The Sierra Club on behalf of their democrat allies are currently running adds calling for the reinstitution of the Superfund tax so that polluters will pay for the cost of superfund cleanups.

 

The following is a list of those polluters who have been identified as a viable, liable party under the superfund law and are not being held accountable:

 

________________________________________________________________

________________________________________________________________

________________________________________________________________

________________________________________________________________

 

...we couldn't find any-- can you?

 

FACT: The "polluter" already pays. When there is an identifiable and viable "polluter", consistent with the law, they are held liable. Governor Whitman testifying before the Environment and Public Works committee addressed this very issue answering a question from Senator Inhofe:

 

Ø “No, Senator, I couldn't think of an instance where a viable, responsible party has not been held liable. There have been instances where we can identify a responsible party but the company has subsequently gone out of business, gone into bankruptcy, where we have had difficulty in recovering. But wherever we know the responsible party, that is our first line of defenses, our first line of funding for Superfund sites. We did last year stayed up at the level that has been consistent throughout the history of Superfund, the 70 percent. We were actually a little bit higher at 71 percent, but that goes up and down from year to year. We are absolutely committed to the polluter-pays principle here.”

 

FACT: The Superfund Tax was levied on business - many of which never caused ANY contamination, and those that do are already held liable. So it is factually incorrect to call this a "polluter tax.” Governor Whitman at the same EPW hearing in an answer about who actually pays this tax said:

 

Ø “It was certainly a broad-based tax that captured everyone in the industry, whether they had, in fact, been responsible for specific pollution or not.”

 

 

FACT: There is no correlation between the dollars in the Super Fund (from the collected tax which expired in 1995) and the level of funding that goes to Superfund clean ups. There has never been a delay in clean ups due to lack of a Superfund tax. Funding for actual clean up has remained constant or increased under President Bush.

FACT: This is simply a tax increase wrapped in a good sound-bite -- a sound-bite based on anything but the FACTS. The Sierra Club and the Democratic Party continue in their all out mission to defeat President Bush once again show they will stop at nothing in their efforts and distort the truth for political gain.

Click here for link: (.pdf)

Click here for link: (.pdf)