Clinton to Seek 12% Boost in Environment Spending

President Clinton will propose spending 12% more for environmental protection next year, senior administration officials said Tuesday, signaling a pronounced turn in his commitment to environmental issues as he is imposing budget-balancing restraints on other domestic spending.

The proposed increase, included in the fiscal 1998 budget proposal Clinton will announce Thursday, is likely to draw opposition from congressional Republicans. At the same time, it risks setting off a feud between Democrats who favor environmental programs and those who oppose new constraints on funding for housing, job training and other social programs.

“Discretionary programs are way down across the board,” said one White House aide. “Environment and education are the main exceptions.”

After a first term in which environmentalists often expressed disappointment with the administration, Clinton is now proposing more funding for the Superfund toxic waste cleanup program by as much as $700 million. He is also seeking more money for safe drinking water programs and environmental initiatives on pesticide controls and food safety, the officials said Tuesday.

“We must protect our environment in every community,” Clinton said in his State of the Union message Tuesday night. “In the last four years, we cleaned up 250 toxic waste sites, as many as in the previous 12. Now we should clean up 500 more of them, so that our children grow up next to parks, not poison.”

In his speech, the president also said he would begin a program to help communities clean up river fronts and cut pollution in rivers. But any money for the program would be shifted from other environmental efforts, an aide said.

All told, the Environmental Protection Agency would receive an increase of about $800 million beyond the $6.7 billion in its current budget.

The increases are mainly in programs to combat pollution and to some governing public lands.

In two areas on which Clinton will focus, the Republicans will have little room to voice opposition: They gave overwhelming support last year to legislation rewriting federal regulations of pesticides and food as well as to the federal program helping communities across the country keep drinking water supplies clean.

The budget plan sets Clinton apart from congressional Republicans by increasing spending for programs they have opposed in the past, particularly the Superfund campaign.

Federal spending on the environment became a central element in the clash between the White House and the Republican majority in Congress during the winter of 1995-96 that led to the shutdown of the federal government and Democratic candidates hit hard on that point during the 1996 elections.

Republicans sought, generally unsuccessfully, to use budgetary restraints to impose sharp policy shifts on environmental programs, including efforts to restrict the effectiveness of Environmental Protection Agency inspectors and the reach of the agency’s regulations.

Administration officials expressed uncertainty about what to expect from the Republicans this year, a time when a majority in Congress is sounding a theme of reconciliation.

“They’ve been talking a good game,” said one senior Clinton aide, speaking on the condition of anonymity. “I think they’d be skittish to go into battle again.”

But an aide to a senior congressional Democrat expressed confidence that the Republicans once again would seek to pare environmental spending--and could walk into a political trap being set for them by a White House counting on popular support for environmental spending. “They’ll be out there trying to cut funding and that creates a problem for them,” he said of the Republicans.

Rep. Sherwood Boehlert (R-N.Y.), who has often sought to moderate his party’s attempts to restrict environmental programs, said he was pleased to learn of the proposed increase in the Superfund toxic waste cleanup program. But he said that the request is likely to run into opposition unless efforts to overhaul the program are completed.