Jeremiah Smith: “That is not much time to try to make my points here. But, look, this is one of those situations where you have an…”

“That is not much time to try to make my points here. But, look, this is one of those situations where you have an amendment, part of which I support and part of which I do not, which means I have to oppose it. The clean air provisions that the Senator from California has outlined I can support. But it is unfortunate that I have to be here today, as the chairman of the committee, to choose to do something that this body chose to do 4 years ago in the Safe Drinking Water Act amendment. It is worse that the only groups objecting to this language in VA-HUD are doing so because they stand to gain attorney's fees. I support the underlying managers' amendment by the Senator from Missouri. We are going to see wasteful litigation here, and it is wrong. To put this in context would take more time than I have, but we all agree the standard on this should be reviewed. This is not a discussion about the standard. The arsenic standard needs to be reviewed. But due to the complexity and science that was needed to develop the standard, the Congress very clearly dictated a timeframe. Congress directed EPA to propose a rule on January 1, 2000, and to finalize the rule on January 1, 2001. They made it clear we wanted to provide one year from the date of publication of a draft rule to publication of a final rule. EPA cannot meet this requirement right now, and we need to get this science. We need to draw all this in. That is what the managers' amendment allows for.”