure that the lives of older people not be devalued, and that needed protections not be shortchanged by the application of biased analytical approaches. We urge your colleagues in conference to do the same.

Should you have any questions, please contact me or have your staff contact Jo Reed or Tim Gearan in our Federal Affairs office at 202-434-3800.

Sincerely,

MICHAEL NAYLOR,
Director of Advocacy.

Mr. DURBIN. What we see, and I will summarize, is an effort by some to discount the lives of senior citizens in America when judging the impact of public health regulations. That has to come to an end. We have to make certain the policy we follow in this country, the policy that is being articulated by John Graham, the head of the OMB regulatory office, is one that counts senior citizens the same as any other citizen.

Some of the statements made by Mr. Graham are troubling. But with this statement, and the amendment we have offered today, which is identical to the one offered by the House of Representatives, this bill will say once and for all that senior death discounting has to come to an end.

I ask unanimous consent that a list of supporting groups be printed in the RECORD at the conclusion of my remarks.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

(See exhibit 1.)

Mr. DURBIN. To reiterate, this amendment would stop the EPA and other agencies funded in this bill from using a discriminatory method of regulatory analysis known as the senior death discount.

Heart disease, cancer, and strokes are the leading causes of death for people age 65 and older. According to the CDC, air pollution can be devastating to the healthiest Americans, but can be deadly for senior citizens and other vulnerable populations with these diseases. The EPA should be creating regulations that maximize health protections for everyone, especially older Americans.

However, instead of maximizing the benefits for everyone, the regulatory analysis is being manipulated in a way that makes seniors' lives, and the lives of other vulnerable populations, worth less than the lives of other Americans. This practice, commonly known as the senior death discount, devalues the lives of almost 30 million Americans who are over the age of 70.

To give you a sense of how this works, when the EPA develops environmental regulations, it must evaluate the costs and benefits of multiple regulatory alternatives. As part of the calculation of benefits, the EPA places a dollar amount on each life that can be saved by implementing each alternative. The EPA often makes a determination about which regulatory alternative to adopt based on the comparison of the benefits and costs.

Historically, the EPA valued all lives equally by using the same dollar amount for every potential life saved. But now the OMB is encouraging agencies to base the value of a life on the age of a person. In many cases, when discounting was applied, the life of each person over the age of 70 was valued at 37 percent less than the life of a younger person. In other cases, each year people aged, their lives were considered to be worth less-leading to some lives being worth a de minimus amount. In still other cases, the lives of people with illnesses or other health conditions were further devalued.

The use of the senior death discount has played a significant role in some very important environmental policies. In a rule to cut emissions from heavy diesel equipment, the EPA not only lowered the value of saving the lives of seniors, but also for children and the disabled. In the end, discounting calculations shrank the benefits from over $81 billion to just over $12 billion.

In a regulatory proposal to control air pollution from snowmobiles, the benefits were originally calculated to be approximately $77 billion by 2030. However, the health benefits dropped to only $8.8 billion-half of this decrease was due to the senior death discount and half was due to selective use of scientific studies limiting the amount of people who were affected. Applying the senior death discount in this instance made certain regulatory alternatives less appealing, and the rule was ultimately weakened as a result.

Some of my colleagues may wonder whether this amendment is still necessary, given that former EPA administrator Christine Todd Whitman said the agency would no longer discount the lives of seniors by 37 percent when calculating the benefits of regulatory policies. However, there is no guarantee that the new administrator or other agencies will follow this policy.

In addition, Whitman's remarks did not apply to other forms of discounting, which continue to be used. These other forms of discounting also reduce the benefits of important regulatory policies. Besides seniors, vulnerable populations, such as children and those with chronic illnesses and disabilities, are affected when these forms of discounting are used.

John Graham, the head of the OMB regulatory office, has backed away from his support of the 37 percent discount rate for seniors. However, as recently as June 16, he is still insisting that the value of saving lives should depend on a person's age, and he is still pushing agencies to use forms of discounting.

It seems that the end goal is to whittle down the benefits, until they are so close to the costs that regulations will be difficult to justify. So unless we take action today, it appears that the lives of vulnerable Americans will continue to be devalued.

The House already passed Congressman ALLEN's amendment to the House VA-HUD bill, which is similar to my amendment. Members from both sides of the aisle spoke in favor of the amendment and it was accepted unanimously. It's now time for the Senate to act.

Twenty-two national organizations, including AARP and a host of environmental and faith-based organizations, support this amendment.

Our Nation's regulatory system must use methods of analysis that produce regulations that will fairly protect all Americans from the effects of air pollution, toxic waste and other dangerous substances in our environment. We cannot afford to back away from decades of environmental laws that have improved the quality of life for all of us.

EXHIBIT 1

The following organizations support stopping the Senior Death Discount: 20/20 Vision; American Association of Retired Persons; American Baptist Churches USA; American Lung Association; Breakthrough Technologies Institute; Christian Church Disciples of Christ; Church Women United; Clean Air Task Force; Clear The Air; Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life (COEJL); League of Conservation Voters; Natural Resources Defense Council; National Environmental Trust; OMB Watch; Physicians for Social Responsibility; Presbyterian Church (USA), Washington Office; Sierra Club; Sisters of Mercy of the Americas, Institute Leadership Team; United Church of Christ Justice and Witness Ministries; United Methodist Church General Board of Church and Society; United States Public Interest Research Group; Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations.

Mr. DURBIN. I thank the chairman for accepting the amendment. I ask the chairman if at this point we could move the adoption, but I defer to him first.

Mr. BOND. As I indicated, we are ready to accept the amendment by the Senator from Illinois by voice vote.