WASHINGTON — Barely two years ago, the Republican Congress appeared well on its way to rolling back a quarter-century of environmental legislation.
With great fanfare, the GOP majority celebrated opening the national forests to logging, moved aggressively to scale back clean-water programs and tried to rein in the federal government's primary pollution fighters. The Environmental Protection Agency, in the words of House Republican Whip Tom DeLay of Texas, was "the Gestapo of government."
But listen to the GOP now. Chastened by a tide of public opinion against their agenda, Republicans are no longer bashing environmental laws and, in fact, are often heard speaking of their respect for the environment.
Yet their language masks a reality: Behind those gentler words, the Republican majority is still working hard to relax or abolish many environmental regulations.
"Two years ago they were lined up shoulder to shoulder, with muskets firing away at 25 years of environmental law," said George Frampton, who recently resigned as assistant secretary of the Interior specializing in public lands. "They took too many casualties. Now they're firing from behind rocks, still trying to put some pretty big holes in the environmental framework."
Republicans agree that they have changed their strategy, although they insist that they are trying to bring more balance and common sense to environmental regulations--not rip holes in them.
In his speech to the National Cattlemen's Beef Assn., Sen. Larry E. Craig (R-Idaho) said he has "adjusted [his] language," stepping away from talk about "changing or reforming" environmental regulations that the public already considers beneficial and is instead talking about "modernizing and improving" the rules.
Many of the targets remain from past encounters: legislation and regulations that protect endangered species and ancient timber, measures that limit dune buggies and self-propelled water skis in public wilderness, and restrictions on accessing oil resources hidden beneath the fragile frozen crust of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska.
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The focus of Republican efforts is expected to be natural resources--legislation that often protects fuzzy creatures but at the expense of the rights of property owners. At the same time, Republicans are likely to avoid major revisions to legislation limiting pollution.
