Norman Mineta: “in so many areas this bill would make it harder for citizens and property owners to be protected from damaging acts by…”

“in so many areas this bill would make it harder for citizens and property owners to be protected from damaging acts by others. This is a bill which will make it harder, slower, and more costly for all of us to respond in the future to new threats to the public health and safety, no matter how great the consensus that we need to have. Frankly, from my perspective, this is the wrong direction. The idea that we should be concerned about unfunded mandates is not wrong. There is a temptation that the Federal Government will deal with its own budget problems by directing other levels of government to meet the public needs the Federal Government no longer can afford to meet. Yet, we must also look carefully at how this problem has been misrepresented, and how the proposed fix often does not do what it is intended to do. Many of the mandates we impose are essential to the public health and safety. We require cities to treat the sewage they dump in the river, and we do that for the protection of those who live downstream. We require local government which operate dumps to protect their neighbors from the toxins they allowed to be dumped at their site. The Constitution itself is an unfunded mandate: we require States to respect the civil rights of our citizens without regard to whether the Federal Government pays the States for the costs they incur in complying with the Constitution. The issue before us is how we can best respond to the issue of unfunded mandates.”