House Rejects Republican Cuts in EPA Budget

WASHINGTON —  The House on Wednesday rejected legislation that would cut the Environmental Protection Agency’s budget by 22.5%, handing the Republican leadership a new defeat in the politically sensitive environmental arena.

The 216-208 vote, which sends the measure back to a committee of House and Senate members for at least minor changes, reflected the difficulty that Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) and his senior aides have encountered each time in recent months they have shifted their focus toward the nation’s natural resources, particularly the quality of its air and water.

The Senate, meanwhile, unanimously approved legislation that would provide $1 billion for states to improve water treatment facilities and set the first federal standards for bottled water. The House has not yet acted on the legislation.

But opponents complained that the bill would relax a number of important drinking water standards, raising by tenfold the amount of radon--a naturally occurring cancer-causing element--that would be allowed in drinking and bathing water. It also would push back--from 1997 to 2001--the deadline for the preparation of new, and presumably tougher, federal standards governing the level of arsenic, another carcinogen, in water.

“That sets a horrendous precedent,” Erik Olson, a senior attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council, said of the lowered standards.

As the two chambers took up legislation of central concern to the environmental community, Democrats argued that the Republican majority was masking its efforts to reduce environmental protection behind the clamor to reduce the federal budget deficit.

“Under the guise of balancing the budget, they have systematically savaged the Environmental Protection Agency budget, not so much to balance the budget but to serve the special interests by crippling the agency’s ability to enforce our environmental laws,” Sen. Frank R. Lautenberg (D-N.J.) said at a news conference Wednesday.

Indeed, Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-Redlands), managing the Republican side of the debate on the EPA appropriation, closed his argument by focusing entirely on the contribution the cuts would make to lowering the budget deficit.

“The most important challenge [facing Congress] is moving toward balancing the budget,” Lewis said.

The few Republicans who spoke in favor of the measure either praised projects it would pay for in their districts or saluted its budget-cutting side, rather than arguing in favor of limits on environmental regulation.

In addition to cutting spending for the environmental agency, the bill would reduce funds for the Department of Housing and Urban Development by 21%, including cutting funds to help the homeless by 27%. It would increase spending on veterans by $400 million, to give the Department of Veterans’ Affairs $37.7 billion, but it would cut major construction of veterans’ projects by 62%.

It would eliminate President Clinton’s AmeriCorps program, which provides volunteers for inner-city projects. Also under the measure, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s budget would be cut 4% to $13.8 billion.

“This bill makes huge reductions in housing. It makes huge reductions in our ability to enforce environmental cleanup regulations. It abdicates responsibilities we have to our veterans,” said Rep. David R. Obey (D-Wis.).

The House vote, conducted after an hour of desultory debate before a near-empty chamber, caught House leaders by surprise.

“Nobody anticipated this. This was out of the blue,” said Rep. Bob Livingston (R-La.), chairman of the House Appropriations Committee.

Rep. Sherwood Boehlert (R-N.Y.), who in recent months has led a revolt among conservation-minded Republicans against their leadership, said in an interview after the vote that House members who voted to reject the measure were “posturing” with an eye toward establishing a pro-environment record for next year’s election.

The vote sent the measure back to a conference committee of senators and House members, which had negotiated differences between measures passed by each chamber. Twenty-five Republicans joined 190 Democrats and the one independent in the House in voting to reject the measure. Two Democrats and 206 Republicans supported it.

While the debate in the House focused on the impact the measure would have on the environment--particularly the spending cuts that have led Clinton to threaten to veto it--the motion sending the measure back to the negotiators instructed them to add $213 million in spending on veterans’ medical care.

It followed by two weeks a vote in which a similar coalition of Democrats and 48 Republicans rejected for a second time legislation cutting funds for the Interior Department and making only limited changes in a now-controversial 123-year-old mining law.

With appropriations legislation piling up, there is now talk among Republicans of combining them into one massive measure that would be thrown into the budget maelstrom, rather than allowing the Democrats to pick away at each one until only such sensitive political matters as Medicare and Medicaid remain as the centerpiece of the budget debate.

In a concerted effort to gain back some of the more than $1 billion that has been cut from their appropriation, EPA officials have tried to draw attention to specific agency activities that would not be carried out if the money is not restored.

Carol Browner, the agency’s administrator, for example, spoke by telephone Tuesday with the mayors of Butte, Mont., Jefferson City, Mo., and Santa Fe and Albuquerque, and invited reporters to listen in while she told them that if the cuts are enacted, “your communities will lose funds.”