Political Quotes

“I thank my dear friend from New York. I commend him for his outstanding service, and I appreciate his yielding this time to me. Well, we have a bad bill on the floor. Frankly, I am embarrassed; and if I was one of the Republican managers of this bill, I would have a red face. Quite honestly, it does nothing except expose Federal employees to liability for actually enforcing the law. No oversight was conducted to bring about the consideration of this legislation. No opportunity was made for the agencies to come forward and fully set out their concerns about how this bill is a bad piece of legislation. As the chairman of the Committee on Energy and Commerce, I handled the Superfund amendments in the reauthorization acts earlier. In that effort, it was a fully bipartisan undertaking, and we worked very closely with the Reagan administration, which was present and involved in all the conference meetings. The Senate at that time was under Republican control. President Reagan signed the act on October 17, 1986, after overwhelming votes of 386-27 in the House and 88-8 in the Senate. At the one hearing that we had on this bill, I did not hear any support from the majority's witnesses. Most of them seemed to be somewhat embarrassed about the legislation and were unable to tell us anything that the legislation would accomplish in the public good or towards speeding up or improving the enforcement of Superfund.…”