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From: Patricia Neill <pnpj@db1.cc.rochester.edu>
Subject: L&J: EPA: Master of Mission Creep
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>From Forbes, Oct. 20, 1997
Found this at:
http://www.forbes.com/forbes/97/1020/6009170a.htm
the Environmental Protection Agency Congress created a
monster it can no longer control. With a shrewd politician like
Carol Browner running it, the agency just thumbs its nose at
the legislators.
Carol Browner, master of mission creep
By Pranay Gupte and Bonner R. Cohen
AS THE CENTER OF that enormous rent-seeking
organization known as the federal government, Washington,
D.C. has evolved its own vocabulary. There is, in
bureaucratese, an innocent-sounding but insidious phrase:
mission creep. Mark it well: Mission creep explains a lot
about how big government grows and grows and grows.
Mission creep is to a taxpayer-supported organization what
new markets are to a business organization. It involves a
gradual, sometimes authorized, sometimes not, broadening of a
bureaucracy's original mission. It is a way to accrete money
and power beyond what Congress originally approved when it
funded an agency.
Playing mission creep is an old game in Washington. But no
one has ever played the game with more skill than Carol M.
Browner, Bill Clinton's choice to head the Environmental
Protection Agency.
From a modest beginning a quarter-century ago, the agency
has grown to employ nearly 20,000 people and control an
annual budget of $7 billion. But these numbers are a poor
measure of the agency's power: Because its regulations have
the force of law, the agency can jail people, close factories and
override the judgments of local authorities.
In its quest for power and money, the agency has imposed
many unnecessary costs on American industry, and ultimately
on the American people—costs that do more to satisfy
bureaucratic zeal than to clean the air or the water.
The EPA was established in 1970 by an executive order issued
by President Richard M. Nixon. Rachel Carson, a patron saint
of the environmental movement, had made a huge impact with
her emotional tract, Silent Spring, a few years earlier.
The public was right to be alarmed. Industrialization has
imposed hidden costs in the form of polluted air, despoiled
streams, unsightly dumps and a general degradation of the
landscape. Concerns about pollution could, of course, have
been dealt with by existing agencies, but that is not the nature
of American politics. Politicians must be seen to be doing
something dramatic. Creating new agencies makes favorable
waves in the media.
EPA scientists, following the agency's
cancer-risk guidelines, were soon
ignoring the age-old admonition that the
"dose makes the poison."
Nixon created a new agency. Pulled together from a
hodgepodge of existing federal programs, the EPA never had a
congressional charter that would have defined its regulatory
activities. It was simply given the task of carrying out the
provisions of what, over time, became 13 environmental
statutes, each with its own peculiarities and constituencies.
Without perhaps fully comprehending the issues, Nixon made
the new EPA the instrument for a tremendous power grab by
the federal government. Most environmental
problems—chemical spills, groundwater con- tamination,
abandoned dump sites—are purely local in nature. But
suddenly they were federal matters. In the name of a greener,
cleaner Earth, Washington mightily increased its power to
intervene in the daily lives of its citizens. It was a goal so
worthy that few people saw the dangers inherent in it.
Mission creep had begun.
In 1978 then-EPA administrator Douglas Costle cleverly
shifted the focus of the agency. Henceforth the EPA would
protect not just the environment but your health. "Costle
became determined to convince the public that [the] EPA was
first and foremost a public health agency, not a guardian of
bugs and bunnies," wrote Mark K. Landry, Marc J. Roberts
and Stephen R. Thomas in their book, The Environmental
Protection Agency: Asking the Wrong Questions from Nixon
to Clinton.
People do care about forests and wildlife, but they care much
more about themselves and their families. There is a strong
strain of hypochondria in the American people, and nothing
grabs our attention faster than an alleged threat to our health.
If the alleged threat involves cancer, it is almost guaranteed to
make the six o'clock news. Costle shrewdly exploited
cancerphobia to expand his agency's reach and to wring money
from Congress. He launched the EPA on a cancer hunt,
looking for carcinogens in foods and air and water, even in the
showers we take.
Carcinogens, of course, abound in nature, ordinary sunlight
being one of the most prevalent. So it is with many man-made
substances. The exposure to background levels of these
carcinogens is so minimal in most cases as to pose no serious
threat in the overwhelming majority of cases. Never mind:
EPA scientists, following the agency's cancer-risk guidelines,
were soon ignoring the age-old admonition that the "dose
makes the poison." If it was man-made and carried
carcinogens, the EPA would root it out. As one EPA scientist
explained it to Forbes: "At EPA, we're not paid not to find
risks."
