Jerry Lewis: “Mr. Chairman, I rise to reluctantly join my colleague in resisting this carefully thought out amendment but an amendment…”

“Mr. Chairman, I rise to reluctantly join my colleague in resisting this carefully thought out amendment but an amendment that, unfortunately, does damage to other programs that are disconcerting to me, for I have great appreciation for his concern. The Leaking Underground Storage Tank Program, known as LUST, and I must say that, as I noted in our ``Dear Colleague,'' we have a headline something like ``Stop Hefley's LUST'' or something. We have to change that before we put those out tomorrow. But in the meantime this was created to assist the States and tribes with the cost of cleaning up underground storage tank spills where responsible parties cannot be found to pay the bill directly. The LUST trust fund is a source of funds for this activity, although like Superfund the amount of money we appropriate from the fund is treated exactly like funding from general revenues, it scores against us in VA and outlays. The trust fund, which holds nearly a billion dollars, was funded through a gasoline tax of one-tenth of 1 percent per gallon. That tax expired at the same time as the Superfund tax in December of 1995. Mr. Hefley's amendment essentially puts the program back to the budget request level of $67 million plus.”