NEWS FOCUS
Congressional Outlook '90 Lois R. Ember, David J. Hanson, Janice R. Long, and Pamela S. Zurer, C&EN Washington
The new spirit of cooperation that many expected between the new Bush Administration and the new 101st Congress didn't quite work out. There were quite a few confrontations between the two over the past year/particularly over how much money to spend on what programs. Still, there were enough areas of agreement on such issues as the need to finally get on with cleaning up the nation's air, to improve the country's science education system, and to remove potentially harmful pesticides speedily from the market that the second session of the 101st Congress may see the enactment of a number of pieces of legislation that have languished in the back halls of Congress for some time. In this annual preview, C&EN looks at some, but by no means all, of the issues affecting the chemical community to be addressed in the coming session of Congress. Budget. Will fiscal 1991 be the year in which Congress finally goes along with the oft-repeated request to double funding for the National Science Foundation over five years? Will it provide enough money for other research funding agencies, so that their budgets do more than keep pace, if that, with the inflation rate? Will Congress find the money to finance the many proposals for improving science education at all levels? The answer, unfortunately, is most likely no. The squeeze on the federal budget won't ease very much despite the touted "peace dividend" from the rending of the "Iron Curtain." Congress barely managed to meet the mandatory deficit target of $100 billion, plus the $10 billion built-in fudge factor, for fiscal 1990. The target for fiscal 1991 is $64 billion, which means that Congress is going to have to find at least $36 billion in further savings in the coming year. 8
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That doesn't leave much room for a budget increase, given President Bush's demonstrated adherence to his pledge of " n o new taxes." The budget juggling act for fiscal 1991 will
begin just as soon as Congress reconvenes on Jan. 23. The Administration's budget plan should, but probably won't, be ready and waiting for the returning lawmakers. Reportedly, the plan will meet the $64 billion deficit target. But if the experience of past years is any indication, Congress won't be particularly happy with how the spending cuts are achieved and will set about writing its own budget, which is Congress' responsibility under the Constitution. Business. Prompted by the October 1987 stock market crash, the House Ways & Means Committee and the Energy & Commerce Subcommittee on Telecommunications & Finance, along with the Senate Finance Committee, all began the first session of the 101st Congress with an intensive scrutiny of the phenomena surrounding the wave of leveraged buyouts and mergers that had swept Wall Street and of how the stock market responded to unusual pressures. However, by spring the issues had been moved to a back burner. Then came the ministock market crash of 1989, and the issue
heated up again. In the final days of the first session, Congress, in the budget reconciliation bill, agreed to several minor revisions in the federal tax treatment of corporations that responded to concerns about mergers, acquisitions, and excessive levels of corporate debt. One such provision places limits on federal tax refunds arising from interest payments on debt that replaces equity. The Senate Banking, Housing & Urban Development Committee and the House Telecommunications Subcommittee both approved legislation giving the Securities & Exchange Commission increased authority to deal with severe market disruptions. Both bills await further action. The limited, one-year extension of the R&D tax credit and the tax credit for corporate expenditures on university research means that both issues will be revisited during the second session of the 101st Congress. Also returning will be legislation designed to limit the use of "surplus" employee pension-plan funds to pay for anything but retirement benefits. Both the Senate Committee on Labor & Human Resources and the House Committee on Education & Labor included such legislation in the reconciliation bill, but the provisions were stripped from the final version.
