A Need for Spring Cleaning

Just over a year into his term, President George W. Bush has all but proven who his real constituents are—big business and industry. In his latest budget, Bush flatly declined to reauthorize the tax on high-polluting industries that once kept the environmental cleanup trust fund—known as the Superfund—self-sustaining. The fund, which was created in 1980, has shrunk from billions of dollars to less than $100 million today without the corporate contributions.

The tax that paid for most of the Superfund was reauthorized under Presidents Reagan and Bush. Unfortunately, a Republican congress refused to renew it in 1995. Bush’s action this year all but guarantees the permanent death of a large Superfund.

Over the last six years, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) managed to keep the fund afloat with a combination of previously-collected industry taxes and congressional funding. But the amount of money coming from Congress, and thus the taxpayers, has been steadily increasing, from 21 percent in 1994 to 50 percent in 1999. By 2004, all of the funding will come out of ordinary taxpayers’ pockets. It is painfully ironic that a program set up to hit polluters where it hurts them most—in the pocketbook—will soon do the same to those for whom Bush supposedly has the most compassion—individual taxpayers.

Although in a perfect world every polluter would pay for its own mess, the Superfund plays the necessary role of cleaning up sites for which no company takes responsibilty. Numerous small projects have been completed successfully, but many big ones remain, and they can’t get started without money. Instead of ensuring an impoverished future for the Superfund, Bush should have tried to reinstate the tax on polluting industries to pay for cleanup costs. He had the opportunity to right the mistake his Republican compatriots made in 1995 and to reassure centrists that he cares about the environment regardless of his ties to big business, oil and industry.

Bush’s action guarantees that the Superfund will get less and do less. What was once a self-sufficient federal operation is now yet another under-funded government program. The Superfund will be subject entirely to the whims of Congress, and a tight congressional budget almost guarantees a drop in funding for the program. The current dearth of corporate money in the fund is already having an effect; several projects have been delayed due to a lack of funding. While the Bush administration estimated that 65 sites would be cleaned up in its first year, only 47 sites were actually reclaimed, and the administration estimates that only 40 sites will be cleaned next year.

Bush may talk about his special brand of conservatism that cares for ordinary people and the environment, but once again he failed to follow through. It is the height of hypocrisy to pass a tax cut that supposedly benefits ordinary Americans, as Bush did last year, and then shift the tax burden of the Superfund to working class Americans later, as he is doing now. The Superfund was about justice; those who greedily polluted America’s natural resources had to pay. Now it seems that polluters can destroy our environment with impunity.