Big Stake in Superfund Bill : Friendly Lawmakers Get Chemical Industry's Help

By MAURA DOLAN

Dec. 5, 1985 12 AM PT

Times Staff Writer

WASHINGTON — In the two years leading to his last election, Rep. Jack Fields (R-Tex.) received more campaign money from the chemical industry than any other member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. And when the committee recently took up Superfund, the nation’s toxic dump cleanup law, Fields consistently voted against the environmental line on key issues.

Fields says it was not the campaign money that prompted his votes but a home district dominated by the petrochemical industry. Regardless, the chemical industry, whose financial future will be on the line when the Superfund bill goes to the House floor today, contributed a whopping $4.5 million toward the election of Fields and the other 434 House members who will decide Superfund’s fate.

And even if the industry has not purchased the support of anyone in Congress, it has undeniably used its contributions to help elect congressmen who support it. Campaign records show that the House members who voted with the industry in the committee earlier this year generally received substantially more from the industry than those who hewed to the environmental line.

Jane Mentzinger, director of the campaign finance monitoring project of the public interest lobby Common Cause, said campaign gifts may not buy votes but they provide access and influence to contributors that they otherwise would not have. “People try to look for a quid pro quo and that’s not really the question,” she said. “ . . . What we are talking about are shades of gray.”

The Superfund bill will present Fields and his colleagues with some thorny issues. Fields, for example, will have to balance the interests of the chemical and petroleum industries, which do not want to bear the entire burden of financing the cleanup of the nation’s toxic dumps, against his own opposition to a proposal already passed by the Senate to establish a more broad-based tax to replenish Superfund.

“I don’t know what I will do,” the Texas congressman said. “It will be a difficult vote for me.”

It will be a difficult vote for many in the House. The bill on the House floor today would set aside $10 billion over five years, more than six times the amount spent on Superfund during its first five years. The chemical and petroleum industries, which largely have financed Superfund in the past through special taxes, do not want the levies substantially raised to pay for the larger program.

Industry’s Proposal

Instead, the industry has promoted a new federal excise tax on manufactured goods. Branded a “value-added” tax by its opponents, the proposed new tax could raise the cost of everything from automobiles to floor wax. Under an alternative proposal, the chemical and petroleum industries would pay twice as much to support the program as under the proposed new excise tax. And financing is not the only Superfund issue in which the chemical industry has a stake. It will be affected by provisions that determine how quickly cleanups will be required, how clean the dumps must be left and whether citizens will be permitted to sue polluters for cleanup.

“I doubt there are too many people in this town we haven’t talked to about our policies, positions and opinions on Superfund reauthorization,” said Jeffrey Van, a spokesman for the Chemical Manufacturers Assn.

Money Goes to Friends

The chemical industry has spent its money largely on its friends. Energy Committee members who voted the environmental position on more than six of nine key issues in the House Energy and Commerce Committee this year received an average contribution of $7,264 from the political action committees of chemical companies, their trade associations, subsidiaries and parent firms for the last election, according to Sunshine News Services, which analyzes campaign contributions.

Members who voted against the environmentalists on a majority of the issues received an average $20,186 contribution from chemical industry political action committees.

During the past three election cycles, the industry spent $26.5 million to influence all federal, state and local elections. In 1983-84 alone, the average House member received $10,455 from the industry. Of the Republicans who received industry money, the average contribution was $15,504, more than twice the comparable amount given to Democrats.

Environmentalists Active

Environmentalists and conservationists have been active too. Their PACs contributed $275,000 to House members in 1983 and 1984, compared with the chemical industry’s $4.5 million. The average contribution was $10,000 to Democrats and $1,119 to Republicans.

Rep. W.J. (Billy) Tauzin (D-La.) received about $32,000 from the chemical industry in 1983 and 1984, and incomplete records from the Federal Election Commission show at least another $8,000 this year. In the Energy Committee this summer, he voted against the environmentalists’ position on eight of nine key votes.

“There were a lot of important votes and I called them like I saw them,” Tauzin said. “Frankly, I do not look to contributions in deciding my votes.”

Tauzin said he frequently opposed the environmentalists because he thought their approach would result in litigation that would tie up the program in the courts in the years ahead.

Pro-Industry Votes

Rep. Don Ritter (R-Pa.) said the $40,000 he received from the industry had nothing to do with his pro-industry votes on the committee. Chemical companies, he said, “see Don Ritter as a voice for a science-based approach to the regulatory process.”

It was the House Ways and Means Committee that contributed to the Superfund bill a provision, similar to one passed by the Senate, to impose a new federal excise tax on manufacturers. Ways and Means Committee members who supported the new tax, which was supported by the chemical industry, received an average of $18,000 from industry PACs in 1983 and 1984, nearly double the average contribution for those who opposed the tax.

The proposal to establish the new tax was sponsored by Rep. James R. Jones (D-Okla.), who received more money from the chemical industry for the last election--$59,250--than any other congressman.

Jones, however, pointed out that many of his contributions classified as from the chemical industry were donated by oil and gas companies that are also in the chemical business. The oil and gas industry is important in his home district, and industry representatives told him that a massive hike in the Superfund levy on chemical-producing companies would cost jobs back home.

Concern for Oil and Gas

“My concern is oil and gas, which is on its knees in Oklahoma,” he said.

He said he does not look at his campaign contributions or handle them. “I didn’t even know that we received that much money from chemical PACs,” he said.

Rep. Thomas J. Downey (D-N.Y.) will ask the House to scrap the Ways and Means Committee’s broad-based excise tax in favor of a hefty increase in the Superfund tax on the chemical and petroleum industries. Both the Downey proposal and the Ways and Means package also call for a new .02 cents-a-gallon tax on petroleum.

The law authorizing Superfund expired Oct. 1 and the program has been using its limited funds to take care of emergencies. A House vote on Superfund has been delayed because of a feud over whether Congress should mandate specific timetables and environmental standards for cleanups or give the Environmental Protection Agency flexibility to decide the best course.

Cleanup at 850 Dumps

Advocates of strict requirements say that in the program’s first five years, $1.6 billion was spent to clean up six sites, one of which was recently discovered to be leaking dangerous chemicals and must be cleaned up again. In some cases, toxic wastes were simply moved from one site to another and new potential Superfund dumps were created. The EPA says that 850 dumps will have to be cleaned up eventually under Superfund, 60 of them in California.

The Senate has already passed a $7.5-billion, five-year Superfund program to be financed largely with an excise tax on manufactured goods. The EPA says it cannot spend more than $5.3 billion efficiently during the next five years, and President Reagan’s advisers have recommended a veto of any bill that carries a new broad-based tax or a substantial increase in the levies on the chemical and petroleum industries.

Twenty members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee -- 16 Republicans and 4 Democrats -- were given low scores by the National Campaign Against Toxic Hazards based on their votes in committee on nine key Superfund bill issues this summer. Another 12 members, all Democrats, got perfect or near-perfect environmental scores from the same group. Here are the campaign contributions to these members from chemical industry political action committees during the two years before their last election.

PAC SPENDING AND SUPERFUND VOTES

LOW ENVIRONMENTAL SCORE: Bilirakis (R-Fla.) $10,850

Bliley (R-Va.) 21,832

Broyhill (R-N.C.) 23,239

Coats (R-Ind.) 13,370

Dannemeyer (R-Calif.) 22,689

Dingell (D-Mich.) 19,100

Eckert (R-N.Y.) 12,061

Fields (R-Tex.) 48,822

R. Hall (D-Tex.) 16,945

Lent (R-N.Y.) 14,414

Madigan (R-Ill.) $23,810