evidence: Stagnation of EPA's Legislative Proposals [...] One of the great environmental challenges and dramas of our time is the highly contaminated state of the former communist countries. EPA played the key role in thinking through those problems, and in setting priorities in conjunction with the World Bank to help address them. We proposed the establishment of the Budapest Center to take a regional approach toward Eastern Europe's environmental problems and then provided a Program Director from our staff. [...] We never got the same kind of generous outlook in the House. There were some long-term critics of the Agency like Dingell who even in a Democratic Administration won't support putting EPA in the Cabinet, but might conceivably be willing to defer to a President of their own party on something he felt strongly about. So, I regret not getting Cabinet status but I don't think there was much I could have done to achieve that.