Lincoln Chafee: “Mr. President, the Senator was quite right when he said this was a carefully crafted bill. What it is, it is a balance…”

“Mr. President, the Senator was quite right when he said this was a carefully crafted bill. What it is, it is a balance between the exporters and the importers, and the exporters and the importers have agreed--are very close to agreement now--on dealing with municipal solid waste. If you throw a new equation into it, a new element into the equation, such as how many different kinds of wastes are there--oh, there is hazardous waste and there is industrial waste and there is construction and demolition debris--all of these things. We have become experts on waste around here. But we do not know what the volumes are, for example, of this industrial waste that the Senator is talking about. Suppose that added into the numbers that were exported or imported and affected how much the quotas could be that come into each State. This whole bill, clearly, would just drop down. If we want a killer amendment, this is it, Mr. President. I respect the earnestness of the Senator who offered it, and if he wants to come around sometime later in future years and say now we have worked it out with municipal solid waste, with the import and export restrictions and the volumes and how much there can be in future years and so-called ratchets, that is fine, but not today. We have enough problems with this legislation without adding this element into it.”