[greenyes] Administration and Senate Republican Approach to Clean Air Debate

["Peter Anderson" <anderson@no.address>]

BushGreenwatch

..............................


March 8, 2005
Bush "Clear Skies" Bill Showdown Tomorrow

President Bush's controversial "Clear Skies" legislation appears finally due 
for a markup tomorrow in the Senate Environment and Public Works committee.
Committee Chair James Inhofe (R-OK)--noted for his unabashed public disdain 
for environmental regulations (he once assailed EPA employees as "a Gestapo 
bureaucracy")--has twice postponed the markup in hopes of finding one member 
willing to break a 9-9 deadlock over the legislation.
His targets have included Democratic Senators Barack Obama (Illinois), Max 
Baucus (Montana), and Republican Lincoln Chafee (Rhode Island), but so far 
none of them has indicated support for Clear Skies in its present form.
President Bush last Friday urged passage of the bill, calling it 
"common-sense, pro-environment, pro-jobs." Sen. Inhofe aims to finish 
drafting a final bill by March 15.
Opponents say the proposed bill has been so weakened by industry lobbying 
that the current Clean Air Act--if properly enforced--does far more to 
reduce smog and soot-forming gases than Clear Skies. Indeed, even powerful 
Republican Governors like New York's George Pataki and California's Arnold 
Schwarzenegger do not support it. They oppose the bill's removal of Clean 
Air Act protections that allow individual states to establish their own 
pollution controls that are stronger than the federal standards. [1]
Inhofe antagonized clean air advocates last month when he called for an 
Internal Revenue Service investigation of an organization that opposes the 
legislation--even though the group is a bipartisan association of state air 
pollution officials. A member of the group, known as STAPPA (State and 
Territorial Air Pollution Program Administrators), has testified before 
Inhofe's committee that Clear Skies "simply was not protective enough" for 
the public good and "too lenient" on polluters.
Inhofe's tactic was blasted by Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) as "a blatant 
attempt at intimidation and bullying." Congressional hearings, said Waxman, 
"should be an attempt at honest fact-finding, not thuggery. A committee has 
no right to intimidate witnesses."
The Inhofe maneuver was further faulted in a statement by the Environmental 
Integrity Project (EIP), headed by Eric Schaeffer, former director of EPA's 
Office of Regulatory Enforcement. Schaeffer resigned from EPA in 2002 in 
protest of the Bush Administration's efforts to weaken the Clean Air Act and 
other environmental protections.
Said EIP: "Are the proponents of the unpopular Clear Skies legislation now 
publicly conceding that their case is so weak that the only way they can 
counter their opponents is to threaten them until they shut up? Is this the 
kind of conduct we will tolerate in the United States Senate?" [2]
###

SOURCES:
[1] Pataki & Schwarzenegger letter, Jan. 2005.
[2] EIP briefer, Mar. 2, 2005.


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