Politico reports:
One of Gina McCarthy’s biggest obstacles to becoming EPA administrator vanished Tuesday after Sen. David Vitter came out against a filibuster on her nomination.
The move is a big step forward for President Barack Obama’s climate change policies, which will rely on McCarthy to lead the agency in crafting long-awaited rules for throttling greenhouse gas emissions from current and future power plants. McCarthy is now head of the agency’s air office, which is in charge of writing those regulations…
Vitter said in his statement that EPA has agreed to the following steps to ease his objections:
— EPA will retrain its workforce on complying with Freedom of Information Act requests and issue new guidance on maintaining records and use of personal email accounts.
— EPA has begun efforts to provide the committee with data that backs several health studies that are highly significant to EPA’s air pollution policies. Much of the data in the hands of private research institutions or encoded for personal health information, and the agency is still working on gathering that information. “For the first time we should be able to determine if there is any way of independently re-analyzing the science and benefits claims for a suite of major air regulations,” Vitter said in a statement.
— EPA has agreed to convene a panel of experts to look at “whole economy modeling,” which would look at the economic impact of regulations on a much wider scale.
— The agency has two new websites where it posts legal notices from groups that intend to sue the agency and petitions the agency gets asking EPA to put out new regulations.
Not caving in, just following their normal tendency. Despite false rhetoric from both sides, Repooflicans have ALWAYS been the Greenest party. Look at laws passed to strengthen EPA, look at EPA funding. Biggest growth was in Rep admins.
There isn’t much courage in Congress anymore – it seems they’re all just worried about being re-elected. Sigh.
Sometimes you take what you can get, and fight again another day. A post earlier mentioned the Dems were looking to change the filibuster rules, which would help them now, but might bite ’em later. So Vitter gets some promises that will never be fulfilled, thereby gaining ammo for the 2014 elections. Since the administration postponed the pain from Obamacare til after the elections, the costs of the new regs, especially in the Northeast, will give some low info voters a kick in the a..wallet. Maybe it’s only .22, but add it to Benghazi, Obamacare, the NSA, Keystone, et al, every bit helps.
This is become so typical of the GOP. They make all kinds of promises to us when they are running for office, but once elected they cave on every vital issue. Their image should not be an elephant, it should be “the cowardly lion”.
The EPA makes promises with their fingers crossed behind their back.
Yeh, EPA makes promises, with their fingers crossed behind their back.
The GOP did what the GOP does best: cave. They want the Democrats to love them and to stop saying bad things about them. They think being better Democrats than the Democrats themselves. For over 100 years, the Democrats have played that game and for 100 years the Republicans have fallen for it.
This is as good of an idea as allowing the fox who ate half of your best chickens to guard your hen house on the promise that he won’t eat as many the next time. Then after the fox has eaten half of the remainder, allow the fox to continue based upon the same promise.
Well, the fox didn’t eat as many hens as the last time so it must be OK. Blink…blink…blink
We need a NONE OF THE ABOVE choice!
The EPA is the biggest job killer in America. These are committed leftists who’s goal is to shut down private industry. They have effectively neutralized the GOP because many republican business supporters are in reality EPA contractors or otherwise enrich themselves via EPA regulations. Why did the EPA survive the sequestration with nary a cut…
They sold out for an administration stall. I had no faith in the GOP actually making a stand.
The EPA funded the Harvard Six Cities Study that is in question. The data was provided to Health Effects Institute for re-analysis. The potential problem was that the reanalysis was not really independent.
The data is available. It always has been. It could be produced in a day. Just turn over the data set that was provided to HEI.