Senator Michael B. Enzi Monday Interview

June 21, 1999

Jackie Yamanaka, KEMC Billings, and Maggie Shepard, Cody Enterprise

Mike Enzi: I want to talk today about appropriations and the appropriations process, because in the coming weeks we'll be concentrating on passing the bills that fund government. A major work of government is passing bills that fund government. Every year we have to pass 13 different appropriations bills. We've finished four so far. That becomes very critical because it has to be done by October 1. It puts us under a time crunch. I've been pushing to have this process changed so that we would appropriate funds once every two years. That would give us a year in between both to do oversight and handle some of the normal legislative functions. It's an intense process because all the interested parties have their own ideas about what programs ought to be funded and at what levels they ought to be funded. The biggest problem are the additions that get made to appropriations. Some additions people are very familiar with, the requests for dollars, sometimes referred to as pork. Those are the requests that haven't been through an authorization program first. Extra dollars and extra lines that are added that way. But more significantly, one of the difficulties we have is there is the ability to put almost any bill onto an appropriations bill. Right now we're debating the agricultural appropriations bill. It's about 76 pages. So far there's been an amendment of another bill which is 111 pages. The amendment is considerably bigger than what we're discussing . There's the potential of spending more money than what we're talking about spending in [the original appropriations bill]. There's no limit that there can only be one of those amendments. There can be several of them, so it gets into a real time crunch for us. Then there's also emergency provisions, and those are in addition to the 13 spending bills. I would prefer that we had a process where we appropriate every other year, look at what the exact expenditures are in between, find out what government says its doing ,and find out how we can tell if its getting it done. I think that would help the whole legislative process. We would be able to pay down the national debt, save Social Security and Medicare. Those are priorities that we have. With that I'll open it up to any questions you might have.

Jackie Yamanaka: Good afternoon Senator. I'd like to ask you, as a member of Senate Banking, about some of the recent activity before some of the committee. There was a hearing on June 9 on financial privacy -- on that same day a Minnesota state attorney general filed a law suit against Minneapolis Based US Bank Corps, which has branches in Montana, charging that the company basically has sold confidential customer data to a telemarketing firm. Do you think there's a problem now with bank customer privacy?

ME: There are probably privacy issues in almost every committee I can think of that deal with the businesses and the individuals that are covered by those committees. Earlier in the year there was a big controversy over the federal government requiring banks to "know their customer." The attempt was to eliminate money laundering with drugs and other potential crimes by requiring the banks to know their customer well enough to know any deviation in their deposits and their spending and reporting it to the Federal government. We protested that and that regulation has been withdrawn. We have had in the medical field and they're having some discussions on some privacy bills there, and of course in the Banking Committee we're also having those discussions. Some of them were brought up by the controversies that we read about in the newspaper. Others of them are just by constituent concerns that have come up. It's a quest to be sure and find a way that customers don't have to fill out extra forms and documents. At the same time [we want to] be sure that what they do fill out they have a private right to disseminate in the way that they want to disseminate it and to whom they want it disseminated. We need to make sure the customer has more control than perhaps they do right now.

JY: Congress has been reluctant to prevent corporations from sharing or selling private financial data, and during that hearing, Senator Leahy pointed out that he was particularly concerned about safeguarding medical information, especially in light of mergers. I'm wondering, is the sentiment starting to change in Congress because it appears that Congress is considering legislation right now that appears would allow banks to get into securities and insurance areas and that would address an area that Sen. Leahy is looking at, medical information.

ME: Well, the Financial modernization bill that has passed the Senate has some definite constraints on using documents from customers. There are some privacy issues that are already addressed in that bill. I also happen to be on the Health Education Labor and Pensions committee, and we have been dealing with medical privacy. I think there's some bipartisan agreement on how to handle that. There are also some difficulties with to what extent we go. For instance, for people to be reimbursed by worker's comp., there has to be some notification other than from that person showing they've been injured and to what extent and for how long they have to be off and for whom and when they're released to go back to work to determine their compensation. If everything is locked up, their will be people that will suffer an interruption in obligations that they're already receiving money for. There are both ends of this that want privacy, and also want to make sure that customers get service properly.

JY: Is the Congress really the one that has to make decisions on this type of privacy and do you see action coming in this Congress?

