Reagan and the environment The premise behind President Reagan’s economic plan is that his administration has inherited short-run economic and budget forces which threaten a duplication of the 1980 credit crunch, double-dip recession in early 1981, federal budget and credit hemorrhages, serious commodity shocks, and a prohibitively expensive environmental regulatory burden. Several elements of the new approach have begun to surface. First, it has been suggested (see “The Stockman Manifesto,” Washington Post, Dec. 14, 1980) that this administration is serious about trying something new, Le., decisive and credible strategies for outlay control, reduction of future budget authorities, and curtailment of governmental absorption of credit. Second, it is a refreshing realization that static waste-cutting approaches to 198 1 fiscal expenditures will hardly affect the nation’s true economic problems. Similarly, the manifesto recognizes that expansion in the nation’s capital-spending sectors will not be accomplished through tax cuts alone. The president’s economic planners and advisers are apparently seeking to restore credit and capital market order through fundamental monetary policy reform. It comes as no surprise, therefore, that expenditures for implementing environmental regulations will be seriously affected by this fundamental approach. David Stockman, President Reagan’s new head of the Office of Management and Budget, has estimated the environmental safety and energy compliance costs for the early 1980s to be in excess of $100 billion. These costs can be saved through relaxation (auto safety, auto emission and passive restraint standards, and ambient ozone standards), cancellation (EPA’s fuel additive testing program and DOE’Sappliance efficiency standards), modification (EPA’s pretreatment standards for industrial wastewater), and deferral (OSHA’s workplace noise standards) of selected regulatory requirements. The accuracy of these cost projections is not the
point. The philosophy behind the decision to cut is important and rests most heavily on the political belief that these costs outweigh an identifiable social benefit. Particularly in the area of human health effects, the evolution of supportable answers to the basic question of how much information is enough information is in a primitive state of development. Given that prevailing social attitudes in the U S . are not in favor of wholesale public health protection, a particularly attractive political opportunity is available to President Reagan. Funds saved from actions which defer, revise, or rescind existing or impending environmental regulations could be partially diverted to research funding, under the prudent counsel that we need to understand much more about environmental mechanisms before we require expensive regulatory compliance. Our present research investment in the environmental area is extremely modest. EPA’s fiscal 198 1 budget is only $0.445 billion and NIEHS’s figure is only $0.1 billion. Therefore the potential exists for making almost everyone happy. The taxpayers would be pleased with a reduction in the $100-billion cost of enviromental compliance. Industry would be pleased with relief from this burden, and environmental researchers would benefit from a reallocation of some of the savings. Actually, as with all environmental problems, there is no happy solution. Environmentalists will say that there is clear subterfuge in the avoidance of action . . . or at least that the president is dragging his feet. Industrialists will say this should have been done much earlier. The public will be uneasy, but not as uneasy, perhaps, as they would be with continued market instability. Yet, a prudent addition to research funding will serve positive, if not happy, purposes.
Volume 15, Number 2, February 1981
127
