Zimmer Responds

I agree with Olden’s view in this issue of AJPH (p. 454) that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) faces unprecedented challenges, but I disagree on the reasons why it faces them.

NOT VICTIM OF BUDGET CUTS

Unlike Olden, I do not believe the EPA will fall victim to budget cuts. In fact, the Appropriations Committees of both houses of Congress have rejected nearly all the cuts in the budget President Trump proposed. Under proper leadership, the EPA can appropriately meet its regulatory obligations with relatively flat funding.

On the basis of my experience in Congress, businesses generally can live with fairly high levels of spending by regulatory agencies. They dislike new regulations that impose significant costs (especially if their effective date comes too quickly for them to smoothly adjust), but they value prompt responses from regulators, which they understand take reasonable numbers of experienced and decently paid staff. For example, large pharmaceutical companies value a responsive and professional Food and Drug Administration, and federal contractors need a reliable federal acquisition process. All this takes a lot of federal money.

Moreover, there is a great deal of inertia in federal spending programs (and a lot of lobbying to keep them going). As they gain more seniority, appropriators tend to identify with the mission of the agencies they fund because they usually choose subcommittees that are economically important to their district. Over time, they develop personal ties to the bureaucrats they oversee and the lobbyists supporting the programs for which they provide money.

Moreover, American businesses have come to accept most environmental regulations and have built their enterprises on the belief that a commitment to a healthy environment is good for business. For instance, despite political polarization, most large businesses—with the exception of those directly reliant on the extraction of carbon-based fuels—continue to support the Paris Accords.

VICTIM OF ITS DIRECTOR . . .

The problem facing the EPA does not come from lack of funding or a recalcitrant business community. It instead comes from its director, Scott Pruitt, who was nominated by President Trump because of his record of fervent opposition to federal environmental regulations as Oklahoma Attorney General.

Here are some of the actions Pruitt has taken in his first year:

• He has moved quickly to delay or undo many environmental rules, including the Obama Administration’s Clean Power Plan.

• He has replaced academics with industry representatives on EPA advisory councils.¹

• He has alienated and demoralized many staff employees, leading to more than 700 departures, including the loss of more than 200 scientists.²

• He has drastically reduced civil penalties against polluters compared with previous administrations.³

Pruitt is not the “inspirational, visionary leader” Olden says is needed to reinvent the EPA. He is instead the most retrograde EPA administrator since Anne Gorsuch.

. . . AND OF ITS SUCCESS

I agree with Olden’s assessment that the EPA is the victim of its success in reducing pollution levels. Political observers have noted that this success has been minimized by opponents of environmental regulation, who do not want to concede that it has produced benefits commensurate with its costs, and also by environmental organizations, whose political and financial interests are served by a perception that the environment is in decline.

Finally, I believe that Olden is correct in his view that the EPA’s original command-and-control regulations are outdated and should be recalibrated to better regulate nonpoint source pollution and new global economic realities. Regrettably, Scott Pruitt is not the man for this job.