William R. Richardson: “Mr. Chairman, as somebody who was involved with the Clean Air Act, I rise in strong support of the Skaggs clean air…”

“Mr. Chairman, as somebody who was involved with the Clean Air Act, I rise in strong support of the Skaggs clean air amendment. I think what the gentleman from California [Mr. Waxman] has done is pointed out the tremendous potential for us, if we pass this legislation, to seriously usurp the Clean Air Act. If we move ahead with this bill, what is going to happen with the various states and some of the standards? 50 different clean air standards? No uniform protections from automobile factory manufacturing emissions? And unless we pass this amendment, I think this whole issue is going to be unclear. We need to make sure that we are exempting clean air regulations from this unfunded mandates legislation. Otherwise, we are going to have a lot of angry people, angry communities and you are going to have a public asking us immediately to revoke this ill-timed legislation. Many of us were here in 1990, when the House passed the Clean Air Act by 401 to 25. The vote was clearly representative of the American people's public desire for effective responsible federal regulations. But that is not what other advocates of the unfunded mandates legislation are telling us. They must think that the American public does not care about the quality of air that we breathe. And they must think that a double standard is okay. As currently written, the unfunded mandates legislation exempts only state and local governments. That is right.…”