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EPA Seeks Comment on Emissions Rules, Then Discredits Effort
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In a letter dated July 10, Susan E. Dudley, administrator of the White House Office of Management and Budget's office of information and regulatory affairs, was similarly blunt.
"The issues raised during interagency review are so significant that we have been unable to reach interagency consensus in a timely way, and as a result, this staff draft cannot be considered Administration policy or representative of the views of the Administration," Dudley wrote.
John Walke, director of the Clean Air Program at the Natural Resources Defense Council, an advocacy group, said the administration had squandered a chance to address the challenge of climate change.
"This appalling document pits the Bush administration's political machinery against EPA's scientific and legal experts, with the machinery grinding up sound global warming science, legal authority, smart economics and solutions to the problem," Walke said. "These actions by the administration's political machinery deserve to end up, along with the administration's irresponsible global warming legacy, in the dustbin of history."
Business and conservative groups, however, hailed the administration's move, saying that the federal government should not rush to issue sweeping curbs on greenhouse gas pollution.
William L. Kovacs, vice president for environmental policy at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said the administration's decision to incorporate the critique of the EPA staff's findings in the proposal showed that Bush would not move to regulate carbon dioxide even though the EPA had concluded that this could be done under current law.
"It's very significant, because the last I checked, the president of the United States runs the United States," Kovacs said in an interview. "The staff of EPA has put forward a proposal that would virtually destroy the United States. They had to make it clear to the staff of EPA that they're running the government, not EPA."
