By the time our amendment came before the full House on December 10, 1985, it had been stripped of everything but the Toxic Release Inventory. The inventory did nothing to limit emissions or impose a single new cost—it simply established a way to measure airborne pollution. But the Chemical Manufacturers Association, the industry trade group, virulently opposed even this much, and claimed that our survey’s estimate of the 80 million tons of pollution wildly exaggerated the true amount.
Industry groups and their allies launched a full-court press to induce panic and whip up opposition. Republican congressmen claimed that the measure would force hardware stores, gas stations, and beauty parlors to document which chemicals they release. But still we prevailed by the narrowest of margins, 212-211, and early the next year the concept became law.
By the end of 1986, the Clean Air Act appeared no closer to renewal, the problem of acid rain was getting worse, and the EPA still would not regulate more than a handful of hazardous substances. But beneath the surface, the debate was moving our way, and we could now claim a tangible legislative achievement. The National Toxic Release Inventory could not, of course, reduce air pollution. But the invaluable information it provided became the basis for legislation that could. The first report appeared in March 1989 and immediately became front-page news across the country: It showed that a staggering 2.7 billion pounds of toxic air pollution was released into the air in 1987.
Though it wasn’t clear at the time, the turning point in the decade-long battle for clean air occurred during the next session of Congress, in another showdown over deadlines. Air quality sanctions due to take effect on the last day of the year, December 31, 1987, convinced many in Washington that an agreement had to be near. House negotiations opened in July, but after several months it became clear that not even the impending deadline would force a resolution.
With sanctions set to strike nearly every urban area, focus shifted to postponement. Industry and its allies favored a two-year extension that would effectively remove any pressure on Congress to act promptly. I considered this pressure valuable motivation, and with Silvio Conte, a Massachusetts Republican, offered an amendment extending the deadline by just eight months. Since the competing provisions required a floor vote, this soon shaped up as the first measure of House sentiment toward clean air in several years, and a defining test of strength.
The day before the vote, Dingell and John Murtha, a formidable Democratic congressman from Pennsylvania, took the unusual step of predicting that their side would win handily. This threw us, since our count showed us winning narrowly. When voting began the next day, Dingell and Murtha looked on in dismay as presumed allies began to go our way, just a few at first, and then, as the outcome became clear, a stampede that ultimately gave us a ninety-five-vote margin—and a ringing declaration of where Congress now stood.
This resounding defeat of those who had held the upper hand for so long sent a shockwave through Washington. Everyone suddenly realized that the forces of industry had badly overestimated the willingness of many members, especially Northeastern Republicans, to go on record against the environment. Absent a pressing local reason to do so, most simply didn’t see the need.
The psychological advantage we gained from this victory drove the subsequent debate. Dingell had strength enough in committee to defeat us on most days. But we had prevailed in all three votes of the full House—on the Dannemeyer-Waxman amendment, the Toxic Release Inventory, and now the eight-month extension. The vision of ramming it through no longer an option, Dingell and his allies began to doubt whether they could still prevail if a measure went to the floor. Industry confidence began to collapse.
Throughout the next year the Energy and Commerce Committee negotiated toward a broad overhaul of the Clean Air Act. Though our opponents had become more interested in resolving issues than in battling them out, we could not reach agreement before Congress adjourned. But our disappointment did not last long.
IN 1989, OUTSIDE EVENTS CONSPIRED ONCE AGAIN TO JERK THE debate even further in our direction. In Washington, Ronald Reagan gave way to George H. W. Bush, who bid to distinguish himself from his predecessor by declaring that he would be “the environmental president” and promising to renew the Clean Air Act. George Mitchell of Maine replaced Robert Byrd of West Virginia as Senate majority leader, instantly transforming the fight over acid rain: The Senate’s leading Democrat became someone whose constituents suffered, rather than prospered, from the regulatory status quo. Beyond Washington, the effects of weak environmental laws were coming into visibility everywhere. Needles and other medical waste started washing up on the Jersey Shore. The first report from the National Toxic Registry Index appeared, laying waste to the industry claim that severe air pollution was not a problem. And then, on March 24, 1989, the Exxon Valdez tanker disaster spilled 11 million gallons of oil into Prince William Sound, killing most wildlife and poisoning miles of pristine Alaskan coastline.
Despite claims of environmental commitment, President Bush and his administration came up with a revision of the Clean Air Act that was still weaker than what we wanted. He nevertheless did us a tremendous service by declaring the environment a presidential priority and submitting his own bill—he put his reputation on the line, which greatly increased the chance that some version of the Clean Air Act would become law. Our job became taking his bill and rewriting it to match his lofty rhetoric.
Using the Bush bill as our vehicle, rather than introduce a competing measure, we scheduled a series of hearings to highlight its major deficiencies and lay the groundwork for strengthening amendments. Momentum had swung to our side, but there remained countless ways for our opponents to weaken a bill so that the law wouldn’t have its intended effects—in some cases, a single word change was enough to do the trick.
