Less guv'ment

In order to smooth passage of a high-priority bill, congressional leaders said they would ban any provisions that didn't have something to do with the financial industry. But Sen. James Inhofe has inserted an amendment to address what he sees as problems associated with lead-paint removal regulations. The Oklahoma Republican has drafted language to stall enforcement of an Environmental Protection Agency rule that requires special instruction and certification for contractors who remove lead paint. In Oklahoma, where he lives in a 75-year-old lead-painted house, no such instructors exist. His amendment would delay the rule until every state has training programs. Asked how the amendment was connected with Congress's response to the financial crisis, Mr. Inhofe said, "It's not! That's the point."

You can't make this stuff up; if you did, no one would believe it.

Ban on Pet Provisions Proves Too Much for Lawmakers

By ELIZABETH WILLIAMSON And DAMIAN PALETTA

They said they wouldn't. They tried to stop themselves. But they're doing it anyway.

As they debate a more than 1,500-page bill intended to overhaul Wall Street and prevent the next financial crisis, senators from both parties are inserting pet provisions into the legislation.

Buried among more than 300 amendments to the bill are efforts to keep Social Security numbers off documents processed by U.S. prison inmates; regulate the oil, gas and mining industries; condemn Myanmar for human-rights violations; and control the sale of minerals from war zones.

In order to smooth passage of a high-priority bill, congressional leaders said they would ban any provisions that didn't have something to do with the financial industry.

But Sen. James Inhofe has inserted an amendment to address what he sees as problems associated with lead-paint removal regulations.

The Oklahoma Republican has drafted language to stall enforcement of an Environmental Protection Agency rule that requires special instruction and certification for contractors who remove lead paint.

In Oklahoma, where he lives in a 75-year-old lead-painted house, no such instructors exist. His amendment would delay the rule until every state has training programs.

Asked how the amendment was connected with Congress's response to the financial crisis, Mr. Inhofe said, "It's not! That's the point."

This whole lead paint thing is "a mess," Mr. Inhofe said, "so anything we can put this in, we will."

Sen. Sam Brownback (R., Kan.) and senators from both parties won passage of their amendment reining in the global trade in Congolese cassiterite. The measure would require anyone who buys cassiterite or a half-dozen other minerals abroad to certify to federal regulators that the sale did not directly or indirectly finance or benefit armed groups in the Democratic Republic of Congo that are accused of human-rights abuses.

Mr. Brownback, a conservative with a long record of support for such causes, built a coalition of liberal and conservative lawmakers to back his cassiterite measure. He has framed the amendment as relating to financial issues.

"It is on Congo conflict commodities," he said on the Senate floor this week. "It is a narrow SEC [Securities and Exchange Commission] reporting requirement." The amendment passed the Senate.

Sen. Tom Coburn (R., Okla.) said he hoped his Stop Secret Spending Act would make it into the bill, or that he at least could leverage a deal to reintroduce it down the road. The provision, which his staffers have nicknamed "The If-You-Only-Knew Act," would require lawmakers to certify they have read every bill they adopt by "unanimous consent," a process that doesn't record how they voted.

The process is usually reserved for measures seen as noncontroversial. But Mr. Coburn, a well-known deficit hawk, objects that noncontroversial bills often involve spending, too.

Among those that get his goat: Disease-specific earmarks that call for more research money for certain conditions. Mr. Coburn, a physician, wants legislators to have 72 hours to read those bills and decide them on the merits, not "who has the best celebrity lobbyist for the disease," according to his spokesman.

West Virginia Democratic Sen. Robert Byrd's amendment would "require the disclosure of safety and health conditions at risky workplaces (coal mines, refineries, oil rigs), and to empower the SEC and shareholders to compel disclosure and to seek civil penalties for those who fail to disclose this safety and health information."

"As we seek to make Wall Street more transparent and accountable to investors and Main Street America, I believe it is imperative that workers, investors and the general public receive a more complete and consistent analysis of whether the companies in which they have invested their funds are operating in a safe and healthy manner," Mr. Byrd said in a statement.

Aides to Mr. Byrd are uncertain whether the measure will make it into the overhaul legislation.

South Carolina Republican Sen. Jim DeMint's proposal demanding that the U.S. finish work on the 700-mile border fence between the U.S. and Mexico within a year already has been withdrawn.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D., Calif.) and five senators from both parties want to keep prison inmates, many of whom hold data-processing jobs while incarcerated, from gaining access to Americans' Social Security numbers, such as by seeing them on government checks.

"In 2009, more than nine million Americans were victims of identity theft, at an estimated cost of roughly $50 billion a year. These costs flow to financial institutions, retailers and consumers," Sen. Feinstein said in an emailed statement. "I believe the financial reform bill is an appropriate vehicle for this bipartisan amendment."

Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page A4