H.R. 4194, the bill that appropriates funds for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), included nine riders restricting the agency's ability to administer existing environmental laws. Some of these provisions were included in the text of the bill itself; others were specified in the committee report language accompanying the bill.

The riders would:

• delay federal action to protect children from the effects of pesticides in food (under the Food Quality Protection Act passed in the 104th Congress); 
• delay the cleanup of mercury from power plants; 
• interfere with EPA's efforts to clean the air in national parks;
• interfere with Superfund clean up; 
• prevent government climate experts from examining ways to stop global warming; and 
• delay the dredging of PCBs from the Hudson and Housatonic rivers and any other PCB-contaminated rivers where dredging is being considered.

When the bill came to the House floor, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) offered an amendment to override all the anti-environment riders in the bill except those related to global warming, which were the subject of a separate amendment (See House vote 10).

On July 23, 1998, the House rejected the Waxman amendment, 176 - 243. YES is the pro-environment vote.