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News Focus Chemical-biological warfare. "We expect the Department of Defense to request big money for the 155-mm artillery shell, the Bigeye bomb, and the multilaunch rocket to get the binary chemical weapons program juiced up," says a staffer on the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Rep. Dante B. Fascell (D.-Fla.), chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and Rep. John E. Porter (R.-Ill.) are again expected to take the lead in defeating the Pentagon's request. And the committee staffer expects that several factors will make their efforts easier this year. First among these factors is the decreased Soviet threat. Intelligence agencies have downgraded Soviet chemical capability from 300,000 tons to 50,000 tons of chemical agent. And the Soviet Union claims to have stopped production in April 1987. Second, the rapidly changing circumstances in Eastern Europe and in the Soviet Union will make it difficult for the Pentagon to argue for increases in any part of the defense budget. And third, the arms control environment has brightened considerably after the Malta meeting between President Bush and Soviet Secretary General Mikhail S. Gorbachev. The binary program has run into practical and technical difficulties that need to be corrected before more money is allotted to the program. The Bigeye bomb can't pass developmental and operational tests, according to the General Accounting Office. And the
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so-called DC/DF production facility (which would make one of the chemicals in the binary shell) at Pine Bluff, Ark., was to have been completed last September, and completion is now likely to be delayed several more months. At present, the Pentagon cannot meet its own schedule for producing binary artillery shells. Money requested last year for such production is, by Congressional decree, being held in reserve until the Pentagon can meet the schedule. Still, more roaring battles are likely in the House and Senate over chemical weapons funding this year. Sen. David H. Pryor (D.-Ark.) is again expected to carry the flag on this issue in the Senate. According to a committee staffer, Fascell and other committee members hope "that Bush seizes leadership, halts production of binary weapons, and puts all monies requested into research and development of these weapons." Congress would wholeheartedly support such action, he notes. Clean air. Renewal of the Clean Air Act will consume a good part of Congressional debate on environmental bills this session. It wasn't supposed to be so. Remember when President Bush vowed to sign a clean air bill into law on Jan. 1, 1990? Bush sent a bill to the Hill and then Congress quarreled over regional and partisan issues, delaying passage till the second session of the 101st Congress. Prospects for passage of a clean air bill this session are bright. One harbinger: The Senate Environment Committee, for the first time in more than 10 years, voted out a bill that now will be hotly debated on the floor. Senate majority leader George J. Mitchell (D.-Me.) "expects extensive debate" on the air bill, says Steven Shimberg, a staffer on the Environment & Public Works Committee. "The clean air bill [S. 1630] is the first item of business when the Senate returns on Jan. 23, and Mitchell has said the Senate will remain on it until the bill is finished," he adds. The resulting omnibus committee bill, a combination of three separate measures on ozone, acid rain, and toxic air pollutants, is stricter than President Bush's clean air proposals. The committee also added two unexpected provisions that strictly control municipal waste incinerators and ozone-depleting chlorofluorocarbons. Both are controversial and likely to be hotly debated on the Senate floor. They are not the only contested issues. Others involve economic aid to some states hard hit by compliance with acid rain provisions, and whether the bill should contain an alternative fuels provision. Sen. Robert Dole (R.-Kan.) has asked for a detailed cost estimate of the bill reported out by the Environment Committee. Committee staffers are concerned that the Senate Republican leader might make the bill's costs an issue during floor debate. President Bush's clean air bill, offered last year, is the vehicle being used in the House to develop a reauthorized Clean Air Act. This omnibus bill, H.R. 3030, has moved slowly in the House and is now stalled at the subcommittee level. Before the Congressional recess last year, the House
Energy Subcommittee on Health & the Environment completed its markup of H.R. 3030. This came on the heels of the unprecedented agreement between subcommittee chairman Henry A. Waxman (D.-Calif.) and full Energy Committee chairman John D. Dingell (D.-Mich.) over motor vehicle tailpipe emissions. The bill is stalled in the House Energy Subcommittee on Energy & Power, where chairman Philip R. Sharp (D.-Ind.) is holding it up. He is seeking concessions for midwestern utilities by championing a national cost-sharing plan for controlling acid rain. But impending Senate floor debate on a clean air bill and Bush chiding Congress for sitting on his legislation are likely to propel Energy & Commerce chairman Dingell to move the bill to full committee quickly. There, the air toxics debate will center on the number of major sources to be regulated. The President's bill calls for regulating half the major sources within seven years, leaving the Environmental Protection Agency to decide on the need to regulate the remaining ones. Waxman in his bill, H.R. 2585, calls for EPA regulation of all major source categories within eight years. Many of the air toxics amendments to a final clean air bill are likely to be drawn from H.R. 2585. For example, H.R. 2585 also contains accident prevention language more stringent than the President's bill,
