Chairman Glenn. The statement will be included. 



Senator Lieberman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 



In some sense this bill runs against the flow of what is happen- 

 ing in Washington now where there is an awful lot of talk about 

 reinventing Government and doing away with Government agen- 

 cies, but I think the counterflow represented by this bill is quite 

 appropriate, because in the other cases, we are really talking about 

 eliminating form where the substance no longer exists. 



This is the happy case where form follows substance, where the 

 substance of the importance of environmental protection to our 

 country, to our Government, has been established, but the form, 

 the status of the Cabinet, is not there, and the presence at the 

 table is not there in the fullest sense. Clearly, one of the intentions 

 of this bill is to make sure that environmental protection goals and 

 values be integrated into policy-making throughout our Govern- 

 ment. So I strongly support the bill. 



Having said that, I do want to respectfully respond to the ques- 

 tion about whether this should be a clean bill or not, and I do it in 

 the spirit of healthy debate, I hope. As I look at this bill, it is, re- 

 spectfully, not a clean bill now. 



In other words, it does not just elevate EPA to Cabinet status. It 

 creates a Bureau of Environmental Statistics, which I support. It 

 calls for a study by the National Academy of Sciences on the ade- 

 quacy of data collection procedures, which I support. Title II au- 

 thorizes the convening of an international meeting on energy effi- 

 ciency and renewable energy. It encourages the establishment of 

 an Office of UNEP, U.N. Environmental Programs, to monitor 

 annual carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions. Title 

 III creates a Commission on Improving Environmental Protection. 



All of these, I think, are worthy steps, and I just want to state, 

 obviously without the intention of hampering the future of the bill, 

 that we are here present at the creation of a new department and 

 as such we have opportunity to create in the form some of the sub- 

 stance that we want to see occur. 



I have three particular areas that I would be interested in 

 having considered by the Committee of my colleagues in the Senate 

 to express what I think are some generally accepted goals that we 

 all have about environmental protection. The first would be to 

 create — and I have been working with Senator Mikulski and my 

 colleague from New Jersey is at the table. Senator Lautenberg — to 

 create within the new Cabinet-level Department of EPA an insti- 

 tute that would coordinate the development of environmental tech- 

 nologies by our Government which are critical both to our environ- 

 mental and economic future, would coordinate research within that 

 institute and would also coordinate research under a program, au- 

 thorized in a bill that I have already submitted, by other Govern- 

 mental agencies to make sure that we in America are at the fore- 

 front of the development of environmental technology. 



Second, there is now within EPA an unofficial office of small 

 business ombudsman. The whole relationship of environmental reg- 

 ulation to the small business community has too often been adver- 

 sarial. We need their cooperation. We need an emphasis on pollu- 

 tion prevention, and I would like to see us take that small business 



