The Sad State of the Policy Debate

Over the last decade and a half, the Superfund policy debate has assumed all the characteristics of what sociologists might call a dysfunctional subculture. Inside the Washington Beltway, the same 200 people make the same arguments to each other with the same disastrous results: controversy, gridlock, and a bad name for anyone prominently associated with the program. Occasionally, the debate is treated to an infusion of fresh blood, as it was in the 1994 national election. But newcomers flush with conviction about their own ability to find a magic solution to the problem soon become mired in the tangle of conflicting interests, dueling ideologies, and—perhaps most important of all—fiscal realities. At the same time, it is impossible for most of the participants to abandon the field, either institutionally or personally. Superfund's dual goals—to clean up the dangerous legacy of decades of toxic waste disposal and to prevent continued contamination of the environment—are simply too important to ignore.

The statutory authority for the taxes that support the Superfund program expired in December 1995, and there is little realistic prospect that it will be extended any time soon. In the meantime, the process of cleaning up sites has slowed across the country. Although Superfund has been in tight spots before, the gridlock that characterizes this reauthorization debate is arguably the most serious threat to the program's ongoing viability that it has ever faced, and may ultimately threaten its very existence. The gridlock is especially tragic because the 103d and 104th Congresses squandered an historic opportunity to enact delicately balanced, carefully crafted consensus legislation that was supported at the time by a critical mass of the program's stakeholders, including everyone from the Monsanto Company to the Sierra Club.