USA Today
www.usatoday.com

Arsenic fouls review of new rules Uproar marks turning point for president

By Jonathan Weisman and Mimi Hall
April 19, 2001

As the curtain rose on the Bush administration, White House officials boldly began dismantling parts of former president Bill Clinton's legacy. They dropped efforts to regulate carbon dioxide, dumped an international global warming treaty, scuttled repetitive-stress-injury regulations and repealed a host of executive orders protecting organized labor.

Then came March 20.

The political firestorm that erupted after that date's decision on arsenic levels in drinking water marked a turning point for President Bush, when regulatory rollbacks turned dramatically to pass-throughs.

''Call it 'Before Arsenic' and 'After Arsenic,' '' quips Gary Bass, executive director of the White House watchdog group OMB Watch. ''After arsenic, we've gotten a much more moderate tone.''

Upon taking office Jan. 20, Bush slapped a freeze on 175 regulations issued by the Clinton administration, including 70 that had been finalized but had not taken effect. Up to 35 were considered major new rules; many had been completed in the Clinton White House's final weeks.

But 90 days later, Bush has decided to repeal or significantly change only four of those major regulations so far. He has changed other Clinton administration initiatives through executive orders, policy pronouncements and legislation. About two dozen major regulations have been allowed to stand.

Through the months of February and March, the White House appeared to pay little heed to traditionally Democratic interest groups such as labor unions and environmentalists. In rapid succession, the administration:

* Overturned five Clinton-era executive orders favoring organized labor.

* Signed congressional legislation that scuttled regulations to combat repetitive-stress injuries, such as carpal tunnel syndrome and tendinitis.

* Dropped a campaign pledge to regulate carbon dioxide emissions from power plants and announced that the United States would withdraw from the Kyoto treaty on global warming.

* Moved toward repealing stringent environmental regulations on hard-rock mining on federal land.

* Suspended requirements that government contracting officers review whether a potential contractor violated environmental, labor, consumer or employment laws or regulations.

* Signaled it would consider rewriting a Clinton regulation that banned building roads in national forests.

Then came arsenic. On March 20, the Environmental Protection Agency signaled it would significantly rewrite a Clinton-era regulation that would have lowered the acceptable level of arsenic in drinking water from 50 parts per billion to 10 parts per billion.

The Clinton standard would have brought the U.S. drinking water supply into line with World Health Organization and European Union arsenic levels. Even so, the need for Clinton's level of protection was hotly contested in scientific circles.

''The question is never posed: Do you want your water bill to go up several hundreds of dollars a year to go from a one-in-500,000 to one-in-a-million chance of cancer?'' says Peitro Nivola, a regulatory expert at the Brookings Institution.

But arsenic became a rallying cry for environmentalists, who had little difficulty raising alarm bells about a substance universally recognized as a deadly poison.

''You just hear the word 'arsenic,' and you think poison,'' says Susan Dudley, a senior research fellow at George Mason University's Mercatus Center, which is critical of most regulations.

In the decision's wake, the shift has been dramatic. This month, the Bush White House has announced it will let stand Clinton regulations on energy-efficient washing machines and water heaters, medical privacy, wetlands protection, lead reporting, and nutrition labeling on meat and poultry.

Bush is not finished.

On Monday, the White House will announce its decision on a Clinton-issued regulation banishing snowmobiles from national parks.

The administration is also grappling with a far-reaching regulation promoting patients' rights for Medicaid recipients.

White House aides say the review has been methodical. The individual agencies make the initial call before sending the regulations to the White House budget office. If no dissent emerges, the budget office can make the decision on whether a regulation stands or falls. If significant disagreements emerge, the White House -- perhaps Bush himself -- makes the final decision. That was the case with the medical privacy rule.

The shift has been both substantive and symbolic. White House aides have sought to focus public attention on their decisions. In February and March, the administration let stand major regulations on food safety and diesel engines but got scant attention.

This month, they have stepped up their public-relations efforts: They brought EPA administrator Christie Whitman to the White House briefing room and sent the president to the Rose Garden for a formal announcement.

Bush spokesman Dan Bartlett freely admits such events are meant to ''shine a light'' on decisions that could counter the negative image created by arsenic.

Though Bush appears to have become more favorable to his predecessor's decisions, his aides are still quick to criticize Clinton's last-minute regulatory rush.

''If the environmental actions that President Clinton took that President Bush is studying were so important, why did President Clinton wait until the last week to do these things?'' White House spokesman Ari Fleischer asks.

White House aides still appear to be licking the wounds inflicted by the media in the wake of the arsenic decision.

The press, Bartlett says, ''starts with the presumption that what was done by the Clinton administration was correct.''