The GOP's Hidden Debt-Deal Agenda: Gut the EPA
It was lost in the endless drama of the debt-ceiling negotiations, but last week the Republicans in charge of the House of Representatives launched an unprecedented attack on the country's environmental protections. GOP representatives added rider after rider to the 2012 spending bill for the Environmental Protection Agency and the Interior Department, tacking on amendments that would essentially prevent those agencies - charged with protecting America's air, water and wildlife - from doing their jobs.
snip
Among the 40 riders the knee-jerk antienvironmentalists of the House GOP produced last week were:
• A rider that would prevent the EPA from issuing any regulations on greenhouse-gas emissions over the next year - despite the fact that the Supreme Court has ruled the agency has the responsibility to regulate those emissions as a public health threat under the Clean Air Act.
• A rider that would stop the EPA from carrying out tough new automobile-fuel-efficiency standards that were announced last week - standards that have the support of all the major automakers.
• A rider that would prevent the EPA from labeling the toxic ash left over from coal combustion as hazardous waste - something that would no doubt alarm the people of Kingston, Tenn., buried by a coal-ash spill in 2008.
snip
Last week's rider fest wasn't unusual for the 112th U.S. Congress. Representatives Henry Waxman and Edward Markey - two senior Democrats with solid green credentials - recently charted all the votes taken so far this year and calculated that the Republican-led House has voted to "stop," "block" or "undermine" efforts to protect the environment 110 times since January. As Natural Resources Defense Council president Frances Beinecke wrote recently, this body of lawmakers stands an excellent chance of becoming "the most anti-environment House of Representatives" in U.S. history.
snip
The good news for environmentalists is that with the Democrats still in charge of the Senate, those riders are unlikely to remain in the final EPA-Interior spending bill. Indeed, these demands were less about actual policy than about making a political point.
Link:
http://news.yahoo.com/gops-hidden-debt-deal-agenda-gut-epa-111500435.html