July 29, 1976
Page 24514
CLEAN AIR AMENDMENTS OF 1976
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Under the previous order, the Senate will now resume consideration of S. 3219, which will be stated by title.
The assistant legislative clerk read as follows:
A bill (S. 3219 ) to amend the Clean Air Act, as amended.
The Senate resumed consideration of the bill.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The pending question is the amendment of the distinguished Senator from West Virginia (Mr. RANDOLPH), No. 1798.
Mr. MANSFIELD. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum, with the permission of the Senator from Alabama, who has the floor and will retain the floor.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will call the roll.
The second assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection. it is so ordered.
The Chair must remind the Senator from Maine that the Senator from Alabama is to be recognized under a previous order.
Mr. MUSKIE. Will the Senator yield briefly without losing his right to the floor?
Mr. ALLEN. Yes, Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I may yield to the distinguished Senator from Maine (Mr. MUSKIE) without losing my right tothe floor and without the continuation of my remarks being considered a second speech.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The Senator from Maine is recognized.
Mr. MUSKIE. The leadership is pressing to get this matter disposed of and get it to a vote. In a spirit of cooperation, I wonder if the Senator from Alabama would be agreeable to a proposal of 3 hours and a half on the Allen amendment, the 3 hours for the Senator from Alabama, the 30 minutes for the Senator from Maine.
Mr. ALLEN. That request would be as to what amendment? I have not offered an amendment as yet.
Mr. MUSKIE. May I ask, then — the Senator, as I understood it, was holding the floor yesterday for the purpose of discussing an amendment which he proposed to offer. If that is still his intent, I wondered whether or not, with that assumption, the Senator would be agreeable to that kind of agreement?
Mr. ALLEN. I say to the distinguished Senator that I have not yet offered the amendment. As I outlined here, on the floor, my preference is to act first on the Moss amendment. We have explored, as the Senator knows, the various possibilities of ordering of the votes on the amendments that have been offered or that Senators plan to offer. I am still hopeful that something can be worked out in this regard in order that the Moss amendment might be brought up first.
I think the distinguished Senator fromUtah has some remarks he would like to make with respect to his thought that it had been understood that the Moss amendment would come up first. Until such time as we have completed our exploration of the possibility of acting first on the Moss amendment, I am not inclined to offer my amendment which is close to the Moss amendment but not fully the Moss amendment.
I have only finished a small portion of my prepared remarks on the bill generally, and I have quite a few other prepared remarks to make, and then other remarks that have not been prepared but that might possibly come to mind during the discussion.
I am not able to agree on a time limit on an amendment that has not yet been offered.
Mr. MOSS. Mr. President, will the Senator yield to me under the same conditions as he yielded to the Senator?
Mr. ALLEN. Yes, I will yield under the same conditions.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Alabama yields to the Senator from Utah without losing his right to the floor and his remarks being shown as a second speech.
Mr. ALLEN. I thank the Chair.
Mr. MOSS. I thank the Senator from Alabama for his explanation of the position we occupy. I deplore the delay we have gotten ourselves into on the clean air amendments. I was assured that my amendment would be considered first on the matter of nondegradation and the study commission.
Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, will the Senator yield on that point? The Senator received no assurance from me. I have been—
Mr. MOSS. I do not have the floor and I cannot yield.
Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, will the Senator from Alabama yield so I can correct the record?
Mr. MOSS. All right.
Mr. MUSKIE. The Senator received no such assurance from me. I have been trying since last April, and I have agreed to postpone bringing up the Clean Air Act time and time again, several times out of deference to the Senator from Utah, and I have tried to reach an agreement on time when we could deal with the Moss amendment first. That was not possible. So the bill was finally brought up on Monday.
There was nothing but talk on Monday. Then Tuesday came and the leadership pressed me, not the Senator from Utah, to get amendments up and to get them disposed of in order to get the bill moving. The Senator from Utah made it quite clear to me that he did not want his amendment brought up until Wednesday, and so I scurried around looking for other amendments,
noncontroversial amendments, that had been pending at the desk that I could dispose of to fill the time on Tuesday so that I could accommodate the Senator from Utah on Wednesday.