As we prepared to debate Bush’s bill, a contact in the EPA leaked my staff an earlier draft of the plan that enabled us to compare the two, and see where and how the final product had been diluted. The original Clean Air Act of 1970 established the EPA administrator’s role under the law in unambiguous language: It was written that he or she “shall” carry out the enumerated duties. The early Bush draft maintained this language—but the final version swapped “shall” for “may,” thereby introducing the possibility that a future EPA administrator, should he or she so desire, “may” choose not to enforce the law.
Bush selected as his first EPA administrator William Reilly, a moderate environmentalist, whom we summoned before the subcommittee to explain this curious choice of word. Reilly insisted that he had every intention of enforcing the law to its fullest extent. But we kept pressing him: Why the tricky language? He finally conceded that he could not explain it. (More likely he could, but chose not to.) Reilly later admitted to me that while our grilling had been tough, what bothered him most about the hearing was that none of his fellow Republicans had spoken up in his defense. None was familiar enough with the bill’s details to argue over them.
By now, our clean air agenda had grown to encompass four parts: acid rain, smog, toxic air pollutants, and a new issue, ozone depletion. Scientists warned that the hole in the earth’s atmospheric ozone layer would have serious climatic consequences were it allowed to continue growing. Fixing the problem entailed reducing the amount of man-made ozone-depleting chemicals called chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), which meant changing industrial manufacturing processes. This drew opposition from the usual quarters. At one memorable proceeding, Bill Dannemeyer proposed building giant fans that would blow ozone up into the stratosphere. But few any longer doubted that there would be major improvements in the law.
During the 1980s, Congress came to consider more and more environmental provisions that were undesirable from an industry standpoint. And each year the proposals grew stronger. Everyone now had something to fear: Smog standards hit automakers, acid rain measures hit utilities and coal, toxic emission limits hit chemical companies, and CFC restrictions hit appliance manufacturers. The likeliho
od that Congress would finally mandate tougher air standards compelled each of these interests to rethink its strategy. Reductions had to come from somewhere—therefore any breaks given to one industry came at the expense of the others. Business interests that had once moved in lockstep now began looking out for themselves.
This was precisely the opposite dynamic to that of 1982, when everyone lined up behind Dingell. Back then, we targeted industries like chemical manufacturing because we didn’t have the strength to take on President Reagan and Dingell directly. But with every industry now fighting to deny breaks to the rest, Dingell and the automakers no longer held such a strong hand. We decided to try our luck and go right after them. If we could beat Dingell and set tough standards for automobile emissions, we wagered that he would be more inclined to compromise on everything else. In September, when the time came to decide on amendments, I engineered an early showdown on a measure I’d introduced setting strict tailpipe standards.
Like so many of our previous fights, this one looked to be close. To ensure that no one missed its overriding significance, and to pressure members to vote with us, I took to describing it as “the environmental vote of the decade,” a characterization that the press eagerly adopted. To rattle industry, I told reporters that I expected the “real” fight to come on the House floor, where Dingell had not fared well, while behind the scenes, we set to work trying to take away some of his support.
The struggle came down to two members ordinarily inclined toward him. Tom Tauke, an Iowa Republican, worried that stricter emission standards would hurt his district—his concern was not over autos, however, but over tractors and other farm equipment that fell under the same standard. By assuring him that they would not be singled out for tougher requirements, we were able to bring him along. Ralph Hall, the conservative Democrat from Texas, had balked at what he perceived to be overambitious limits on auto emissions. One way in which Congress worked to reduce pollution was by setting requirements and letting industry develop the technology to meet them, a mechanism known as “technology forcing standards.” This is how the catalytic converter, among other innovations, was brought into being. The automakers routinely claimed that they couldn’t possibly meet our proposed standards, though most experts believed that they could. We walked Hall through the amendment, section by section, explaining why our goals were feasible, and how, in the event that they turned out not to be, the EPA would be permitted to adjust the standards later on. Satisfied by what we told him, he approached Dingell in an anteroom just off the committee chambers. “John,” he said, “I think Henry’s got something here.” This is a congressman’s way of conveying that he intends to support something—and by doing so, Hall also gently told Dingell that he was going to lose the fight.
For more than a decade, Dingell and I had battled ferociously over the Clean Air Act, and we had often tried to get him to sit down and work out a deal. Dingell never budged, and so neither did I, each of us believing that we would prevail when matters came to a vote. Seeing that this was now unlikely to happen on the issue so important to him, Dingell did what any good congressman would do, and sat down to negotiate the best possible deal for his constituents. Two hours later, we had settled on the outline of an agreement. Most importantly, our agreement was “through conference,” meaning that no changes could be made in conference with the Senate unless all parties agreed, which made success seem all the more likely.
The other members of the House were thunderstruck by the news—the deal had seemingly come out of the blue. “We had thought it would be King Kong versus Godzilla,” Jim Cooper, a Tennessee Democrat, remarked afterward. But everyone recognized, with a mix of relief and excitement, that the long campaign for clean air had passed what had sometimes appeared an insurmountable obstacle. When Dingell and I reached across the conference table to formally shake hands on the agreement, the committee room burst into loud applause.
