House Votes to Curb Unfunded U.S. Mandates

WASHINGTON — The House overwhelmingly approved landmark legislation Wednesday restricting Congress from imposing requirements on states unless the federal government picks up the tab, and Republican leaders immediately announced plans to review existing laws in search of expensive “unfunded mandates.”

The legislation was approved, 360 to 74, with more than half of the Democrats joining Republicans in voting for the measure after a floor debate that was unusually civil for the current Congress.

The Senate already has passed similar legislation. A conference committee will have to iron out minor differences between the two bills before the second major piece of legislation from the 104th Congress can be sent to President Clinton, who has expressed support for it.

“This bill will restore state and local governments to their true places as partners in our federal system,” declared Rep. William F. Clinger Jr. (R-Pa.), the bill’s House sponsor. “The message was: Stop us before we mandate again.”

While the bill applies only to future legislation, House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) said that congressional leaders intend to institute special House proceedings to eliminate provisions of existing laws that are widely deemed as obnoxious or burdensome to state or local governments. Gingrich said that monthly “correction days” would be established to take up the changes outside the established committee process.

“Our goal is to say, ‘Let’s go and look at the most destructive and least useful federal requirements that already exist and let’s piece-by-piece change them.’ But let’s get it done. Let’s not wait around.”

As an example of the kind of federal requirements that could be expunged from the books quickly, Gingrich referred to a provision of the federal Clean Water Act that has imposed treatment standards on the sewage that San Diego dumps into the Pacific Ocean.

Gingrich called the provision “a $10-billion hit on one city” and suggested that some form of waiver would be taken up quickly when monthly correction days begin in March.

The unfunded-mandate bill would make it more difficult for Congress to enact laws that would force state, local and tribal governments to carry out programs unless federal funds are appropriated to carry them out. If legislation establishes programs that would cost state and local governments a total of more than $50 million annually or private industry more than $100 million annually to carry out, Congress would either have to earmark funds to carry out the programs or vote explicitly to waive the prohibition. If neither is done, a federal mandate law becomes void.

“If we think something is important enough to mandate, we ought to be challenged to find the money to fund it,” said Rep. Rob Portman (R-Ohio).

But many of the bill’s Democratic opponents argued that in an era of severe fiscal contraction, such money will be impossible to find. The bill would simply discourage Congress from setting any national standards in the future, they argued.

“I’m for a highly reformed federalism, but not for the end of it,” said Rep. Sander M. Levin (D-Mich.), an opponent of the final bill.

The fate of the correction days proposal in the Senate is far from certain, however. Any revisions approved by the House would require Senate passage and a presidential signature to become law. Although Gingrich expressed hope that the Senate would follow suit, there is no similar mechanism in the upper chamber for considering revisions outside of the normal committee process, nor are there any plans to put such short cuts in place.

Gingrich’s proposal immediately raised concerns that it would be used to dismantle landmark environmental, labor and public health and safety laws piecemeal, rather than trying to review and alter them through the more laborious committee process.

“This process could allow you to pick laws apart, piece by piece,” said Rep. George Miller (D-Martinez), a champion of many of the environmental and health and safety laws that Republicans have targeted for changes.

“It’s much easier to attack the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act and the Special Education Act piece by piece, by anecdote, than to reform them on the basis of facts and reason,” Miller said.

Miller said that the correction days would be a “holiday for special interests and their high-priced lobbyists and public relations firms.” He predicted that those interests would try to short-circuit Congress by casting themselves as victims of senseless bureaucracy. Gingrich said that he had discussed the idea with governors and with Clinton.

The governors, he said, called it “a very important step” and Clinton, Gingrich reported, was “very positive about the idea of us sending maybe as many as 20 or 30 correction acts a month . . . that would each take care of something that was passed that had an unintended consequence or that was peculiarly destructive in implementation.”

The EPA is engaged in negotiations with San Diego in the case that Gingrich cited Wednesday. Congress last year passed a bill allowing San Diego to apply to the EPA for a special waiver of a Clean Water Act provision that requires cities and industries to treat sewage waste to an advanced level if it is being dumped into an ocean area where marine life could be disrupted.

San Diego officials have been preparing that application and Browner said Wednesday that the EPA is optimistic San Diego’s current plan to treat and pipe waste water into the Pacific would meet federal standards.