{
  "id": "RL30043",
  "type": "CRS Report",
  "typeId": "REPORTS",
  "number": "RL30043",
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  "source": "EveryCRSReport.com, University of North Texas Libraries Government Documents Department",
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      "id": 379178,
      "date": "2011-02-10",
      "retrieved": "2016-04-07T01:05:11.773747",
      "title": "Environmental, Health, and Safety Tradeoffs: A Discussion of Policymaking Opportunities and Constraints",
      "summary": "A policymaker making a decision on approving a program may face the questions, What are the tradeoffs? What alternatives are foregone by committing resources to that program? This issue has been sharpened in environmental, health, and safety policy because studies indicate that some programs are more cost-effective than others, suggesting that redirecting resources from less efficient to more effective programs would increase overall national economic welfare.\nActually making implied tradeoffs has proved difficult, however. One reason is continuing controversy over methods for evaluating the risks, costs, and benefits of alternative programs\u2014leaving uncertainty about exactly what would be gained and lost in a tradeoff. Other constraints affecting tradeoffs include variations in regulatory standards among environmental, health, and safety statutes and political responses to nonquantifiable values such as equity. Legislative efforts to revise the statutes or to establish more comprehensive reviews of tradeoffs have moved slowly.\nTwo further factors constrain the ability to make a tradeoff at a particular time and in a particular institutional context. One consists of institutional structures and procedures that impose limits on possible ranges of decisions within the legislative and executive branches. For example, an appropriations subcommittee typically weighs spending tradeoffs only among programs within its jurisdiction, but not tradeoffs with programs in the jurisdiction of other subcommittees even if the programs are related. Similarly, statutes authorizing environmental, health, and safety regulations may be written by separate committees, leading to variations in cost-effectiveness standards for protecting the public health and environment.\nA second complicating factor occurs when a program\u2019s alternative(s) would require a shift in who can decide on the use of the resources involved, as when a regulatory program is considered in lieu of a tax-supported program. Deciding to regulate industrial air pollutants mandates spending by industry and consumers; choosing not to regulate leaves those monies available to the industry\u2019s executives and consumers, who can invest/spend them according to their own preferences. Having little control over alternative expenditures, a decisionmaker tends to focus on each program as self-contained, not to compare options.\nThe actual tradeoff faced by a legislator or policymaker at a particular time and place is constrained by institutional structure and rules, and by the fact that most decisions are up-or-down, not between program options. Many putative tradeoffs exist only in a theoretical sense: they are tradeoffs not then and there available to that policymaker. Making environmental, health, and safety tradeoffs on the basis of cost-benefit analyses implies restructuring decisionmaking processes, but such restructuring is very difficult in itself, and it is unclear whether the results would more accurately reflect the informed preferences of Congress\u2014or the citizenry.",
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    },
    {
      "source": "University of North Texas Libraries Government Documents Department",
      "sourceLink": "https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc817952/",
      "id": "RL30043_2004Feb27",
      "date": "2004-02-27",
      "retrieved": "2016-03-19T13:57:26",
      "title": "Environmental, Health, and Safety Tradeoffs: A Discussion of Policymaking Opportunities and Constraints",
      "summary": null,
      "type": "CRS Report",
      "typeId": "REPORT",
      "active": false,
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      "topics": []
    }
  ],
  "topics": [
    "Appropriations",
    "Economic Policy",
    "Environmental Policy"
  ]
}