Lincoln Chafee: “I wonder if I could present the counterargument to the Senator's proposal. The Senator is saying that it goes against…”

“I wonder if I could present the counterargument to the Senator's proposal. The Senator is saying that it goes against his grain and his philosophical belief that a local community cannot impose so-called flow control; a local community cannot say: We are going to build an incinerator. We are going to bond it with revenue bonds, with the revenue coming from the requirement that, for everybody in this community and every business, all trash must go to this central facility. And the reason we, the town, say that, or the city says that, is because we have to pay off the bonds to pay for the facility. And the Senator finds it disturbing, and understandably so, that in this legislation we are saying, ``No, you cannot do that anymore. Oh, yes, you can do it if you have some bonds outstanding.'' Let us say the bonds have 18 years to go and that is the expected life of the facility. But beyond that, no, you cannot have this proposal. It is a little bit like, I suppose the Senator would say, Big Brother saying to the town of Lakeland, or whatever it is in Florida, whatever the town might be, ``You can't do that.'' Here is the other side of the argument. The other side of the argument says the Constitution of the United States as interpreted by our courts says you cannot do this to start with; that no way can you be able to issue these requirements that everybody in this local community must go to point A to dump the trash.”