By now it is crystal clear that the "Contract With America" is a Contract ON the Endangered Species Act (ESA), as well as nearly all environmental, public welfare, public health and safety laws. Despite rhetoric that speaks for smaller government and less regulation, the Contract would burden the Fish and Wildlife Service and other agencies with vast new bureaucracies, making it impossible to reauthorize, implement, or enforce the ESA. Worse, it will cost taxpayers billions of dollars by forcing the government to pay state and local governments and property owners to obey the law. Already, we are seeing attempts to put a moratorium on the current ESA while the reauthorization process is on-going, and attempts to force the agencies to compensate people for "any measurable reduction in the value of their property..." Other provisions of the euphimistically titled "Job Creation and Wage Enhancement Act" (Title 8 of the Contract) would :
´ Prevent government agencies from listing species as threatened or endangered;
´ Make virtually impossible the designation of critical habitat to protect vital breeding and migration areas of endangered wildlife;
´ Block regulations which prevent public resources, such as fisheries, from being over-exploited.
The Contract also establishes a burdensome maze of governmental procedures and reviews making it impossible to adopt - or even propose - essential health, safety, and environmental regulations. Every government rule that affects more than 100 people or costs more than $1 million would require a speculative, burdensome and redundant regulatory impact analysis of 23 separate items. Any rule protecting endangered species or their sensitive habitats could be blocked even before it is adopted by "scientists" representing corporate interests or by industry lawyers challenging the analysis in court.
The Contract places Congressional budget committees in charge of environmental laws, and imposes arbitrary caps on regulatory budgets without accounting for benefits provided to the public and the environment. This will likely result in massive cuts in agency staff, scientific research and data collection, enforcement, and the revocation of critical environmental legislation and regulations. [The above was excerpted from an article by Tim Eichenberg of the Center for Marine Conservation.]
Recent polls taken across the USA indicate that over 75% of the people want environmental regulation; value clean water, clean air, and the protection of wildlife. It is outrageous that the Republicans believe they can get away with rampant gutting of virtually every environmental, health and safety regulation. All of us are called upon to make our voices heard in Washington. (NOTE: If you sign up for Working Assets Long Distance Service, you can call Washington free! Contact the MEC for info.) The right wing is very well organized; we must be, too. Please contact your representative, your senators, and the President. Tell them that they do not have a mandate to gut environmental, health and safety laws, and that, instead, these laws should be strengthened. For daily updates on the status of the various pieces of legislation, please call the MEC at 468-1660.
Copyright Mendocino Environmental Center 1995