Background: On Wednesday, September 22, 2004, Republicans in the House of Representatives will celebrate the tenth anniversary of the unveiling of the Republican’s Contract with America, a major political document written by then-Rep. Newt Gingrich and current House Majority Leader Tom Delay.

One of the Contract’s main proposals was to prevent the federal government from imposing federal requirements on cities and states if federal funding was not provided to the cities and states to help them comply with the standards. The so-called unfunded mandates proposal provoked widespread debate about the proper role of the federal government in protecting the environment, providing public education and protecting worker safety, among other things. Great concern was raised over the fact that the contract simultaneously called for budget cuts to key domestic priorities while then declaring that federal standards could not be enforced if they were not fully funded. While the Republicans succeeded in passing this proposal, they quickly ignored it in passing new legislation that they favored without adequate funding.

Below, Congressman Miller articulates the value of federal laws to communities throughout the United States.

MR. LEHRER: We pick up that debate now with the Republican governor of Ohio, George Voinovich, and Congressman George Miller, Democrat of California. He's the ranking member at the House Resources Committee.

Congressman, make the case for unfunded mandates,

REPRESENTATIVE MILLER: Well, I don't think anybody wants to make the case for unfunded mandates but I'll make the case for federal mandates, some of which are unfunded and some which require local governments to meet responsibilities and/or industries to meet responsibilities that they refuse to meet.

I wrote the Education for the Handicapped Act…. The fact is we had millions of Americans that were precluded from participating in an elementary and secondary education. We found them in basements. We found them at home, because their parents were told they couldn't come to school.

We found them in segregated schools because they were different, they were in wheelchairs, they were on breathing machines, what have you, and they were denied that. The states didn't want and the local governments didn't want to educate those children.

The Clean Water Act. I don't remember the industries volunteering, coming to Washington and saying we're going to clean up the Ohio River or the Sacramento River, we're going to do it on our own. They didn't do it until the Clean Water Act. They didn't clean up the air until the Clean Air Act, and the cities were the same way. They thought United States Steel in my hometown should clean up the river, but they didn't…

But they didn't think they should have to clean up their municipal sewage. San Francisco couldn't clean up its municipal sewage for decades, because they just simply didn't want to pay for it, so everybody else is supposed to swim in their sewage or eat fish that comes from their sewage.

This is a body of laws that has bound us together as a nation and has provided the social progress that provided workplace safety, that brought about the minimum wage, child safety, education for minorities, education for handicapped children. It's cleaned up our air. It's cleaned up our rivers. It's made it a safer and a better place. Sure, the automobile companies didn't want airbags. But when the Japanese started using them, and we finally mandated them, now you can't sell a car without them. They didn't want seat belts. They don't want bicycle helmets. But the fact is today in the paper a lot of children are surviving bicycle crashes because they're wearing a helmet. What are those lives worth?

Now, obviously, the federal government didn't pay the full freight for cleaning those items up or providing those laws, but, again, the federal government didn't dirty the Sacramento River or San Francisco Bay. A lot of industries and a lot of municipalities did. But the people who live down the coast from that have a right to clean water, have a right to clean air, and many of these issues go across state lines. If the governor cleans up the air in Ohio, it doesn't help them if the people in Pennsylvania aren't doing the same, or the people in Illinois aren't doing the same. The same is true on the West Coast. This is a body of law that has bound us together as a nation.

MR. LEHRER: And improve the nation.

REPRESENTATIVE MILLER: And improve the nation and improve the quality of life and enhance social progress. Gov. Romer in the piece you just saw was right. We should review, and hopefully we will have an opportunity to review, these relationships between the different levels of government. But the same governors who are here to tell us don't put unfunded mandates on them, in California, Governor Wilson puts more unfunded mandates on my home county or in the cities in California all of the time, or he tells me to do something and then takes away the money. So this isn't unique to the federal government. The federal government happens to be the most attractive whipping boy in the process at the moment, and in the feeding chain, looking for dollars to get things done in this country….

… MR. LEHRER: What's wrong with doing what [Governor Voinovich] and the others want to do in this legislation?

REPRESENTATIVE MILLER: Well, what they say they want to do and what the legislation does, unfortunately, are two different things, because not everybody who is a co-sponsor of this legislation is operating exactly with great candor or in good faith, because the legislation really opens the way, in effect, so that any renewal of the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, many of the environmental laws, but also workplace safety and health and safety laws in this country, really have tremendous hurdles put in the way of the reauthorization of those in the future, so this is a sort of backdoor attack on basic environmental laws of this country and health and safety and workplace laws because they don't want to take 'em on head on.

The issues that are raised by the governor and other governors that testified today are for very valid reasons. And I can tell you I deal with horror stories all the time of a mindless bureaucracy imposing regulations on communities or industries, what in my district, in our state, because simply they don't provide the flexibility. But if you want to talk about the flexibility, if you want to make these things fit the different situations in different communities and make them rational, that is a far different situation than setting up the legislative means by which you can start to tumble the Endangered Species Act, the Clean Air Act, and the Clean Water Act.

The fact is, governor, that is true. I've sat with the authors of this legislation this afternoon, and it's one of the points that are being debated this evening. It's about what happened to the reauthorization of existing laws and what happens if you cut -- we're going to go into a process here where we're going to cut huge amounts of money out of the federal government. Under this legislation, you then have to re-think whether the mandate can stay in place or not because of those cuts, so there's more going on here than what I think is well-intentioned concerns by local communities….

… [T]he suggestion is somehow the Congress is just running around, looking to provide unfunded mandates on every given subject. The fact of the matter is in many instances there have been years of debate, with local input, state input with all of the various organizations and concerned citizens in this country. And what was found wanting was the unwillingness of local communities to do these jobs. But we now come at the end of a twenty-five or thirty year cycle. It should be ripe for review. It should be discussed in economic terms, but this legislation simply goes far beyond that debate. This isn't about simply providing an economic analysis within Congress to do. The discussion in the Senate is whether or not it's going to take a super majority, a super majority to reauthorize the Clean Air Act.

GOVERNOR VOINOVICH: We're opposed to that.

REPRESENTATIVE MILLER: I appreciate that. What I'm suggesting is this vehicle that has been launched today, it's going to be passed in the committee in the House of Representatives on Tuesday with no public hearings.

… MR. LEHRER: Is it going to happen anyhow?

REPRESENTATIVE MILLER: Sure, it's going to happen, the legislation that passed last year is not the legislation that was introduced today. It's entirely different legislation, entirely different legislation.

MR. LEHRER: If it passes, is it going to be bad for the country, or good for the country?

REPRESENTATIVE MILLER: I think it raises some very serious problems for the country. I think, on balance, I think it's going to be bad for the country….

… When the state of Ohio decides not to address a problem and, and doesn't deal with landfills, and it does seep into the next state's groundwater supply, we'll watch and see how good that is for the country. And that's happening in California and elsewhere.

MR. LEHRER: And we have to go. Gentlemen, thank you both very much.