If the Reagan Administration had made hundred-thousand-dollar grants of taxpayer funds to Moral Majority, the Conservative Caucus, the Committee for the Survival of a Free Congress, the National Conservative Political Action Committee, and the Young Americans for Freedom, you can bet that the Washington Post would assign investigative reporters to expose the giveaways, and Pulitzer Prizes would probably reward the reporters.
But when the shoe is on the other foot, we don’t read about it in liberal newspapers. We have to rely on small-circulation, no-advertising newsletters such as the one called “Eye on the Bureaucracy” published by The Conservative Caucus Research, Analysis and Education Foundation. Its June issue goes a long way toward explaining the vitriolic way that Anne Gorsuch Burford was hounded out of office as Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency.
Few public officials have ever had to take the full brunt of a media assault as she did — a front-page hammering, day after day, at an emotional pitch that ranked with Watergate. Yet, she hadn’t done anything wrong; and she was merely carrying out President Reagan’s policies and orders.
Through Freedom of Information requests, the Conservative Caucus Foundation has uncovered what is probably the real reason why the environmentalist groups hated Mrs. Burford. She cut them off from the millions of dollars of Federal subsidies and grants which they had been receiving during the Carter Administration.
The National Resources Defense Council (NRDC) received $360,000 in Federal grants from the EPA in 1980, and another $816,382 on January 21, 1981 before Mrs. Burford took office. After she became head of EPA, NRDC received only $178.
So, in 1982, former Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall mailed out a fundraising letter for NRDC. The letter was a harsh attack on Mrs. Burford’s EPA policies, denouncing her for drastic budget cuts at EPA.
Another environmentalist agency with its hand in the EPA cookie jar was the National Wildlife Federation (NWF). It received $57,372 in 1978, $58,500 in 1979, $208,701 in 1980, and $498,167 in 1981 before Mrs. Burford took office. After she took office at EPA, NWF was cut to $66,000 in 1981 and another $74,508 in 1982. That’s too much, but it was a lot less than under the Carter Administration.
NWF reacted by denouncing EPA for pursuing a policy of “pro-exploitation at any price.” NWF still had plenty of subsidized taxpayers’ dollars and wasn’t bashful about biting the hand that had been feeding it so well.
Take a third environmentalist organization subsidized by EPA, the Sierra Club. In 1978 it received $68,700, in 1979 it received $176,713, in 1980 it received $60,097, and in 1981 it received $256,250. Then, the spigot was shut off.
Was the Sierra Club angry? In December 1981, the Sierra Club joined with the NRDC and Friends of the Earth in signing a letter designed to get the March of Dimes and the American Cancer Society to contact their Congressmen and the White House to oppose cuts in the EPA budget.
Other policy advocacy groups funded by EPA under the Carter Administration include Ralph Nader’s Public Interest Research Groups ($11,000 since 1978), the Environmental Action Foundation ($358,822 since 1978), the Gray Panthers ($30,000 since 1980), the Brookings Institute ($143,000 since 1978), and the League of Women Voters ($511,391 since 1977).
Of course, any private organization has a right to make a political attack on a public official or governmental agency. But private organizations do not — or should not — be allowed to lobby with the taxpayers’ money. It’s rather clear that, when they lobby and propagandize against cuts in the Federal budget, they are serving their own self-interest.
The more we hear of the way private advocacy organizations have been feeding at the public trough, the more we come to the conclusion that the only thing the matter with the Reagan budget cuts is that they were not soon enough and not deep enough.
