The TRAIN Act

Floor Speech

Mr. WELCH. Mr. Speaker, the House this week will take up a bill called the TRAIN Act. The acronym stands for Transparency and Regulatory Analysis of Impacts on the Nation. It is quite a mouthful, but what it's going to do, very specifically, is delay the implementation of two very important Clean Air Act standards that protect human health and the environment. Now, we can have a lot of arguments about proper regulation, which ones are good and which ones are bad, but can we really argue about the necessity of taking appropriate action to protect the air we breathe?

The Clean Air Act has been very successful in improving air quality around this country. Obviously, much more needs to be done. But the two provisions that are under attack by the so-called TRAIN Act are:

One regulation that regulates cross-State air pollution. Now, if you live in one State and there is a coal-burning plant in another State, the law of air motion means that the pollution is going to follow the path that the air travels, and people in a State that are on the receiving end of polluted air ought to have some protection. This has a significant impact on health. It is not as though you can have appropriate regulatory safety without having the Federal Government have some role, since air does travel according to the law of physics, not according to an act of Congress.

A second provision is the power plant emissions of mercury limitation. Mercury is a known carcinogen. It is extremely dangerous to our health, particularly that of infants. And the success that we've had in limiting mercury pollution has had dramatic impacts--positive impacts--on our health. Why? Why would we delay the implementation of a mercury regulation that is going to have significant and immediate benefit?

There may be some cost to this; that's true. But what about the cost in lives? What about the cost in health care expenditures by allowing pollution to occur?

When we do something and price it cheaply by ignoring what the external impacts of allowing something to be theoretically cheap, in the terms of lives lost, in terms of health care expenses incurred, we're not saving anybody money. We're making some money for the owners of the polluting entity, but we are not making money for society, and we are certainly not protecting it.

We have to have careful regulation. We should always be willing to look at them to get rid of things that don't make sense and aren't getting the job done, but we also need proper regulation. And when it comes to health and safety, clean air and mercury, those are two provisions that should not be delayed. This legislation would do that. It's harmful to our health, and it will be harmful to our economy.

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