Under the mantra of "one fiber can kill," the EPA in the 1980s
mounted a costly and probably self-defeating nationwide
effort to rip asbestos out of schools. Simply sealing the
substance would have kept the fibers away from kids at a
fraction of the cost. But it would not have yielded the same
harvest in headlines.
Where most agency chiefs tremble at
criticism frm congress, Browner has a
platform from which to counterattack.
Even more than her predecessors—and possessing much
greater resources—Carol Browner presents herself as the great
family physician. "There isn't a decision I make on any given
day that's not related to the health of the American people,"
she tells Forbes. Browner, it's worth noting, is a lawyer with
no medical training.
After all, she reminds us, she's the mom of a young boy.
Attendees of Capitol Hill hearings snicker at her constant
references to her son, Zachary, when she testifies on
environmental issues. But she never misses a chance to repeat
the message. "If we can focus on protecting the children . . .
we will be protecting the population at large, which is
obviously our job," she tells Forbes
Who said that was her job? Nobody, but that's what mission
creep is all about.
Last September Browner announced the release of a new EPA
report setting forth a broad national agenda to protect children
from environmental risks. She followed up the report with the
creation earlier this year of the Office of Children's Health
Protection at EPA.
There was no congressional mandate, but Congress meekly
went along by failing to challenge the agency's justification of
the program. Who would want to face reelection accused of
being callous toward children? Especially when the EPA's
kept researchers stand by ready to produce scare studies on
EPA money (see box, p. 172).
Where most agency chiefs tremble at criticism from Congress,
Browner has a platform from which she can counterattack. An
EPA-funded newsletter was recently distributed by the
National Parents Teachers Association. At the time an internal
EPA memo noted: "The PTA could become a major ally for
the Agency in preventing Congress from slashing our budget."
Thus does Browner's EPA use taxpayer money to fight
efforts to trim the federal budget.
On Mar. 15, 1995 David Lewis, an EPA scientist attached to
the agency's laboratory in Athens, Ga., was told by his
supervisor that EPA employees with connections to members
of Congress should use their influence to sway lawmakers
against a bill proposed by Representative Clifford Stearns
(R-Fla.)—if it could be done "without getting into trouble."
Stearns' bill would have reduced funding for EPA. The
scientist later said in a deposition: "We were being asked to do
this during government business hours, and the purpose was
to protect EPA funding levels." This request on the part of
high-level EPA officials to lobby Congress on government
time is under investigation by the House Government Reform
and Oversight Committee.
Had this been a Republican administration and had the
department involved been other than the EPA, one can
imagine the outcry in the media.
Asked about the growing criticism of her tactics, Browner
blatantly ducks the question with: "This isn't about me. It
never has been about me. It's about the air being cleaner. Is the
water going to be safer? It's about business going to be able to
find a better solution to our environmental problems."
It's really about politics. When supportive lawmakers ask to
borrow EPA experts for their staffs, the EPA hastens to
comply. Requests from liberal Democrats almost always are
filled, those from Republicans rarely. A request by
Representative Richard Pombo (R-Calif.) for an EPA detailee
was rejected on Jan. 2, 1997 on the grounds that "new
procedures" were being written. Less than four weeks later
(Jan. 28), a similar request from liberal Democrat
Representative Charles Rangel of New York was approved,
without reference to any "new procedures."
Since 1995 her office has approved all requests for employee
details to four Democratic lawmakers—Senator Frank
Lautenberg (D-N.J.), Senator John Kerry (D-Mass.), Senator
Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-N.Y.) and Rangel. Of the four
GOP requests, three were rejected.
Browner was at her politically impressive best in this
summer's debate over the EPA's tougher clean air standards.
Because air quality levels have improved markedly since
passage of the Clean Air Act amendments of 1990, it was
widely hoped—especially in areas that badly need new
jobs—that the standards would not be further tightened. The
EPA's own data showed that levels of the particulates have
dropped dramatically over the past decade. Many local
governments, anxious for jobs and economic development,
were looking forward to being removed from the list of
so-called nonattainment areas for ozone and particulate
matter, or PM.
In July the EPA finalized new tighter standards for ozone and
PM. For communities that had made expensive efforts to
comply with the current law, the higher standards were like a
baseball player, having rounded third base and heading toward
home, being told he had to circle the bases again to score.
