Congress' concentration on budgetary and economic matters reduced the output of substantive environmental legislation in the first session of the 97th Congress. Nevertheless, environmental issues drew their share of attention, thanks in large part to the Reagan Administration's draconian budget cuts, its controversial choices for key environmental positions in the Administration, and its inability to mobilize the bipartisan majorities that have been the hallmark of its stunning legislative victories in non-environmental contexts. While business and development interests, encouraged by the new Administration's promises of regulatory relief and the more conservative mood of the new Congress, launched aggressive drives to loosen pollution control requirements, environmental interests gained strength from record membership drives and found Congress sensitive to public opinion polls and mail counts indicating a groundswell of sentiment within the electorate for maintaining current environmental standards. Sharply divided on many environmental issues, Congress considered a wide variety of legislative proposals, but proved reluctant to follow the Administration's lead in relaxing environmental laws and even made efforts to blunt legislatively what was seen on Capitol Hill as anti-environment initiatives by the Administration. Legislative action ranged from a House proposal to abolish the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA),¹ to an unprecedented resolution by the House Interior and Insular Affairs Committee to halt mineral leasing in wilderness areas.²

In the grand scheme of things, these were only a sideshow to the reauthorization of the Clean Air Act,³ which drew much of Congress' energy, but saw very little actual progress. Environmental groups were concerned at the beginning of the session that Congress would make major changes in the Act, such as requiring the use of cost-benefit techniques in setting national ambient air quality standards (NAAQS), but at year-end, it now appears likely that only fine-tuning will occur. One tangible change was the Steel Industry Compliance Extension Act of 1981,⁴ which followed up the work of the Carter Administration's "Tripartite Committee" by allowing the steel industry to defer pollution controls for three years.