Clean Air Act

Congressional Republicans thwart an attempt to expand the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)‘s ability to compel chemical facilities to prepare contingency plans for terrorist attacks (see December 1999 and Late September 2001). The 1990 Clean Air Act (CAA) allows the agency to force plants to plan for potentially calamitous accidents, and environmentalists and national security advocates argue that the CAA could easily be used in regards to having plants prepare for terrorist attacks. However, Republicans in Congress resist the idea. The EPA is unpopular among conservatives—Senator James Inhofe (R-OK) has called the agency a “Gestapo bureaucracy,” and House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX) has called it “the Gestapo of government”—and, along with industry representatives and lobbyists, the Republicans successfully persuade the EPA not to, in the agency’s words, “push the envelope” in interpreting the CAA. [Roberts, 2008, pp. 93]