News Digest Tuesday, March 12,1996 Page 2 Clinton tags GOP efforts as \anti-environmental’ HACKENSACK, N.J. — In a stinging denunciation of Republi can clean-earth policies. President Clinton accused Congress on Mon day of engineering an “anti-envi ronmental campaign” in concert with industrial lobbyists. Making his first election-year address on the environment, Clinton proposed $2 billion in tax breaks for companies that clean up and develop land contaminated by toxic waste. And he promised more vetoes for bills he thinks would undermine the environment. “When it comes to protecting our air, our food, our water, I can not sacrifice America’s values or America’s future,” Clinton told a crowd of 6,000 at Fairleigh Dickinson University. Fighting a bad winter cold, Clinton also traveled to neighbor ing New York City to be honored as Irish America magazine’s “Irish American of the Year.” The presi dent, who heads to Egypt on Tues day for an anti-terrorism summit, also met in Hackensack with fami lies of two American victims of Middle East bombings. In his main address of the day, Clinton called for a bipartisan ap proach to environmental control — a point easily lost in a highly parti san speech. “It is incredible to me now that the environment has, for the first time in a generation, become a source of political division,” the president said. His voice cracking from his cold, Clinton added, “Congress has mounted the most aggressive anti cnvironmcntal campaign in our his tory. And I am proud that we have stood against that.” Poll after poll shows Clinton making strides against Republicans by portraying them as enemies of the environment. Every word and every photo here was designed to capitalize on that. “When it comes to protecting our air; our food, our water, I cannot sacrifice America's values or America's future." BILL CLINTON U.S. President Republicans argue that the En vironmental Protection Agency is a bulky bureaucracy that ovcrrcgu lates. EPA money and rules can be trimmed without hurting the envi ronment, the GOP says. Clinton began the day with a tour of a Superfund site in nearby Wallington, N.J. His motorcade rolled past a sign reading, “Danger: Hazardous Waste” and wound down to the bottom of a bowl shaped field that consists of20,000 tons of snow-covered, PCB-con taminated soil. At the rim of the field stood an elementary school, its students lin ing a security fence and shouting down happily to Clinton. He was told that cleanup work at the abandoned Industrial Latex site stopped last year after Congress imposed a 25 percent cut in the Superfund budget. “We cannot afford to just stop things like this,” Clinton replied. Though the GOP budget in cluded a major cut for Suncrfund projects, so did a makeshift spend ing bill signed by the president this year to reopen the government. The EPA says the budget re straints forced the agency to aban don cleanup work at 60 other toxic waste dump sites across the coun try. Prosecutor says McDougals planned ‘perfect’ crimes LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — As gov ernor, Bill Clinton helped secure a $300,000 business loan for one of his Whitewater partners that she instead put into her personal checking ac count, a federal, prosecutor said Mon day.