A perfect example was the administration's decision to withdraw the Clinton-Gore proposal to tighten the federal standard for arsenic in drinking water from 50 parts per billion (ppb) to 10 ppb. When this decision was made, there was no serious effort to explain the move, let alone defend it. Asserting the need for "sound science" could not deflect the absurd claims that the Bush move threatened children's health. Within weeks, the administration was forced to retreat. Shortly after the initial announcement, the Bush EPA announced it would issue its own arsenic rule, and that it could be even more stringent than the initially proposed rule.
Defending the arsenic decision should have been easy. Arsenic is a naturally occurring substance in drinking water. In most parts of the country, arsenic levels are well below those linked to adverse health effects. Where arsenic is a problem, individual states are fully capable of setting their own standards, as many have. The primary beneficiaries of a looser standard were not major corporations, but drinking-water systems in small communities that could have been bankrupted by the tighter rule. Should the 10 ppb limit go through — and it still might — many communities would see dramatic increases in their monthly water bills, forcing some to abandon treated water in favor of local wells. This could put more lives at risk than would hypothetically be saved by the Clinton-Gore rule. Indeed, an analysis of the Clinton-Gore rule by economists at the AEI-Brookings Joint Center on Regulation found that dropping the standard to 10 ppb could, on net, increase mortality. In other words, by withdrawing the Clinton-Gore proposal on arsenic, the Bush EPA was saving lives, but you'd never know it listening to the Bush officials defend the move.
Many of the Bush administration efforts to curb the Clinton-Gore regulatory excesses could be defended on environmental and public-health grounds. But they aren't. Appearing on NBC's Meet the Press after the arsenic controversy exploded, Karl Rove tamely insisted that the administration was not anti-environmental because the administration would tighten the arsenic rule, sign international environmental treaties, and spend billions on other environmental concerns. Listening to Rove one could fairly assume that the measure of a politician's environmental commitment is his willingness to issue regulations and spend taxpayer dollars. Accepting this equation of environmental protection with government largesse is a recipe for disaster. It is bad policy and bad politics.
After eight years in office, why did slick willie wait until January of 2001 to enact stricter standards on arsenic levels in drinking water?
The answer is quite simple and involves billions of dollars of costs to the taxpayer.
To quote Barbara Olson in her book "The Final Days"
"Like a land mine that explodes as it is being removed, the arsenic rule and other Clinton rules had unpleasant political consequences fo Bill Clinton's sucessor. no matter how costly it would be to implement, revocation of the rule put President Bush in an untenable political position of being opposed to reducing the level of arsenic-a poison in the public's mind irrespective of amount-in the water we drink. No amount of explanation could take away the image-or the opportunity for enviromentalist demagoguery and cartoonist punditry."