We disposed of three Domenici amendments, proceeded in due course to the Randolph amendment which, as far as we knew, was noncontroversial, and a mere study, and the Senator from Utah chose to interpret that move as an assault upon his position, which was not the intention whatsoever, and I still do not regard it as an assault on the position of the Senator from Utah.
So whatever delay that has been occasioned has been occasioned because the Senator from Utah interpreted the laying down of the Randolph amendment as a precipitation of the nondegradation issue, which it was not at all.
Mr. MOSS. Mr. President, may I now proceed?
Mr. MUSKIE. The Senator from Alabama has yielded to me.
Mr. MOSS. May I now proceed?
Mr. MUSKIE. So I just want to make the record eminently clear that this Senator is not responsible for the delay. I tried to accommodate in every way I could the wishes and the prerogatives of the Chairman of the Public Works Committee, Senator RANDOLPH, who presented an amendment in all good faith, and has a right to have his amendment voted up or down, just as the Senator from Utah has.
So far as I am concerned, I do not see anybody's rights as being prejudiced if we have a vote on the Randolph amendment, proceed to the Moss amendment and dispose of it.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Alabama has the floor.
Mr. ALLEN. I have yielded to the distinguished Senator from Utah, and I shall not yield to anyone else without the permission of the Senator from Utah.
Mr: MOSS. I asked to say that because the manager of the bill jumps up and constantly interrupts, when any statement is made, that he wants to correct the record. He knows as well as I know that the Moss amendment was the focus of the debate that had to be determined in this matter to see where we were going to go on the Clean Air Act amendments, and he knows as well as I that it was his suggestion, to which I agreed, that I would go over until Wednesday so that we could take it all in and, perhaps, dispose of it in one session and not chop it up.
He knows as well as I that we got into this parliamentary morass because the Randolph amendment was projected into the debate before we had any general debate on degradation and the study before any orderly discussion of the Moss amendment, which all the Senators here had been expecting.
I quote the leader yesterday. He said:
I did visit a number of Senators, but the uniform answer was that they were waiting to see what happened to the Moss amendment.
So the Moss amendment is the key to the whole process.
I would like to get on with my amendment. I cannot see why the manager of the bill and the chairman of the Public Works Committee are reluctant to get on to the key of this debate. The Moss amendment has been the focus of the debate for over 4 months. All of my colleagues are aware that there are two parts to the Moss amendment, a study and a deletion of section 6 while the study is being made.
The Randolph amendment surfaced within days after my amendment was first printed, and it is clearly on its face an attempt to copy part of my amendment, and it confuses the issue. But the Randolph amendment is a weak substitute on the study section, and it fails to meet the issue.
So I would want to get the study section coupled with the suspension of section 6.
So I find the delay of the managers to get to the bill, the heart of this bill, regrettable. And, indeed, the Senator talks about the right of the chairman of the Public Works Committee, which is his right, I will agree, to present an amendment and to hope that he can get a vote on it. But I am within my rights, and I think the Senator from Alabama is within his rights, as are others, to say if we are going to dispose of this in an orderly manner, let us get to the Moss amendment. Let us vote it up or down. If it is voted down, that is fine. If it is voted to pass, and the Moss amendment becomes part of the bill, that is fine, too, and that is what this body should proceed on and not find itself snarled, as it is now.
But I can say, having worked on these amendments for months, and in consultation with many, many people, not only in my own State but many others, that this is the key to the bill that is
before us. If we do not get to the Moss amendment and have it disposed of in an orderly manner then we will probably have no bill, and I would regret that, too, Mr. President, because I think there are parts of that bill, in fact, the main thrust of the bill, that are good, and I agree with them, and I would hate to see the whole bill go down just because we cannot get to the nondegradation plus a study to see whether or not we are going to go in that direction now.
I would expect to have some rather extensive remarks yet to make on this subject and on this bill, following the Senator from Alabama, and I understand he has very extensive remarks to make, and many others have come to me and said they, too, have some rather extensive remarks to make.
So we put ourselves into an impasse where we are not going to get anyplace unless they let us come to the issue that is the basic issue now before the Senate, whether or not we are going to have nondegradation written into the law before any study is made or whether we are going to hold it out of the law until a study is made. It is that simple.
I thank the Senator from Alabama for yielding to me.