Negotiators Complete Clean Air Bill : Environment: A compromise on aid for laid off workers clears way for agreement. White House indicates Bush will sign far-reaching measure.
WASHINGTON — Environmentalists and industry representatives joined with the White House on Monday in welcoming what lawmakers hailed as a “historic†agreement on new clean air legislation that aims to free the nation’s skies of smog and other harmful forms of pollution by early in the next century.
Working around the clock, exhausted negotiators put the final pieces of the far-reaching legislation into place just before dawn Monday, agreeing to a compromise over a $250-million job retraining and compensation program for workers laid off as a result of the new clean air regulations.
The compromise, which closed a loophole that the Bush Administration feared could have been widened into an open-ended entitlement program with staggering costs, eliminated what had been a White House veto threat and cleared the way for final passage of the legislation later this week.
Approving the final package, the 25 congressmen and seven senators who formed the core negotiating group voted, 32 to 1, to recommend that the House and Senate give final approval to the first revision of the 1970 Clean Air Act in 13 years. Rep. William E. Dannemeyer (R-Fullerton) cast the only negative vote.
White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater said that President Bush is “very pleased†with the agreement and considers it a “reasonable†compromise between the clean air package the Administration proposed last year and the tougher legislation subsequently passed by the House and the Senate.
Although its overall cost is expected to be at least 25% more than the $20-billion-per-year ceiling originally proposed by the Administration, Fitzwater and other White House officials indicated that Bush will sign the measure when it reaches his desk.
“Very large costs are going to come with this bill,†warned Rep. John D. Dingell (D-Mich.), an auto industry supporter who played a pivotal role in crafting the bill as chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. “It is not the bill any one of us would have written,†Dingell added, “but it is overall a good bill, a fair bill, a workable bill.â€
Striking a complex balance between the advocates of clean air and the industries that befoul it, the new law will:
--Reduce smog-forming pollution from automobiles by tightening tailpipe emission standards, mandating the sale of cleaner-burning reformulated gasoline and establishing new clean vehicle standards for fleets in the nation’s smoggiest cities beginning in the mid-1990s. It also will establish an innovative pilot program in California to force the development of ultraclean, alternatively fueled cars.
--Attempt to eliminate the scourge of acid rain by cutting the sulfur dioxide emissions that cause it in half by the year 2000.
--Cut the emissions of cancer-causing toxic chemicals released by factories by as much as 90% over the next 20 years.
--Phase out the use of ozone-depleting chlorofluorocarbons by the year 2000 to safeguard the Earth’s protective ozone layer.
House Speaker Thomas S. Foley (D-Wash.) described the agreement as “historic.†Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.), the clean air conference chairman, called it “the most comprehensive and sweeping environmental legislation that Congress has passed in this century.â€
Environmental groups, while not satisfied with the motor vehicle provisions or the extended deadlines incorporated into the bill as concessions to industry lobbyists, also hailed the compromise as a “giant step†forward, in the words of Sierra Club President Susan Merrow.
Tim MacCarthy, a lobbyist for the Motor Vehicles Manufacturers Assn., said that the auto industry also supports the bill, although “only time will tell if the benefits outweigh the costs.†The industry estimates that the regulations will add about $600 to the price of new cars.
Opposition from industry, the Ronald Reagan Administration and dozens of special interests adversely affected by antipollution laws stymied congressional efforts to revise the Clean Air Act for more than a decade even as the air in more than 100 American cities became increasingly unfit to breathe. The stalemate seemed unbreakable until last year, when Bush proposed a revision that became the basis for negotiations with House and Senate clean air advocates, notably Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Los Angeles) and Senate Majority Leader George J. Mitchell (D-Me.).
But more than a year of intensive, torturously difficult negotiations followed in which deals were struck and votes were traded as lobbyists from around the country besieged the Capitol. The last pieces of the complex puzzle were put into place shortly before dawn Monday, when the negotiators agreed to limit the criteria for eligibility for special unemployment and job retraining benefits for workers displaced by the legislation. The five-year, $250-million provision is expected to apply mainly to coal miners who could be laid off because of the bill’s acid rain provisions.
That left only one relatively minor item which would have attempted to improve visibility in national parks. But deep differences emerged as soon as the negotiators turned to the provision and suddenly the entire agreement seemed in danger of collapsing.
“Baucus went ballistic and threatened to bring down the entire bill if the House proposal was adopted,†a conference source said.
Faced with that threat, the House side withdrew the provision.
The White House aide attending the talks smiled, Dingell’s staff rolled out champagne and, with the popping of corks and the lifting of glasses, at 5:02 a.m. the deal was done.
Get the L.A. Times Politics newsletter
Deeply reported insights into legislation, politics and policy from Sacramento, Washington and beyond. In your inbox three times per week.
You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.
