Making Further Continuing Appropriations for Fiscal Year 2003

Mr. EDWARDS. Mr. President, this administration has made new rules that are the biggest rollback of clean air protections in history. The amendment from me, Senator Lieberman, Senator Jeffords, Senator Reid, Senator Daschle, and others says: Before the administration puts kids with asthma and seniors with respiratory problems at risk, we ought to take at least 6 months to see what effect it is going to have on their health. In other words, what we are saying is let's look before we leap.

The amendment from my friend from Oklahoma says exactly the opposite. It says let's leap and then later we will look. What are we going to say when the study that he is proposing is completed if, in fact, it shows what all of us believe it is going to show now, which is that this change will cause pollution, it is going to put kids with asthma at risk, it is going to put senior citizens with serious respiratory problems at risk? What are we going to say to them, those kids who have had asthma attacks, seniors who have had serious heart or respiratory problems as a result of these changes in the rules?

In other words, what the Inhofe amendment is suggesting is let's pollute more now, study it, and when we find out we are wrong we will go back and do something about it.

The responsible thing to do is to conduct a serious, quantitative analysis so we can determine what impact this will have on kids and what impact it will have on seniors' health before it has the force of law.

This study that is referred to by my friend from Oklahoma could well have been bought and paid for by the administration's own people. It is called "qualitative," which means it is guessing by political appointees as opposed to serious analysis. The career officials within the EPA itself have said that it is self-selecting and misleading. One of the key States that is cited in the study has actually disavowed it.

The bottom line is this: The EPA has never scientifically studied and modeled this issue. The one analysis that did do that, by private consultants that the EPA has used in the past, says that these new rules will cause 120 tons more pollution at just two factories.

We should not leap before we look. We need to see what impact this will have on the health of kids and seniors. And all we are asking is 6 months.

I reserve the remainder of my time.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. EDWARDS. Mr. President, the administration has proposed some of the most dramatic changes in the Clean Air Act that have been made in our history. All this amendment says is before we make these significant changes, we take a serious look at a quantitative study of what effect it is going to have on human health, particularly kids with asthma and seniors with cardiorespiratory problems. Look before we leap. It is that simple.

The studies that have been done have not been serious scientific studies. There has not been any serious scientific study done to support this rule. The only serious scientific studies say this rule will cause significantly more pollution.

In addition to that, the Governors, although they support some kind of reform, specifically do not support this reform, and so it is critically important that Senators support this amendment for the sake of our kids and for the sake of our seniors. Six months just to determine what effect this will have on the health of our kids and our seniors is a perfectly reasonable, responsible thing to do. I ask my colleagues to vote for the amendment.