The Clinton administration has made the elevation of the Environmental Protection Agency to a Cabinet-level department, discussed for years, into one of its environmental priorities in Congress. Ironically, this has created an opening for those who want to weaken environmental protection. During consideration of S. 171, the EPA Cabinet elevation bill, Sen. Don Nickles (R-OK) offered an amendment to require an economic and employment impact statement with each major bill considered by Congress and each regulatory proposal from the administration. This would give polluters and their teams of lawyers another hammer to quash environmental protection regulations before they see the light of day. Within a squeamish bureaucracy, many regulations would be dead on arrival, and innovative work on new approaches to environmental protection would be throttled. In addition, such impact statements are costly to produce and largely unreliable. The effect would be to hamper the ability of Congress and the executive branch to take decisive action to protect the environment and human health.

A motion was introduced by Government Operations Chair John Glenn (D-OH) to table (kill) the amendment. The motion was agreed to by a vote of 50-48 on April 29, 1993. YES is the pro-environmental vote.