The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/23/us/obama-set-to-sign-bipartisan-update-of-1976-toxic-substance-law.html
Obama Set to Sign Bipartisan Update of 1976 Toxic Substance Law
By CARL HULSE JUNE 22, 2016

Congress is getting beat up for its failure to find agreement on gun control in the aftermath of the mass shooting in Orlando, Fla. But on Wednesday, lawmakers will be able to celebrate a rare bipartisan achievement on another issue.

President Obama is scheduled to sign into law the Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act, an update of toxic substance regulations originally championed by Mr. Lautenberg, the Democratic senator from New Jersey who died in 2013.

The legislation is the first major rewrite of the toxic substance law since it was originally passed in 1976, and it is being hailed as a landmark improvement in protecting the public from dangerous substances. Because of the influence of industry and environmental groups and their deep disagreements over the issue, the legislation was given little chance for success when lawmakers began work last year.

Those on both sides of the fight credit Senator Tom Udall, the low-key New Mexico Democrat who picked up Mr. Lautenberg's work, for holding together a fragile and ideologically divided group of senators and steering the legislation to passage.

"Tom Udall led an effort with the strangest group of strange bedfellows I've ever seen," said Richard Denison, the lead senior scientist at the Environmental Defense Fund who has long worked on the toxic regulation issue. "The result is an overhaul of a badly broken and outdated law that has allowed toxic chemicals into our homes, schools and workplaces."

So while the political atmosphere may be pretty toxic in Washington most days, lawmakers managed to overcome it in this particular case.

National Journal
https://www.nationaljournal.com/s/637925/how-tom-udall-got-environmental-bill-through-gridlocked-congress
How Tom Udall Got an Environmental Bill Through a Gridlocked Congress
Without taking risks and weathering criticism, Udall says lawmakers won't get to grand solutions.
Jason Plautz June 22, 2016

Before signing a massive overhaul of the nation's chemical-safety laws Wednesday, President Obama made sure to note just how unique the bipartisan compromise was.

"I want the American people to know that this is proof that even in the current polarized political climate here in Washington, things can work," Obama said. "If we can get this bill done, it means that somewhere out there on the horizon, we can make our politics less toxic as well."

The reform of the Toxic Substances Control Act of 1976 followed in the historical footsteps of other landmark environmental bills by passing with over-whelming support from both parties. But the last of those were the Clean Air Act amendments in 1990, and any bipartisan deal is unique in today's Con-gress, when even the normal appropriations bills can't muster enough votes to pass.

Sen. Tom Udall, the lead Democrat on the chemical bill, said that kind of "good old-fashioned legislating"'and the political will to do it'is increasingly rare.

"Right now, in the broken Congress we're in, what I see is the easier way is to attack a problem, to describe the problem, to describe the horrors of the prob-lem, and then just stop right there," the New Mexico Democrat told National Journal. "The riskier thing is to go out and actually pose a solution, find a number of legislators that are willing to work with you on the solution, and then keep pushing that solution all the way to the end.

That's what Udall and Republican Sen. David Vitter did for three years, going member-by-member to build support for a bipartisan bill that started as a deal between Vitter and the late Democratic Sen. Frank Lautenberg. The final bill'named after Lautenberg' was signed into law by Obama on Wednes-day, marking the first update to the nation's chemical laws since 1976.

The bill'which gives the Environmental Protection Agency power to test and regulate new chemicals before they go on the market, and makes it easier for the government to restrict existing substances known to be harmful'is an anomaly in this Congress. It's a major environmental statute at a time when the two parties have never been further apart on the role of EPA.

More than that, Udall said, it's a bipartisan bill that risked irritating stakeholders on both sides, something he said is becoming a rarity. Udall, a strong ally to green groups, found himself the target of suspicion for working with Vitter and industry groups normally opposed to environmental work.

He also faced plenty of criticism from within his own party. Sen. Barbara Boxer, the top Democrat on the Environment and Public Works Committee, was a vocal critic of the bipartisan bill because it would have preempted California's stronger chemical-protection laws; Boxer had even criticized Lautenberg's work on it before his passing. As chairwoman of EPW in 2014, Boxer stopped the bill from advancing at all.

After the Republican takeover, Boxer went on the offensive, releasing her own, more liberal bill with Sen. Edward Markey and holding a series of press conferences accusing the American Chemistry Council of writing the Udall-Vitter version. Some key Democrats stuck with her in the early going, waiting to see how the bill could move to the left.

Eventually, a trio of Democrats'Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse, Jeff Merkley, and Cory Booker'secured a list of changes that would give states more power to control chemicals, building on months of member-by-member, section-by-section negotiating. Udall said that kind of slow-moving compromise is increas-ingly rare, but could help open the floodgates for bipartisan deals on long-stuck issues like criminal-justice reform or energy policy.

"It's much easier to be for the perfect bill, but it's not going anywhere," Udall said. "If you travel the road of finding solutions like I'm talking about, it's one that's not very well traveled."

Udall spoke to National Journal hours before a series of failed votes on gun-control reform in the Senate on Monday, another issue more defined by calci-fied politics than compromise and cooperation. But even there, he said, the key was finding an area of common ground. The discussion about keeping guns out of the hands of terrorists, he said, had opened a narrow window of discussion.

Udall said it takes members fighting through "distrust," both from stakeholders and from lawmakers in one's own party, to get to compromise. But with members pulled between fundraising demands, the role of special-interest groups, and with many members simply not knowing each other well, getting that trust takes time.

Those problems won't melt away instantly, although Udall pointed to a campaign-finance-reform package Democrats are touting as a possible first step. But there is one easy fix Udall suggested.

"I'm convinced today if you went back to the model of having to be here for six months, and you didn't pay anybody's way home, we could get a lot more done," he said.