H.R. 3030. The President's bill calls for regulations to prevent and detect accidental releases of toxic chemicals. It also sets up procedures for emergency response after an accident. In addition, the Senate bill includes language to prevent accidents and to establish an investigations board separate from EPA. Education. Concerns over the quantity and quality of science, math, and engineering education hit a high point in 1989, and more than a dozen bills were introduced in Congress (many at the very end of the last session) that addressed the issue in one way or another. A number of hearings on the issue have been held by various subcommittees and more are scheduled for this year. These bills include provisions that would encourage students to enter scientific and technical fields; to pursue advanced degrees or go into teaching; set up some sort of regional consortia to improve math and science teaching; or provide grants for the development and distribution of improved school curricula for science and math. What is likely to happen is that these will be wrapped up into an omnibus science and math education bill that will move through both houses. The vehicle that will be used is a major piece of legislation being prepared by Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D.-Mass.), chairman of the Committee on Labor & Human Resources, and Sen. Mark O. Hatfield (R.-Ore.), the Appropriations Committee's ranking minority member. The nonpartisan bill will focus on solving the problems of general scientific literacy and filling the education "pipeline" with students studying science and engineering for the future. The major titles of the bill will focus on efforts to enhance teacher training, beginning at the kindergarten level, for science and math education. Also included will be provisions for the creation of new scholarship opportunities for teachers to study science and for undergraduate science and math students. The bill will try to increase postdoctoral fellowships in selected fields and improve availability of continuing education opportunities. The Kennedy-Hatfield bill will also try to improve participation in science and math by women and minority students, who are seen as vital to the U.S. technical future. Energy. As usual energy issues in Congress are intimately tied to environmental issues. President Bush's version of the Clean Air Act amendments includes several parts that affect energy use and supply, including methods for abatement of acid rain and the use of "alternative fuels" in cars. Sen. J. Bennett Johnston (D.-La.), chairman of the Energy & Natural Resources Committee, has scheduled two days of hearings, beginning Jan. 24, on the energy policy implications of the new clean air bill. Specifically, Johnston says his committee is interested in testimony on the acid rain provisions of S. 1630 relating to the emissions cap, the allowance trading system, and cost sharing. The committee also will be examining the impacts of the nonattainment and air toxics provisions of the bill on the oil and gas industry and the electric utility industry. January 8, 1990 C&EN
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News Focus
A number of hearings were held last year on the Administration proposal to require cars to use fuels other than gasoline, and more have already been scheduled for 1990. Although methanol has been the most touted alternative, Congress is also considering compressed natural gas (which is available and converting cars to run on it is relatively cheap), ethanol, liquefied petroleum gas, electricity, and reformulated gasoline that will burn cleaner, reducing both fugitive and tailpipe emissions. A number of other energy issues also will see legislation introduced in the next session. These include trying to set up an independent corporation to handle the job of uranium enrichment for the government, a comprehensive bill to deal with nuclear waste cleanup at the various Defense Department sites, and a new R&D program on what are called inherently safe advanced nuclear power reactors. Global change. The potential for significant climate change brought about by accumulating greenhouse gases—such as carbon dioxide, methane, and chlorofluorocarbons—will continue to be a hot topic in Congress this year. Legislation aimed at reorganizing federal research on global environmental change will probably pass easily early in the session. And, like last year, this session probably will see several bills aimed at reducing greenhouse-gas emissions in the U.S., mainly through energy policy. Also, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee likely will keep a close eye on 12
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the Bush Administration's progress in working toward an international treaty on climate change. Last year bills were introduced in both houses of Congress to improve the coordination of federal agencies working on global change. There is broad support in the House for a bill by Rep. Robert A. Roe (D.-N.J.) that would transfer authority for such research to the Committee on Earth Science (CES, part of the White House Office of Science & Technology Policy) from the National Climate Program Office in the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration. CES last year prepared a global change research plan that was well received in Congress. The plan delineates priorities and assigns responsibilities among various agencies. However, CES was created by Presidential directive and there is fear on the Hill that it could be abandoned, according to a staff member of the Natural Resources & Environment Subcommittee of the House Science Committee. Roe's bill would give a legislative mandate to CES. Similar legislation, introduced in the Senate last session by Sen. Ernest F. Hollings (D.-S.C), is ready for a floor vote. Several members of the Senate Energy & Natural Resources Committee will soon introduce a joint energy policy bill aimed at curbing global warming. The bill will be similar to one put forth last year by Sen. Timothy E. Wirth (D.-Colo.), but will be more narrowly focused—and thus more likely to pass, according to one staff member. The bill will target least-cost planning, energy efficiency, and the use of renewable energy. "We're trying to work on actions that make sense in and of themselves in terms of energy security, competitiveness, pollution prevention, and conservation of resources—even if you are not convinced of
