Larry Craig: “I rise in support of the Faircloth amendment to S. 2019, the Safe Drinking Water Act Amendments. As reported, section 3…”

“I rise in support of the Faircloth amendment to S. 2019, the Safe Drinking Water Act Amendments. As reported, section 3 of the bill would add a part G--sections 1471- 1479--to the Safe Drinking Water Act, requiring the EPA Administrator to make grants to States for capitalizing State revolving loan funds [SRF's] to finance facilities for the treatment of drinking water. This new grant program is modeled after a similar one created in the Clean Water Act. Unfortunately, the new section 1477(a) in the bill would apply the requirements of the Davis-Bacon Act of 1931 to the SRF's. Because Davis-Bacon directly applies only to public works and public buildings, it would not apply to SRF's without such an explicit extension. Davis-Bacon should not apply to SRF's; it would amount to another Federal mandate on the States: Davis-Bacon is a standard for Federal procurement contracts for construction--it shouldn't be imposed on State and local decisionmaking about State and local needs and priorities. The Davis-Bacon provision in S. 2019 is another example of the Federal Government giving with one hand and taking away with the other. The bill says that we'll help pay for some of the capital costs of Federal drinking water mandates. But then we add Davis-Bacon to make capital improvements more expensive, more regulated, and more paperwork-intensive.”