Why a Bill in 2008: Good versus Perfect

This post is by Tony Kreindler, Media Director for the National Climate Campaign at Environmental Defense. It’s the second in a series on Why a Bill in 2008:

1. Same Politics in 2009
2. Good versus Perfect
3. The Price of Waiting
4. The World is Waiting
5. Best Answer to High Gas Prices

Why support the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act (CSA)? It’s pretty good, but not perfect. If we wait until after the election, maybe we can do better.

Or maybe not.

Waiting doesn’t guarantee a better bill, and going with CSA doesn’t mean we’re stuck with all its current provisions. Don’t let the "perfect" be the enemy of the "good". We’ve made this mistake before.

There are innumerable examples of policy issues that were addressed and then improved upon over time – and issues that were not addressed because people waited and waited, hoping for a perfect political climate that never came.

Health care is a clear example of the latter, and not just since the debate in the 1990s. According to the Journal of the American Medical Association [PDF], the U.S. has tried five times to institute national health insurance. The first attempt was in 1915, but the AMA opposed it. It came up again in 1945 under President Truman, and again the AMA opposed it. In 1965 we got Medicare and Medicaid under President Johnson, but it was never expanded to cover all Americans. We almost got national health care in the 1970s, but for Congressional delays and distractions (like Watergate). We again came close in the 1990s, but it was defeated by opposition campaigns.

Now Clinton, Obama and Edwards are again proposing national health care plans. What did we gain from these nearly 100 years of fighting? Imagine how much farther along we’d be now if we’d adopted Nixon’s plan in the 1970s and worked over the years to improve it.

Some people worry that once a bill becomes law, it’s too hard to change and we’re stuck with it. But it doesn’t have to be that way. The Clean Air Act is a great example of how a law can become stronger after it’s passed.

The Clean Air Act first became law in 1967. In 1970, Congress added criteria pollutants and started the phase-out of leaded gasoline. In 1977, a new form of review was added to strengthen regulation of pollution from older facilities. In 1990, the Act was amended again to deal with acid rain.

The Clean Air Act wasn’t perfect in 1967. But think of the tons and tons of lead and sulfur dioxide that would have been pumped into our air over the next decades if we had waited for the perfect political climate so we could pass the perfect bill.

Legislation isn’t static – it’s an evolving political product that can be strengthened (Clean Air Act), weakened (Endangered Species Act), reauthorized (Farm Bill), or allowed to expire (Assault Weapons Bill). The important thing is to start with a strong (if less than perfect) bill, set benchmarks, prove there is hope, and strengthen the bill over time.

We’ve got the momentum now to pass climate change legislation. Betting that the current political momentum will continue in the next administration endangers our planet.