Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, March 26, 1990 TAG: 9003262033
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: PHILIP SHABECOFF THE NEW YORK TIMES
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Long
Byrd was seeking support for an amendment to the clean-air bill that would help his coal-mining constituents in West Virginia.
The proposal, to provide financial relief to miners who lose their jobs as a result of the bill's provisions, is opposed by Sen. George Mitchell, D-Maine.
Mitchell, who succeeded Byrd as majority leader, believes the Byrd amendment would jeopardize the bill by breaking the compromise reached by Senate leaders and the White House.
The two senators have been using their considerable influence to win votes in the hotly contested debate over the legislation.
The day after Byrd worked the hallways, Evelyn Dubrow, a veteran labor lobbyist, stopped Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., as he was coming out of the chamber.
She asked him why he was not supporting the Byrd amendment.
Dodd leaned toward Dubrow and, in a whisper loud enough for those nearby to hear, said, "I'll tell you in one word: child care."
Then, as the elevator was closing, he held up his hands in a what-can-I-do gesture and said, "George is being very tough on this one."
For the record, an aide said later that Dodd had not yet decided what he would do about the Byrd amendment, yet the message was clear: Dodd was convinced that if he wanted his pet child-care bill acted on by the Senate, he would have to stand with the majority leader.
The clean-air legislation, which Senate leaders have called the most important bill before Congress this year, is producing both politics as usual and politics as unusual.
As usual, promises are being made, unspoken warnings are being issued and chits for favors performed over the years are being called in.
Industries are spending millions of dollars in a lobbying effort to persuade senators to ease the requirements of the bill, and environmental groups are urging lawmakers to take the moral high ground by adopting stronger protections for clean air.
But the usual partisan lines have been largely erased.
Divisions over the bill, which would impose new controls on acid rain, urban smog and toxic chemicals in the air, are shaped instead by unusually sharp regional differences over who gains from the bill, who loses, who pays, who doesn't.
States with dirty coal-fired power plants want financial help to pay for cleanup costs; states that have already cleaned up insist that the polluters must pay themselves.
Western states with clean air are demanding the right to dirty it a bit for the sake of economic growth.
States with large numbers of chemical plants and refineries are objecting to the high costs of controlling chemicals in the air.
Mitchell has said he entered into a compromise with the White House because he could not defeat a filibuster that was almost certain to develop over the bill without President Bush's support.
As a result, the Senate is now considering legislation that is weaker in some respects than the bill approved by its own Environment and Public Works Committee.
But the measure is stronger in other ways than the proposal Bush made last June.
Mitchell is struggling to make the compromise stand up against opposition from both environmentalists and their allies who want to strengthen the bill and from industrial interests who want to weaken it.
The result has been some unlikely alliances.
For example, some senators who consistently oppose environmental legislation voted for an amendment offered by Tim Wirth, D-Colo., and Pete Wilson, R-Calif., that would require stricter controls on pollution from automobiles.
Among those who voted for the amendment were Senators Malcolm Wallop of Wyoming, Jesse Helms of North Carolina and James McClure and Steve Symms of Idaho, all of them Republicans who have scored zero or nearly so on the voting assessments of the League of Conservation Voters, the chief political arm of the environmentalists.
To Mitchell, their motive was transparent: "There are a substantial number of senators who don't want a bill. They are voting for amendments that are not part of the compromise, hoping they will kill the bill."
Mitchell said he is finding the process of guiding clean-air legislation through the Senate "the most difficult and demanding thing I have ever been involved in."
Coming from Maine, where there is a strong interest in air quality, he has been a leading Senate champion of clean air for 10 years. Mitchell has come under heavy and, he believes, unfair criticism from his old environmental allies.
The majority leader is also uncomfortable about twisting the arms of his fellow Democrats to support the compromise with the Republican-controlled White House.
He did not warn Dodd on the child-care bill, Mitchell said, adding, "I care very deeply about that bill, and there is not a chance I would do anything to block it."
The most dramatic moment in the clean-air debate so far came late Wednesday, when Byrd took the floor to plead for his amendment.
The Senate chamber is usually empty when a member makes a speech, even during the middle of the business day. But one by one, senators filed in and sat silently while Byrd made an emotional appeal for his proposal to aid miners.
Mitchell, exhausted and suffering from a bad cold, sat nearby, for a time with his head in his hands.
One after another, senators, including old legislative foes of Byrd like Republican Minority Leader Bob Dole of Kansas, and Strom Thurmond, the conservative Republican from South Carolina, rose to challenge Byrd.
Byrd answered them with a plea for the miners, who he said are specifically "targeted" by the legislation because it would encourage power companies to switch from the coal with high sulfur content that is mined mainly in the East to the low-sulfur coal that is mined in the West.
This would reduce the pollution that causes acid rain.
by CNB