Monthly Archives: March 2011

While demagoguing the McConnell amendment to block EPA regulation of greenhouse gases this afternoon, Sen. Jay Rockefeller repeatedly lied to the public by claiming that the McConnell amendment would “permanently” block the EPA from acting on greenhouse gases — regardless of what happened in the future in terms of scientific knowledge about climate.

This, of course, is not true and Sen. Rockefeller knows better. That is, whatever law is passed today, can be amended or repealed in the future. The McConnell amendment simply blocks the EPA from regulating greenhouse gases until Congress gives the agency the legal authority.

Read more about Sen. cRockefeller’s game at Stop EPA Now!.

At today’s House Energy and Commerce Committee mark-up of the Upton-Inhofe bill to strip EPA of its authority to regulate greenhouse gases, Rep. Lois Capps (D-Calif.) tried to defend the EPA by offering a recent American Lung Association poll that purports to show public opinion favoring the EPA.

What Congress needs to know, however, is that the American Lung Association is bought-and-paid-for by the EPA. In the last 10 years, the EPA has given the ALA $20,405,655, according to EPA records.

The master-servant relationship between the EPA and ALA extends back to at least the early 1990s. As John Merline reported in Investors Business Daily (Jan. 28, 1997), between 1990 and 1995, the EPA gave the American Lung Association $5 million — even though the ALA was suing the EPA at the time. Although not many grantors give grants to organizations that sue them, at least in the regular world, the EPA likes to be sued by its buddies because such lawsuits invariably expand the agency’s powers.

So it’s not really surprising (or meaningful) that the ALA issued a poll supporting the EPA.