the threat of global warming," the staff member says. The current draft of the bill does not call for any specific reductions in carbon dioxide emissions, but sets a target for cutting greenhouse gases overall. Health and safety. Congress was very quiet on health and safety issues last year. Aside from concerns about pesticide residues in foods, no major issues were discussed. In 1990, there are spme things that are already evident. One is a report by GAO on the effectiveness of the Occupational Safety & Health Administration. One part will be issued in March and a second part is expected in September. Oversight hearings on OSHA, to be held in late April by the Education & Labor Subcommittee on Health & Safety chaired by Rep. Joseph M. Gaydos (D.-Pa.), coupled with this report could lead to legislation changing the safety laws. Other safety matters to be looked into during the year include safety of video display terminals (several studies are near completion, including one from the National Institute for Occupational Safety & Health), cumulative trauma injuries, field sanitation effectiveness, and the safety of children's camps. And Gaydos will reintroduce his legislation requiring notification of workers exposed to hazardous chemicals. Such a bill passed the House in the last session of the 100th Congress, and will be revised to try to make it more acceptable to the Senate this year. The chemical industry may get a closer look in 1990 because of several spectacular explosions in the past year, the latest being at Exxon's petrochemical plant in Baton Rouge. Congress is concerned that companies may be using too many unqualified contractors for some jobs, endangering others. Although not saying that the industry needs to be regulated more, it may hold hearings on the issue. Pesticides. Early this year, the House Energy Subcommittee on Health & the Environment plans to mark up legislation, introduced by its chairman, Waxman, that sets a negligible-risk standard of 1 in 1 million for pesticide residues in both raw and processed foods and requires EPA to consider only potential health effects when setting pesticide tolerances. The bill would continue the current practice of allowing states to set stricter-than-federal standards for pesticide residues. The Senate Labor & Human Resources Committee is working on an identical bill, S. 722, introduced by its chairman, Kennedy. Meanwhile, the House Agriculture Subcommittee on Domestic Operations, Research & Foreign Agriculture, chaired by Rep. George E. Brown Jr. (D.-Calif.), has held a series of hearings on two pesticide bills. One, H.R. 3153, introduced by Brown, would allow EPA to move more quickly to cancel pesticides suspected of posing an unacceptable risk to human health and/or the environment. It also would establish a nine-year cycle for review of registered pesticides. The other bill, H.R. 3292, introduced by full committee chairman Rep. Kika de la Garza (D.-Tex.), combines many elements of both the K e n n e d y / Waxman and Brown bills. Late last fall President Bush announced his plan for
a major overhaul of the nation's pesticide laws. He also called for a negligible-risk standard for pesticide residues, though he would allow EPA to consider costs as well as benefits in setting residue tolerances. The Bush plan also calls for speeding up the removal of potentially dangerous pesticides from the market, but would bar the imposition of more stringent state standards for pesticide residues. Given all the high-powered backing, it's likely that a compromise can be worked out and that pesticide reform legislation will get enacted this year. Research ethics. Two House Subcommittees will continue to scrutinize the morals and mores of the scientific research community in 1990. The Oversight & Investigation Subcommittee of the Energy & Commerce Committee, headed by Dingell, will focus primarily on how researchers come to grips with cases of scientific fraud—more politely termed "scientific misconduct." And the Committee on Government Operation's Subcommittee on H u m a n Resources & Intergovernmental Relations, chaired by Ted Weiss (D.-N.Y.), will pursue the nebulous area of financial conflicts of interests among government-funded scientists. Not much has been heard from Dingell's subcommittee on the subject of scientific misconduct since the widely publicized hearing he convened last May to delve into what has become known as the "Baltimore affair." The two-day hearing was ostensibly to examine how the National Institutes of Health, Tufts University, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology handled alleged irregularities within a paper that Nobel Laureate David Baltimore coauthored. (The disputed work was not done in his laboratory.) Baltimore—of Whitehead Institute and MIT and soon-to-be president of Rockefeller University—has staunchly defended the research and denounced Dingell's involvement as unwarranted meddling in science. Dingell's view is that the scientific community is too willing to sweep instances of misconduct in research under the rug. The public relations battle surrounding last year's hearing was won by Baltimore. Undaunted, the staff of the Dingell subcommittee is still actively investigating the Baltimore incident—as is NIH, which has reopened its inquiry—and is looking into other cases of alleged scientific misconduct as well. More hearings probably will be held during 1990, but legislation on the issue is unlikely. "Chairman Dingell feels this is not a simple subject and is not easily accessible to fixing by legislation," says one subcommittee staff member. "He would much prefer the scientific community address this issue itself." Weiss' Government Operations Subcommittee will soon issue a report on issues of conflict of interest in research that that panel has examined in hearings over the past few years. Among the conflicts the subcommittee is pursuing are medical scientists who own stock in companies whose products they are testing in clinical trials and universities that give corporations increased access to the results of governmentfunded research in exchange for money. D January 8, 1990 C&EN
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