Mr. Chairman, I consider myself an environmentalist. In Ohio, I sponsored legislation to create the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency when I served in the state legislature, and I fought to end oil and gas drilling in the Lake Erie bed. As Governor, I increased funding for environmental protection by over 60 percent and implemented an innovative voluntary brownfields program to clean up hazardous waste sites. When I first entered office as Governor, most of our urban areas were not attaining the 1-hour ozone standard, but by the time I left all cities had attained the standard and we had a request into U.S. EPA to recognize the last city as being in attainment.
I strongly believe our challenge is to determine how best to protect the environment and the health of our citizens using limited resources. We need to do a better job of setting environmental priorities and spending our resources wisely. We should not do things simply because of appearances.
In addition, we need to ensure that effective programs are not being undercut by well-intentioned policies and regulations that lack scientific backing. Quite frankly, I believe that U.S. EPA's policies often run counter to the efforts, and even the mission, of other federal agencies. For example, the federal government has a number of effective programs that promote education, safety and economic development, such as HUD's empowerment zones, welfare reform, urban schools programs and transportation projects.
However, at the same time EPA is thwarting these efforts through policy decisions that are not always based on sound science and that undermine efforts to revitalize our urban areas. There needs to be a coordinated effort among agencies, in fact even within EPA itself, to ensure that a program's success is not being undercut by unnecessarily restrictive regulations that do not increase protection of public health or the environment.
For instance, one of the Administration's key initiatives in its FY2000 budget is Better America Bonds, which is aimed at preventing urban sprawl and cleaning up brownfields sites. At the same time, however, EPA has set inflexible, one-size-fits-all air standards through its NOx SIP call and NAAQS standards that many areas of the country will be unable to attain.
Hence, there will be no incentive to re-use abandoned industrial sites and industry will look toward our greenspaces.
In order to improve the quality of life in our central cities, we need to have jobs in our cities. That's what the HUD empowerment zones are trying to achieve. I think we can achieve both environmental and public health safety and increase jobs in our urban areas if we base regulations on sound science and cost-benefit analysis.
When I met with Administrator Browner prior to the final NAAQS standards, she told me that her hands were tied, that statutorily she could not use risk assessment and cost-benefit analysis in her consideration for final regulation.
I strongly believe that we need to go in with a laser-like focus and amend the Clean Air Act to add the same risk assessment and cost-benefit analysis provisions that we added to the Safe Drinking Water Act in 1996 -- the same provisions that the Administration supported. This will help ensure that reasonable and cost-effective rules are being set that have scientific backing. I intend to introduce such legislation.
This country will not be well served by policies and regulations that are implemented but do not improve the protection of public health and the environment. And I think we need to carefully review where taxpayer money is being spent on programs that negate each other. I look forward to exploring these issues during today's hearing and in future oversight hearings. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.