James Traficant: “I support the bill. This is a common- sense approach and balance between regulations and jobs, and it is sorely needed…”

“I support the bill. This is a common- sense approach and balance between regulations and jobs, and it is sorely needed in our country. This Nation has gotten so overzealous with this environmental business that if a dog accidentally passes water in a parking lot some government agent might deem it to be a wetland. A farmer cannot even maintain the creeks on their own property from spilling over and ruining their own cropland. What kind of sense is this? The American people have had it. They are asking Congress to employ a little common sense. That is what this bill does. I have a couple of amendments. No. 1 is, the first, a standard buy American, and there should be no problem. The second one, though, states that my amendment would allow for a waiver for the encouragement and development and use of innovative pollution prevention technologies, but only if those technologies are American made to every extent practicable. I expect to have support on that amendment. But what I really wanted to talk about today is this Great Lakes initiative. The report is out. The Great Lakes initiative was originally to be guidelines, not strict binding rules, guidelines, not rules. I support the language in this bill that maintains guidelines, not binding rules for the following reasons: If implemented under binding status, the Great Lakes States will suffer as much as $11 billion in cost factors and as many as 33,000 jobs. Now, that makes no sense.…”