Frank Lautenberg: “I find this a rather distressing moment because the amendment that is proposed, frankly, will do much to undo a lot of…”

“I find this a rather distressing moment because the amendment that is proposed, frankly, will do much to undo a lot of hard work that was done in a consensus fashion in trying to arrive at a way to accommodate the need for States to dispose of their trash in a sensible way. When you say ``trash, garbage,'' et cetera, immediately it sounds like the subject is on the trivial side of things. It is hardly that because there are a few States that do not have a problem. As a matter of fact, this country of ours, and this world of ours is filled with problems created by the excess creation of trash by its citizens. It is a serious problem when you come from a State like mine, the most crowded State in the country. We still value the quality of life that we can develop. We like our hills. Some call them mountains. It depends on whether you have seen mountains or not. But they are our hills and they are our forests, they are our woodlands, and our streams. And we try to make as good use of those as we can. We want for our children nothing different than those who live in Montana or Wyoming or in the other places, the wide open places. As a matter of fact, population growth in this country is much more toward the crowded areas because young people like to be where other young people are, and as a consequence there has to be a national cooperation on efforts like this to help us deal sensibly with the problem.”