A good many congresspeople were outraged. Browner's
insistence on imposing the new standards in the face of
nothing more than scanty scientific evidence unleashed howls
of protest from elected officials in the affected communities.
Legally, Browner was probably in the right. In its haste to
seem to be attending to the environment, Congress failed to
exert control over EPA standards and regulations.
There was nonetheless quite a donnybrook, with veteran
Democrat John Dingell of Michigan leading the charge against
Browner. A lot of jobs were at stake in Michigan, still
headquarters of the U.S. auto industry. Congress, he insisted,
should be consulted. Dingell was not alone.
With lots of support from Vice President Al Gore's office,
Browner went to work putting down the congressional revolt.
Her testimony before Congress was, by general agreement,
brilliant, though her facts were often shaky.
Until then, Bill Clinton had remained on the sidelines. But
Browner maneuvered the President into a corner, where he
faced the politically embarrassing choice of supporting her
controversial initiatives or disavowing his outspoken EPA
administrator. Clinton then got to the head of the parade by
declaring his support for Browner. The game was over.
Browner 1, Congress 0.
If EPA's new standards survive congressional and legal
challenges, state and local governments will have to devise
elaborate State Implementation Plans, or SIPs, detailing their
strategies for complying with the agency's latest regulatory
diktat. And in accordance with the Clean Air Act, it will be up
to the EPA to approve or disapprove the SIPs. The estimated
cost of compliance with the new standards for the Chicago
area alone is projected to be between $3 billion and $7 billion.
"I wish we never had that fight with Congress," she tells
Forbes. "I wish it could have been avoided. I think it came at
great expense to the country. I think it was very unfortunate."
Note the implication: The way it could have been avoided was
for Congress to avoid challenging her.
You can admire Browner's skill and still be appalled by what
she is doing. "This is by far the most politicized EPA I've
seen in my three decades of working in state governments,"
says Russell J. Harding, director of Michigan's Department of
Environmental Quality. "It is an agency driven more by sound
bites than by sound science."
In its haste to seem to be attending to the
environment, Congress failed to exert
control over EPA standards and
regulations.
Says Barry McBee, chairman of the Texas Natural Resource
Conservation Commission: "EPA continues to embody an
outdated attitude that Washington knows best, that only
Washington has the capability to protect our environment.
States are closer to the people they protect and closer to the
resources and can do a better job today."
As a weapon to humble the state regulatory bodies, Carol
Browner's EPA has embraced the politically correct concept
of "environmental justice." This broadens EPA's mandates
even beyond protection of everyone's health.
In early 1993 Browner set up the Office of Environmental
Justice within EPA which, among other things, passes out
taxpayer-funded grants for studying the effects of industrial
pollutants on poorer, mostly black, communities. In 1994 the
White House supported this initiative by ordering federal
agencies to consider the health and environmental effects of
their decisions on minority and low-income communities.
That's the rhetoric. The reality is that the federal agencies have
a new weapon for over-ruling state agencies. Browner's EPA
recently delayed the approval of a $700 million polyvinyl
chloride plant to be built by Japanese-owned Shintech in the
predominantly black southern Louisiana town of Convent.
Louisiana's Department of Environmental Quality had already
given the go-ahead; the plant would have created good-paying
jobs and opportunities in an area suffering from 60%
unemployment and low incomes. But the EPA argued that
blacks would suffer disproportionately from potentially
cancer-causing emissions of the plant in an area already lined
with chemical factories of all descriptions.
Louisiana Economic Development Director Kevin Reilly was
enraged. "It is demeaning and despicable for these people to
play the race card," he says, pointing out that poor people
and blacks would have gained economically and were at little
health risk. The scientific evidence bears Reilly out: A recent
article in the Journal of the Louisiana Medical Society found
that cancer incidence in the area is in most cases no higher than
nationally.
But never mind the facts: This kind of decision has less to do
with science than with power politics. It delivers the message:
Don't mess with the EPA. "Carol Browner is the best hardball
player in the Clinton Administration," says Steven J. Milloy,
executive director of The Advancement of Sound Science
Coalition in Washington, a longtime critic of EPA who
acknowledges receiving funding from industry. "She has the
105th Congress completely intimidated by her debating skills
and her sheer grasp of facts, however questionable. She eats
their lunch."