FROM THERE, THE BILL FOLLOWED A SLOW BUT STEADY PATH TO the president. Having struck a deal on auto emissions, Dingell and I had every incentive to find further agreements so that we could continue to be together. The negotiations carried on after the subcommittee reported the bill to the full committee, and by the following spring a broad overhaul of the Clean Air Act had taken shape.
The struggle over acid rain between the Midwest and the rest of the country continued to be a major source of contention. Only a series of marathon negotiating sessions bought a settlement. One of the longest, to hammer out an acid rain compromise, began on the morning of April 4 and dragged on for thirty-four mind-numbing hours. “You know the difference between being in a medium-security prison and being in Congress?” mused Illinois Democrat Terry Bruce during a break. “There isn’t any. In both facilities you can walk around all you want—you just can’t leave.”
Late the next evening, our business finally complete, the bleary-eyed members of the Energy and Commerce Committee voted 42-1 (Bill Dannemeyer dissenting) to move the clean air bill onto the House floor, and a few weeks later, the House overwhelmingly ratified our work 401-21.
Dingell was practically wistful. “We negotiated rather than fought,” he told reporters. “It’s a process with which I am not entirely comfortable, but it has been a success. It is a good piece of legislation.” I shared his sentiments.
The Bush administration made a key strategic miscalculation that wound up strengthening the law considerably in the final stages of negotiation. Bush officials played an active role in negotiating the Senate bill, but not its House counterpart. Assuming that a weaker bill would emerge from the House, White House negotiators had insisted that the Senate agreement bind its participants only through the floor vote, and not through the subsequent House-Senate conference, as Dingell and I had agreed to do. By freeing senators to vote as they wished, the administration expected that they would combine the weakest elements of both bills into the final legislation. Instead, with an election looming, they supported the strongest provisions in both bills, producing a law that was much better than either the House or Senate drafts had been.
With little choice, President Bush signed the Clean Air Act Amendments into law on November 15, 1990.
THE CLEAN AIR ACT AMENDMENTS OF 1990 WERE THE OUTCOME of one of the longest, most scrutinized, and hardest fought legislative battles that Washington had witnessed in decades. But that effort yielded a law that ranks as one of Congress’s historic achievements.
Five years after its passage, more than half the U.S. cities that exceeded urban smog standards had come into compliance. Production of ozone-depleting chemicals had dropped by more than 90 percent. Power plant emissions that cause acid rain fell to half their 1980 levels, and at a fraction of the cost industry had predicted. Cancer-causing toxic emissions decreased by 1.6 billion tons annually, a drop of more than 25 percent. The EPA’s meager list of five hazardous air pollutants expanded to 189, including such potentially lethal substances as dioxin, mercury, and methyl isocyanate, the chemical that destroyed Bhopal. When fully implemented, the law will prevent tens of thousands of premature deaths, tens of thousands of hospital admissions for respiratory and cardiovascular illnesses, and millions of lost workdays each year.
Some of the greatest successes have come in the most contentious area of debate. In 1989, Ford Motor Company executives testified that “we just do not have the technology to comply” with new tailpipe standards. Yet within four years automakers managed to do just that, and the controversial “technology forcing standards” triggered development of sophisticated engine-control equipment that produced lower pollution, more power, and greater fuel economy. Today’s typical new car is twenty times cleaner than a comparable model in 1981, and hybrids like Ford’s Escape are forty to fifty times as much. In fact, automakers met with relative ease the ambitious standards they once claimed would destroy jobs and cast the economy into recession—the law worked so well that it quickly became hard to recall what all the fuss had been about.
The Clean
Air Act offers several lessons. The first, and most important, is that success is possible even against overwhelming opposition. What began as a seemingly unstoppable assault on a landmark law ended with the enactment of the strongest environmental legislation in American history. The entire battle unfolded while Republicans controlled the White House. Despite fierce opposition throughout, the 1990 measure was stronger in almost every respect than the bills debated in the 1980s. And in the end, even Godzilla and King Kong came together.
The second lesson is that while industry claims often frame the debate, they are usually exaggerated, not accurate descriptions of the truth but tactics to stop unwanted measures, regardless of need or merit. Many business interests predicted catastrophe were the law enacted. DuPont Chemical warned of “severe economic and social disruption,” and Mobil “severe supply chain disruptions” for gasoline. But no one rioted, the economy grew, and Americans never had a problem filling up their tanks.
This is true largely because of the third lesson: Good legislation works as intended. The Clean Air Act passed only after years of oversight hearings, which had singled out the worst problems and the best solutions, and after intense debate over how it was to be drafted had accounted for the concerns of all sides. Rather than split the difference, the focus stayed fixed on the goal of achieving clean air in a way that would work for everyone—and earned the bill broad support from both parties as a result. Because it was so carefully designed, the Clean Air Act has stood up to subsequent White House efforts to weaken it and industry lawsuits challenging it. Today, it stands as testimony that Congress can still find ways to dramatically improve the quality of everyone’s life and well-being that serve citizens and businesses alike.
The Waxman Report Page 10