Debate Over Clean Air Bill Mired in ‘Crazy Alliances’

Take a deep breath. Roughly 10 billion trillion molecules have just entered your lungs. Chances are quite a lot of them were bad for you.

Depending on where they live, Americans inhale a noxious soup of elements that may include carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, acid aerosols, ozone, lead and any number of some 200 other toxic chemicals befouling the air.

Congress has been wrestling--some would say squirming--over legislation to revise the nation’s outdated Clean Air Act for more than 10 years. Until this year, however, no legislation ever made it to the floor of either house.

This year is different. Growing ecological awareness, key changes in the Senate and a new chief executive who wants to be remembered as “the environmental President” have combined to reframe the clean air debate, making legislation virtually certain this year.

But getting to this stage has been the easy part. Now, as they debate their respective versions of a new Clean Air Act--the bill before the Senate is tougher than the one in the House--congressmen and senators alike must somehow bridge divisions so deep they cut across party lines, pit region against region, and offer contradictions so fundamental they split individual constituencies, setting one interest against another.

Legislators from Detroit, where the auto industry is king, square off against legislators from Los Angeles, where auto emissions are choking the city. Meanwhile, the oil industry has teamed up with the auto industry on some issues--for example they are united against the use of alternative fuels. But the two industries are also at each others’ throats over who should be responsible for cutting the gas fumes that escape when a car’s tank is filled. Predictably, the auto industry would like a part to be added to each gas pump, while the oil industry thinks the part should be added to each car.

Making matters worse is the sheer technical complexity of the proposed legislation, which in scope and detail is rivaled only by the tax code. The Senate version is 587 pages long and comes with a 709-page explanatory report that discusses NOx, VOCs, PM-10s and myriad other examples of the alphabet soup terminology fogging the clean air debate.

Cut through the technical smog, however, and the bottom line is cost.

Everyone wants clean air. But the extent to which lawmakers are willing to pay for it depends on how it impacts upon their districts.

“Clean air connects a broad range of issues that affect almost every nook and cranny of interests in this country,” notes Rep. Philip R. Sharp (D-Ind.), chairman of the Energy and Commerce subcommittee that is considering amendments to the House version of the bill.

Forget about conventional partisan politics, Sharp warns. In the political donnybrook of the clean air debate, “all sorts of crazy alliances are being formed to shift the burden, and you’re going to need an incredibly big score card to keep track of who’s doing what to whom.”

While no one thought that revising the Clean Air Act would be easy, last month’s aborted debate in the Senate offered a look at what lies ahead.

Sen. George J. Mitchell of Maine had been fighting for years to get a clean air bill to the floor. Elected majority leader last year, he was determined to move it on a legislative fast track. But no sooner had the debate begun than Mitchell was forced to suspend it, ostensibly to give senators time to familiarize themselves with the complexities of the bill.

Mitchell said he also wanted to give more time to White House and Senate negotiators trying to resolve their differences in confidential consultations. But his decision to postpone the open debate was seen by friend and foe alike as a sign that he did not have the votes to stop a threatened filibuster.

Now, after two weeks behind the closed doors of a smoke-free Senate conference room, the debate is about to move into the open air again. Sources close to the majority leader say he is determined to return to the floor if no further progress is made in the closed talks by the end of the month.

Environmentalists charge that the White House, using the threat of a filibuster, has forced the bill’s Senate sponsors to weaken two key provisions of the omnibus act--those dealing with the regulation of airborne toxic chemicals and smog-causing emissions from stationary sources of pollution.

Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.), the bill’s floor manager, says that neither of these agreements is final and that both could collapse if other disputes are not resolved. These include differences between the Administration and the Senate sponsors over automobile emission standards and the role of alternative, clean-burning fuels. It also includes differences between the sponsors and other senators over spreading the costs of acid rain controls--costs that currently impact most heavily on nine Midwestern states.

The conflicting interests of the negotiators themselves--the private agendas, parochial considerations and contrary political obligations--are another difficult and, as the negotiations intensify, increasingly unpredictable factor.

Mitchell, for instance, represents interests that want the bill to include strong curbs on acid rain. Because these curbs focus almost exclusively on giant utilities, he is being opposed by Sen. Robert C. Byrd (D-W.Va.) and other lawmakers who fear the legislation will raise regional utility rates and lead to the loss of thousands of coal mining jobs in their states.

The Administration, for its part, is also split, with Environmental Protection Agency Administrator William K. Reilly and White House Chief of Staff John H. Sununu at odds over alternative fuels, among other issues. “We’ve had a real problem determining who really speaks for the White House here,” concedes an aide to a Republican senator involved in the talks.

“Everything is fluid, nothing is final. Alliances are constantly shifting,” says another Senate aide. “Everybody is negotiating with everybody else,” adds a lobbyist following the talks. “It’s a floating crap game out there.”

Waiting to get into that game are a host of other senators who hope to influence the debate before the bill returns to the Senate floor.

They include Sens. Alan Cranston (D-Calif.) and Pete Wilson (R-Calif.) who, although not members of the subcommittee that drafted the legislation, are both actively fighting to defend what they see as their state’s enormous stake in the bill.

Of all the states, California is the one most often mentioned in the clean air debate, both as a model to follow and an example to avoid.

Los Angeles has the worst air quality of any city in the country--a dubious distinction recognized by the Senate bill, which ranks it in an “extreme” pollution category all its own. But Southern California also is cited for the strong steps it is taking to meet federal air quality standards by the year 2007--steps that proponents of tough clean air legislation hope the rest of the nation will follow.

Three areas are of special importance to California: alternative fuels, tailpipe emissions, and a section to regulate pollution from drilling platforms, marine vessels and other offshore oil facilities along the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS).

For example, while California has already drafted its own tough tailpipe standards for cars sold in the state, their adoption into federal law would make it much easier for the state to attain the goals it has set for itself. “One out of four cars and light trucks in California comes from out of state,” notes a clean air expert on Wilson’s staff.

The Administration estimates that the Senate bill will cost $40 billion a year to implement--twice as much as the $20-billion price tag it placed on its own clean air proposals. Accordingly, it favors the somewhat weaker House bill, which it figures will be more cost effective and less onerous on industry. Business lobbyists, meanwhile, claim the Senate bill’s true costs could soar as high as $104 billion.

Environmentalists dismiss these estimates as inflated. Moreover, they argue that the cost of improvements must be measured against the $100 billion in annual health care costs that the American Lung Assn. figures Americans will save once they all start breathing cleaner air.

BACKGROUND

The nation’s air quality has been declining for a number of years, but congressional efforts to strengthen the 1970 Clean Air Act were stymied by the Ronald Reagan Administration and industry opposition. President Bush’s new emphasis on the environment broke that deadlock. Now, both the House and Senate are considering comprehensive revisions of the act, with passage expected this year. But the battle is far from over because the Senate is considering a tougher bill than the one sought by the President.