Are You Tough Enough?
Elected on the premise that government was the problem, not the solution, Ronald Reagan marked a major challenge to the postwar consensus that a liberal state could and should intervene broadly to improve public welfare. But popular support for environmental protection remained sufficient to stop Reagan from pursuing his deregulatory agenda outright. Instead, at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Reagan sought to hamstring the agency’s ability to operate, disrupting its enforcement program and bleeding it of the resources it needed to fulfill expansive congressional mandates. Illustrating the investment of the agency’s former officials and career staff in EPA’s original mission, a group of current and former employees banded together to resist Reagan’s assault, eventually attracting enough attention that Reagan abandoned his deregulatory agenda as a political liability.