Like many Clintonites, Browner takes her own good time
about responding to congressional requests for EPA
documents. When word got out that EPA was developing a
series of proposals for reducing U.S. emissions of man-made
greenhouse gases, the House Commerce Committee asked for
a copy. The EPA ignored the request for two years.
When the proposals were leaked to the committee late last
year, it was immediately clear why EPA had stiffed Congress.
The document was loaded with proposals for raising taxes to
pay for new EPA initiatives. Produced in the agency's Office
of Policy, Planning & Evaluation and dated May 31, 1994,
EPA's "Climate Change Action" recommends a new
50-cent-per-gallon gasoline tax, with an estimated cost to
motorists of $47 billion in the year 2000 alone. Seven other
tax increases were recommended: a "greenhouse gas tax," a
"carbon tax," a "BTU tax," an "at-the-source ad-valorem tax"
on the value of the fuel at the source of extraction, an "end-use
ad valorem tax" on the value of the fuel at the point of sale, a
"motor fuels tax" on the retail price of gasoline and diesel, an
"oil import fee." Also recommended: A new federal fee on
vehicle emissions tests of $40 per person to "shift the cost of
vehicle inspection from the state to the vehicle owner."
How could they hope to get so many new taxes through a
tax-shy Congress? The "Climate Change Action Plan"
contains repeated references to how each of the above taxes
and fees can be imposed under existing laws. Talk about
taxation without representation.
It's not entirely surprising that Browner and her crew think in
terms of government-by-edict. Browner's extraordinary power
is in many ways a consequence of Congress' delegation of its
lawmaking power to the EPA. It has let the agency
micromanage environmental activities throughout the nation
with little regard for either local wishes or the cost. This
negligence has permitted the agency to ignore scientific data
that conflict with agency orthodoxy. The EPA is in many
ways becoming a state within the state.
"I wish we never had that fight with
Congress.I wish it could have been
avoided. I think it came at great expense
to the country."
"This is Washington at its worst—out-of-touch bureaucrats
churning out red tape with reckless abandon. The EPA hasn't
taken into account an ounce of reality," says Representative
Fred Upton (R-Mich.), a frequent critic, referring to the new
clean air rules.
If science isn't Browner's strong point, political tactics are.
Her enemies can only envy the way the EPA uses the courts.
An organization such as the Natural Resources Defense
Council will go into federal court and sue to force the EPA to
do something. The EPA will wink and, after the courts expand
its mandate, see to it that big legal fees go to the NRDC.
Mission creep, in short, takes many forms and its
practitioners have many ways to plunder the public purse.
For her part. Browner often dismisses as simple male
chauvinism any criticism of her hardball tactics. "I think
sometimes that it's an issue of men and women," she says,
coyly.
Such cute demagoguery aside, there is no doubting Browner's
sincerity. She is an environmentalist zealot. She was clearly
behind the decision to tighten the clean air standards to what
many people regard as unreasonable levels. If not a tree-hugger
she is philosophically close to Al Gore and his quasi-religious
environmentalism.
After graduating from University of Florida law school,
Browner (both of whose parents were college teachers) went
to work for a Ralph Nader-affiliated consumer advocate
group. There she met her husband, Michael Podhorzer, who
still works there.
She learned politics working on Gore's Senate staff, where she
rose to be his legislative director before heading back to
Florida to head the state environmental commission.
After the EPA, what's next for this tough and aggressive
politician? If Al Gore's presidential hopes aren't dashed by the
fund-raising scandals, there's a vice presidential slot on the
Democratic ticket up for grabs in 2000. A female
environmentalist and mother of a young boy would do a lot to
bolster Gore's otherwise soggy appeal.
In a statement to Forbes, Gore went so far as to try to claim
for Browner some of the credit for the current economic
prosperity. "She has helped prove," he declares, "that a
healthy environment and a strong economy are inextricably
linked."
If not a vice presidential run, what? Could Browner be
nominated by the Clinton Administration to be the next head
of the United Nations' environment program? Or would the
Administration nominate her as the new U.N. Deputy
Secretary General? Either position would give Browner
instant international visibility, which couldn't hurt her
political prospects in Washington.
One way or another, you are going to be hearing a lot more
about Carol M. Browner; whenever you do, it's unlikely to be
good news for business—and it may not even be good news
for the environment.
Sidebars:
An ecosystem of politics, personality and policy
High costs, higher confusion
Providing a bonus for snoops and spies
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