Reducing Excessive Deadline Obligations Act of 2013

Floor Speech

Mr. PETERS of California. Mr. Speaker, this is the final amendment to the bill, which will not kill the bill or send it back to committee. If adopted, the bill will proceed immediately to final passage, as amended.

My amendment simply states that the bill won't take effect if it results in fewer cleaned-up sites, if it shifts responsibility from polluters to the American taxpayers, and if there is greater exposure to carcinogens for schools, hospitals, and nursing homes within 5 miles of a contaminated site.

Mr. Speaker, for too long, we have heard as an article of faith that we have to choose between a prosperous economy and a clean environment, the idea that we can't have both. That is a false choice.

People in San Diego and people around the country know that we deserve nothing less than both. We need to provide both economic opportunity and clean air and water for our future generations.

In my first career, for 15 years, I practiced environmental law in the public and private sectors. Many of my clients were businesses or local governments that struggled to understand and follow what they felt were overly complex and time-consuming regulatory requirements, and from this experience, I have no doubt that overly burdensome red tape hurts our economy.

So I hope that in any case where we can streamline and simplify environmental regulations, while still protecting and enhancing the health of our rivers, lakes, oceans, and air, that everyone in this Congress would be onboard.

I hope that we all agree that real substantive protections are important to ensuring that our drinking water, ocean water, and the land we live and farm on are safe for our children, the elderly, and our families. These resources are economic assets that we have inherited, that we have a responsibility to preserve, and that we must be active stewards in protecting.

At the heart of the Superfund program is the commonsense idea that those who caused pollution would pay to clean it up. The underlying bill turns away from this basic principle and, instead, puts hardworking taxpayers who didn't cause the pollution on the hook for the expensive cleanups. That is not right, and it is not a good incentive for preventing future contamination.

The bill creates an unfunded mandate by allowing States to move polluted sites off of their regulatory plates to the Federal Superfund list, shifting responsibility from corporations and States to the Federal taxpayer, and just as the Congress has slashed the Superfund budget 40 percent over the last 5 years. If we add more sites to the already burdened Federal list, we will certainly delay cleanups at the expense of human health and the environment.

Second, the bill, for the first time ever, would subject our Federal employees to unfair penalties and perhaps even imprisonment if, in the good faith execution of their duties, they find that they can't comply with a State order because it directly conflicts with Federal law. Putting Federal workers who are tasked with cleaning up these heavily polluted sites in this position is beyond bad management, it is cruelly unfair, and it effectively scares employees from doing the very job we pay them, as taxpayers, to do.

Finally, the Department of Defense has serious concerns with the bill, as it would make it difficult to clean up many of the nearly 10,000 Superfund sites on military bases. According to the military, the bill would waste money on unnecessary litigation instead of actual site cleanup.

Just north of my district in San Diego, a part of Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton is a Superfund site. Nine areas of soil and groundwater have been contaminated by pesticides, metals, herbicides, and more. These waters sources flow into the neighboring Pacific Ocean, and every day that we delay the cleanup and restoration of this site, our servicemembers, civilians working on the site, and numerous endangered species in the region face adverse risks. We cannot let this continue.

In these lean fiscal times, we must make the most of limited Federal resources and taxpayer dollars. This legislation would bring with it unnecessary litigation, more spending that doesn't go to fixing the problems, exactly the kind of waste we are trying to eliminate from the Federal budget.

My motion to recommit ensures that we are both careful stewards of the taxpayer dime and the environment. We must support laws that protect human health and the environment and continue to enforce the idea that polluters--not hardworking taxpayers--pay for what they pollute.

I call on my colleagues not to fall for the false choice between growing the economy and protecting the environment. We can and we must do both. Vote ``yes'' on this motion, and stand with me to protect the taxpayer, protect children's health, and ensure that those who cause pollution pay to clean it up.

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

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