The purpose of this research is to examine the process and results of the effort currently under way to elevate the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to a cabinet-level department in the executive branch of the United States government. The plan of the research will be to set forth the key issues that have been raised around the discussion of cabinet-level status for the EPA, and then to discuss the issues in a way that will help clarify their political implications.
One theoretical view of the issue is that creating a Department of the Environment and a Secretary of the Environment would have the effect of providing executive-branch sanction for management and direction of national environmental policy. In 1990, a veteran of environmental issues who had once been an administrator at EPA framed the key reasons in favor of establishing the agency as a full-fledged federal department by developing the background against which environmental issues took their place as important features of public policy after 1960. "Environmental protection today," he wrote, "is widely recognized as central to the long-term health and well-being of the American people" (Train, 1990, p. 7). Citing a full range of health, agriculture, and human-services issues that are important to the environment-related well-being of the American population, Train continued the discussion:
Yet the EPA does not have the status of the other government agencies with which it must work to protect the environment. The EPA should be elevated to the Cabinet for the simple and compelling reason that environmental protection is an overwhelmingly important issue, both domestically and internationally. To do less is an anomaly in today's world.
It is worth noting that the EPA's budget and staff are larger than those of several federal departments. Certainly, the economic impact of the EPA's activities is far greater than that of most departments.
But the...