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One of the important things about environmental protection and 

 environmental regulation is that we are constantly gaining new 

 understanding and new information, and we have to allow for a 

 system that integrates that information as it becomes available and 

 allows us to make changes as we get a better understanding. What 

 we knew 10, 20 years ago when we wrote some of the original laws 

 has changed. We have grown in our knowledge and we need to 

 bring that knowledge to the table. We need to reach out and in- 

 volve all parties concerned in the issues and seek to establish some 

 sort of criteria for how we then rank or prioritize. 



I do not think it is an easy undertaking, but I agree that it is an 

 extremely important one. 



Chairman Glenn. You mentioned the coordinating role that the 

 White House will perform in some of these areas, and I am inter- 

 ested in how, not just on a yearly report-type basis, but in how you 

 will do this on a daily basis, because as you mentioned, almost 

 every agency of Government has some function to perform under 

 environmental law, and it is very, very complex. 



I like a simple approach, too, of just saying, OK, we elevate, as 

 Senator Roth has talked about and Senator Chafee and Duren- 

 berger talked about, and that is very appealing. Just say, we just 

 elevate and that is that. The only reason that we have put in a 

 commission in the bill is to help look at some of these things origi- 

 nally. We have tailored this down, now. It is now just an examina- 

 tion within the agency itself. I do not want this to be confusing. 

 But when we originally talked about getting into EPA and elevat- 

 ing this to Cabinet status, my thought at that time was, we really 

 wanted to simplify Government. There are functions under EPA 

 and environmental law all over the Government, almost in every 

 agency and department. The responsibilities for carrying these 

 things out, it is one of the biggest webs of things you ever saw 

 when you try to put it on an organizational chart. 



So we wanted to take as many of those things as possible and 

 say, let us simplify. Let us put them under one head so they can be 

 administered properly and coordinated within one department. We 

 ran into a real buzz saw on that one. 



That is the reason that we tried this. But because of all the 

 sacred cows and all the people that have a special interest in CEQ 

 or whatever, everybody had their own pet rock here that they 

 wanted to protect, and so we ran into a real problem in that. What 

 we did was we backed off and said, well, OK, this obviously is 

 above our pay grade in trying to decide these things. These things 

 have got to go somewhere. So we backed off and said, "We will 

 form this commission to look at this with the idea of hopefully co- 

 ordinating some of these things in Government." 



Well, even that idea ran into such opposition that we finally 

 said, "OK, there are enough regulatory problems within the agency 

 itself that we will just let the Commission do that within the 

 agency." But this outside problem is still there, and it is one that 

 you are going to have to deal with. I, frankly, do not know how you 

 do it. It is monstrously complex, almost more than any other de- 

 partment of Government. You have this web of interrelated respon- 

 sibilities that is all over Government. That is going to be your, I 

 think, your biggest problem. 



