Seacoast NRG

I am shocked, shocked to find that meddling is going on here.

A Senate committee today narrowly voted to overturn the EPA’s decision blocking California and more than a dozen other states (Arizona, Connecticut, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Mexico, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Vermont, Rhode Island and Washington–hmm, what happened to New Hampshire?) from limiting greenhouse gas emissions from new cars and light trucks. 

This vote came shortly after a report was released by the Democratic staff of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, a report which provides evidence that the Bush administration did interfere with the EPA’s decision on the matter, and that the head of the EPA, Stephen Johnson, had originally planned to give California and its allied states full or partial permission to limit tailpipe emissions.  Mr. Johnson has defended the decision as being his alone, but has refused to say whether there was White House pressure.

From the New York Times,

In the course of its investigation, the committee deposed eight officials of the agency and reviewed more than 27,000 pages of E.P.A. documents, some obtained under subpoena.

The [Senate Environment and Public Works] committee found, as has been previously reported, that the agency’s career staff was unanimously in favor of at least partly granting the California waiver and advised Mr. Johnson that any other decision would be unlikely to stand up in court.

The most explosive new evidence in the report came from a deposition by Jason K. Burnett, deputy associate administrator at the agency.

Under oath, Mr. Burnett told committee investigators that Mr. Johnson “was very interested in a full grant of the waiver” in August and September of last year and later thought a partial grant — allowing the waiver for the first two or three model years — “was the best course of action.”

Mr. Johnson’s position changed after he communicated with the White House, Mr. Burnett said.

But the committee was stymied in its efforts to discover the extent of the White House’s involvement or rationale for it. Mr. Burnett declined to answer questions about precisely whom Mr. Johnson had talked to and when, saying he had been instructed by the E.P.A. not to. –NY Times website, May 20, 2008