Analysis
This article is based upon a new ad campaign by Stabenow. Both candidates make claims about trash from Canada and what the Michigan legislature and Federal government has done in recent years. There are no verification of the claims made, nor are there any non-partisan perspectives on this issue.
Article Text
LANSING, Mich. (AP) — U.S. Sen. Debbie Stabenow’s new campaign ad about her efforts to fight Canadian trash from being dumped in Michigan is misleading, Republicans said Monday.
The ad criticizes the Democratic senator’s Republican opponent, Mike Bouchard, for his record on Canadian trash. It says that Bouchard cast the “deciding vote that kept the trash coming” from Canada when he was in the state Senate in 1996.
The Bouchard campaign said there’s no evidence the amendment in question would have stopped any trash from entering Michigan’s landfills. The amendment would have called for out-of-state garbage to meet the same environmental standards required in Michigan, possibly tightening restrictions in some cases.
But any action taken by the state to regulate the importation of trash would be unconstitutional today and would have been unconstitutional a decade ago because Congress, not states, regulates interstate commerce, the Michigan Republican Party said in a statement Monday.
The amendment mentioned in the ad failed by an 18-18 vote. The state GOP said even if Bouchard had voted in favor of it, the measure would have failed because it would have taken 20 votes to pass.
But the Stabenow campaign said that the state Senate at that point had one less member than usual because of a resignation, so only 19 votes would have been needed to pass the amendment. It contends that makes Bouchard the “deciding vote.”
Stabenow takes credit for helping to stop the flow of Canadian trash into Michigan through a late August deal reached with Ontario. The deal calls for Ontario to phase out shipments of municipal trash from Toronto and other communities in the province by 2010.
But Republicans say the deal reached by Stabenow and other Michigan Democrats is not binding and undercut legislation that would have been more effective at curbing Canadian trash. The Stabenow deal does not cover industrial and commercial waste, which represents more than half the Canadian trash entering Michigan each year.
As part of the deal with Ontario, Stabenow and Michigan’s other U.S. senator, Democrat Carl Levin, agreed to not pursue legislation that would have slapped a $420 fee on each truck Canadian companies used to haul trash into state landfills. The fee would have paid for security inspections at the U.S.-Canadian border.
A week after Democrats struck the deal with Ontario, the GOP-controlled U.S. House approved a measure giving states more power to limit the shipment and dumping of international municipal solid waste until the Environmental Protection Agency issues regulations on trash from Canada. The bill has not yet passed the U.S. Senate.
In her ad, Stabenow notes that Congress had been slow to address Michigan’s problem.
“So I took the fight directly to Canada and got something done,” she says in the 30-second commercial. “And I won’t stop until all the trash stops.”
Bouchard notes that it is the U.S. Senate — where Stabenow serves — that has not passed the measures. But it’s Republicans who control the committee with jurisdiction over the bill who have said they have no plans to take up the measure.
He said he sponsored and helped pass bills in the state Legislature to address the trash situation, including one that shut down incinerators near homes and schools. He also said he co-sponsored legislation in 1997 that asked Congress to give Michigan the authority to regulate the state’s garbage intake.
“She talks about issue after issue, but she has failed have an impact on those issues,” Bouchard said of Stabenow.
The Stabenow campaign stood behind the ad. Campaign spokesman Brent Colburn said Stabenow got results.
“She got something done while they sat on the legislation for more than a year,” Colburn said.
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