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New Englanders’ Reign Coming to an End… Ideology AND Geography Behind Environmentalists’ Senate Apprehensions
Take a look at the “perfect storm” environmentalists are facing upon the return to Washington in January of the new 107th Congress.
The White House, of course, remains Republican, no change there, and no change foreseeable in what environmentalists already have labeled an aggressively anti-environmental philosophy. No one expects the Bush Administration to make environmental activists happy, and recent political results may suggest no need for the Administration to even worry about that situation.
More of the same, but emphasis on “more,” also from the incoming House of Representatives, where Texas Republican Tom Delay, environmentalists’ number-one villain known, gains still more influence and stature in replacing retired Dick Armey (R-Tx.) as House Majority Leader. A couple of more Republican seats and a new shriller-voiced leadership, but all in all not a seismic shift from what environmentalists have been dealing with in the House in recent years.
Not so in the Senate.
You know the one about “the more things change, the more they remain the same”? Don’t count on it in the Senate, environmental activists warn. In incoming Senate Environment and Public Works Chairman Jim Imhofe (R-Okla.), they see one of their principle Senate bad guys. (Environmental activists have a lot of “bad guys” on Capitol Hill and in Washington these days; Imhofe and Delay just happen to be among them and near the top of the heap.)
Couple that with the ascension of pro-nuclear New Mexico Republican Senator Pete Domenici as chair of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, and environmental activists can barely restrain themselves in the face of what they see as a witches’ brew of legislative forces and factors.
The Environment and Public Works Committee (“EPW” to the cognoscenti) long has been the bastion of activity on national environmental laws, a status it has commanded under Republican and Democratic leadership since the first Earth Day in 1970.
That appears about to change now and -- unlike with the Republican Party’s majority status during the Clinton Administration -- there is neither a White House serving as a backstop or, critically important, an EPW Committee chair fully comfortable with the committee’s long-time role as environmental champion and watchdog. (Some wonder if the mass media are up to being the “watchdog” in the absence of a congressional checks-and-balances relationship with the White House. Oh, MY!)
It’s interesting too to look at the geography of the EPW chairmanship since its earliest days at the head of the environmentalism parade.
In roughly 29 of those 32 years -- including all of the formative 1970 and 1980 decades of the nation’s federal efforts to control pollution -- the Committee’s air and water environmental activities were in fact or in essence driven primarily by New England legislators. That too now changes:
The Committee’s chairs, by party and state, since “the birth” of federal environmentalism in 1970:
Number of Years Chaired (or Primarily Influenced) by New England Legislators
Some Qualifications This brief chronology of this critically important Committee and Subcommittee focuses primarily on clean air and on clean water and not on other important environmental and natural resources issues under this committee’s jurisdiction and that of other Senate committees. Neither does it speak of the profound influence -- particularly throughout the 1970s of key Senate staffers -- Muskie aide Leon Billings, now a Maryland state legislator and environmental lobbyist and Tom Jorling, now a v.p. with International Paper being foremost among a class of a dozen or more. Also, the chronology does not reflect degrees of “free hand” provided by some full committee chairs … or in effect taken by some subcommittee chairs and by Mitchell once he became Senate Majority Leader.
1Randolph gave great leeway to Subcommittee on Environmental Pollution Chairman Edmund S. Muskie (D-Maine), at the time the Senate’s “Mr. Environment,” leaving clean air and clean water issues by and large to Muskie. 2During part of Burdick’s chairmanship, Maine Democrat George Mitchell chaired the Subcommittee on Environmental Pollution, and in 1989 Mitchell became Majority Leader. He in effect reigned supreme on Clean Air Act issues -- and on the 1990 Amendments -- from both capacities. 3Moynihan served briefly as chair after the death in office of Burdick and during a time when the Senate was largely in recess. 4Over recent Congresses, Baucus's League of Conservation Voters rating has averaged about 60 percent. As chairman of the full Committee, he was generally supportive of, but not particularly forceful on, Committee environmental initiatives. During his chairmanship, two subcommittees handled clean air and clean water issues – Bob Graham of Florida on water and Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut on air. 5No mistaking it: Smith, who earlier had quit the GOP to run a quixotic campaign for the Presidency against George W. Bush, came to the Committee with a far more conservative overall and environmental voting record than previous committee chairs. Most agree that he tempered those views significantly while serving as Chair, and some environmentalists hold faint hope that the responsibilities themselves may tend to moderate those holding them. At least, in the case of Imhofe, they hope so.
December 16, 2002
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