ME: Actually, I think that any legislation that you see coming out will pass the requirement back to the states to make a lot of the determinations because again there are different kinds of functions that are handled within the state where a one size fits all rule won't apply nationally. There will probably be some overriding national legislation to stimulate more discussion on the state level. But the final decision's being left up to the states.

JY: Won't that affect companies like US Bank Corps that have branches in several states?

ME: They complain a lot because they have to learn the law in each of the states, but as they're banking affects the way people are treated in that particular state, they have to know and abide by the law. They would prefer a one size fits all national law. They'll get an overriding law, but not all the details at the federal level.

Maggie Shepard: I'd like to find out the status about your bill to give local governments the power to participate

as cooperating agencies on the EISes?

ME: That bill is still in committee, but the fact that the bill is in committee has already notified the federal agencies that they ought to be looking at ways of providing more input from those local governments that are affected and in fact on a couple of things there are opportunities that have been given to the local governments for input.

MS: You're talking in other areas?

ME: Yes.

MS: Could you tell me about the status of the effort to turn the North Cody land over to Park County?

ME: Yes, our delegation has been meeting and working on that. There's been a federal appraisal on the land. There's been a counter-offer on that appraisal by the local group. We're waiting to see what the action will be by the [Government Services Agency] (GSA) on that offer and have been writing letters and talking to the GSA to have them sit down and personally negotiate with the group that's interested in acquiring that land. It's important for the economic development of Cody and it's been listed as surplus land by the BLM, that's what brings it under the jurisdiction of the GSA. Yes, we're pursuing that, along with the city, the county and the chamber of commerce. We hope that we can reach some kind of an accommodation that will benefit all the people of that area.

MS: What would you say is the next step in that process?

ME: The next step will be a letter specifically regarding the offer that has already been made for the purchase price by the county and then if that letter is not favorable, and that's our indication that it won't be, then we'll have to work with all of the entities involved to see if we can arrive at a new solution.

MS: I have a couple of questions about OSHA and Yellowstone. Of the major 600 violations, it really talks about how they were corrected. Can you explain some of the specific corrections that had to be made?

ME: In any inspection of any entity, there are often a lot of small things that can be done: plugs that need to be covered, cords that need to be changed so that they don't go across things, bannisters that need to be of the specific height, and it's in exact inches, not just high enough so a person can't fall over it, going on up to considerably more serious things, one of which in Yellowstone's case was the failure to report a death. The only way that could be corrected was to have policies in place so when similar things happen in the future they will be taken care of. Our greatest goal is a prevention goal. OSHA entered into an agreement with the National Park Service -- part of which was to preclude them from coming under the penalties section of OSHA as a business would have to be. That seems to have worked out very well in getting the corrections done. That's fairly similar to what's in my SAFE Act, which is OSHA reform, which would provide incentives for business before an OSHA inspection to hire a consultant to look for the things that are wrong, find the things that are wrong, correct every one of the things that are wrong, and put a safety plan into place that meets OSHA [standards]. We're trying to get that done on a voluntary basis with some incentive. I'm pleased that there was this pact between Yellowstone and OSHA that matches what I'm trying to do with private business.

MS: What sort of incentives are you talking about?

ME: With the SAFE Act, and the National Park Service, the incentive was that it would not come under legislation that would have any kind of fines for them under any circumstances. The only incentive that I have in my bill is that for one year they would not [be assessed] civil penalties. This if OSHA came in, and OSHA has every right to come in and inspect any time, if it finds any violations, they have to be fixed. If OSHA determines that they are a bad actor, that they did these intentionally or that they were slightly defrauding the government then they throw the people out of the program and fine them. But if they've been working in good faith to protect the worker they wouldn't be penalized if they got this additional inspection because hopefully all of the things would have already been found. In the nation, we have 6.2 million work sites, and 2,400 inspectors. The AFL-CIO has pointed out that there's a possibility of being inspected once every 167 years. That's unacceptable to anyone, but we don't want to put a major tax burden on all Americans. Instead we'd rather encourage business to inspect their place, find what's wrong, and fix it.

MS: Because of this partnership with OSHA and Yellowstone, then were there really no penalties for the failure of reporting the death?

ME: That's absolutely correct. There were no penalties.