Clinton Acts to Curb GOP Attack on EPA

President Clinton Tuesday lashed out at Republican attempts to reduce environmental regulation and issued an order to partly offset GOP-sponsored legislation that would cut disclosure requirements by polluting industries.

In an appearance at Baltimore Harbor, Clinton said he had ordered federal contractors to begin preparing special reports on the presence of toxic chemical emissions in their neighborhoods.

His goal, Clinton said, is to counter the effects of legislation, passed last week by the House, that would restrict the Environmental Protection Agency’s power to enforce a law requiring 24,000 manufacturing facilities to disclose information about emissions of 651 chemicals.

Decrying a series of Republican moves to reduce regulation, Clinton said that it is central to Americans’ security “to know that the air we breathe and the food we eat and the water we drink will be safe. . . . This basic security really is in jeopardy today. There are Americans who want to strip away decades of public health protection.”

The House legislation was enacted by a narrow margin and is not expected to clear the Senate intact. Although federal contractors include many major industrial firms, the new executive order will fall far short of offering the protections in the current right-to-know law.

But the White House, amid signs of public unease with the Republican environmental moves, seemed to sense a political opportunity. Clinton portrayed the House action as guided by lobbyists for wealthy financial interests.

The House “voted to gut environmental and public health protection last week under the pressure of lobbyists for those who have a vested financial interest in seeing that happen,” the President said.

In what he called a “brazen display of the power of these special interest groups, the House added 18 separate loopholes, giveaways and stop-in-your-tracks orders, stripping away the very specific public safeguards to benefit very specific interest groups.”

House Republicans have described environmental regulation as a nightmare of red tape that drives up costs without substantial environmental benefit. But Clinton disputed assertions that environmental regulation threatens business and said the EPA in his presidency is committed to cutting the regulatory burden by 25%.

“We can fix bureaucratic problems but we cannot fix the environmental damage that would be done if [Republicans] tore up the progress of the last 25 years,” Clinton said.

Clinton’s order marked the second time in a week that he has sought to use his administrative powers to work around GOP resistance. Last week, complaining that House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) was not making good on his promise to work on lobby reform, he imposed new rules on executive branch employees who are in contact with lobbyists.