THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, July 29, 1995 TAG: 9507290277
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: FROM WIRE REPORTS
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium: 75 lines
In the first major victory for environmentalists in the House this year, Democrats and moderate Republicans joined Friday to narrowly reject a GOP proposal that would have dramatically limited the Environmental Protection Agency's enforcement of pollution laws.
The proposal was part of a spending bill that remains unacceptable to the Clinton administration and environmental allies because it would cut the agency's budget by a third.
But Friday's House vote, a preliminary one, and the Senate's inability last week to pass a bill that would have limited federal health, safety and environmental regulation, suggest an emerging reluctance to go along with the Republican leadership's plans to undo environmental policies put in place during a generation of Democratic congressional control.
The vote Friday, which approved a crucial amendment to the spending bill, was 212-206, with 51 Republicans breaking from their party's ranks. The amendment stripped from the bill 17 provisions that would have kept the EPA from spending money for purposes like regulating commercial development in wetlands areas or toxic air pollution from oil refineries.
Other regulations that would have been reined in limit industrial runoff into lakes and streams; stem sewage overflows; keep arsenic and other chemicals out of drinking water; and check for pesticides in food.
The bipartisan coalition that won Friday had succeeded in getting more than a dozen Republicans to rise, one after another, and warn colleagues in their party that the voters would strike back if they felt that environmental protections were being undermined in Congress.
``Call home,'' Rep. Michael N. Castle of Delaware urged his fellow Republicans. ``Call your environment secretary. Call your governor. Call your constituents, if you have time to do that before this vote.''
``The American people might have been voting to get the government off their backs'' when Republicans captured Congress last November, said Rep. Charles Wilson, D-Texas. ``But they weren't voting to put arsenic in their drinking water or benzene in the air that they breathe.''
Still, the margins Friday and in the Senate last week were narrow, and the final environmental votes have not been cast in either chamber. And the Republican majority's leadership, aided by conservative Democrats, has made rolling back environmental regulations a prime objective, on the ground that they needlessly burden business and landowners.
``We've definitely handed a victory to those who want to regulate more and put more government into people's lives,'' said Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas.
Before voting on final passage of the spending bill, the House is very likely to reconsider next week at least some of the provisions it stripped from the legislation Friday.
Meanwhile, conservative Democrats in the Senate have been meeting all week to try to assemble a compromise proposal to take to Sen. Bob Dole of Kansas, the majority leader, who needs only one more vote to shut off debate and move his regulatory relief bill forward. Sen. Charles S. Robb of Virginia is considered the most likely of the Democrats to defect.
Even if those votes are reversed, though, the narrowing balance in the House and the Senate has stiffened the spine of the administration, which continued Friday to say that the president would use his veto to block either of the bills as they now stand. ILLUSTRATION: HOW THEY VOTED
A ``yes'' vote is a vote to retain the EPA's enforcement powers.
Herbert Bateman, R-Va.
Did not vote
Owen B. Pickett, D-Va. No
Robert C. Scott, D-Va. Yes
Norman Sisisky, D-Va. No
Eva Clayton, D-N.C. Yes
Walter Jones Jr., R-N.C. No
by CNB