Lloyd Bentsen: “The essence of this amendment is that the State of California is trying to secede from the Clean Air Act. I do not know…”

“The essence of this amendment is that the State of California is trying to secede from the Clean Air Act. I do not know if that is the intent, but that is what will happen if we allow that. I think that is grossly unfair. Mr. Chairman, in my hometown city of Houston we are having to deal with the fact that we are a nonattainment area under the Clean Air Act. We are not down here on the floor asking for some special exemption because we cannot come into compliance, or we have to make difficult choices between point source and nonpoint source emissions. We are trying to deal with it, and we are going to deal with it. But what the Californians want to do is to have a separate deal from the other 49 States by being exempted when in fact they have the opportunity, the Governor has the opportunity, to waive the ban that the State has imposed while the EPA, which started under the Clinton administration, has started the process of reviewing the effects of MTBE on ground water. What they have found is MTBE does clean the air, and they are reviewing this. But we should not give a special deal to one State.”