It's very hypocritical, it's astounding that anyone would support such amendments. Riders also allow legislators to play tricks with their own voting records, enabling them to look green to their constituencies while servicing special interests at the back door. In 1996, for example, Congress unanimously passed the Food Quality Protection Act, directing the EPA to determine whether pesticide residues on food were safe for children. Yet scores of the same legislators who supported the 1996 Act passed a rider that blocks much of EPA's funding to implement the law. The same one is pending this year.
Congressional sources say that even lone polluters can push through pet amendments.
They point to General Electric as an example. In December 2000 the EPA is scheduled to recommend whether GE should dredge tons of toxic PCBs that it dumped in the Hudson River, a project that could cost the company over a billion dollars. The rider would delay hazardous waste clean up projects across the nation, including GE's, until a National Academy of Sciences study is completed. EPA has been studying the problem for nearly two decades. The delay could mean that a more compliant George W. Bush administration would set the terms of the clean up.