The Environment, Grilled by Congress

Lisa Jackson, EPA administrator, has appeared seven times before the House of Representatives this month. The GOP is determined to interrogate her and other Obama administration officials involved in environmental policy. But why?

Part of the answer is constitutional. Congress has the perfect right to oversee the Executive branch, and any opposition party worth its salt would do well to systematically follow presidential policy, in every branch of the Executive bureaucracy. The Democrats did this after they swept into power in the Congress in 2006. Now the Republicans have their turn. The Obama administration should know its coming.

Part of the answer, however, is political, and in the view of this writer, perfectly cynical. Hearings involving Jackson, Ken Salazar, etc., have little to do with environmental policy, and next to nothing to do with a concern for the environment. They should be seen instead as a complement to the Republican strategy to emphasize the budget deficit and the need for budget cuts in order to do what really interests the GOP: cut what they regard as liberal programs, ease regulations that arguably limit business profits, and maintain tax cuts that benefit the very richest slice of Americans. Practically speaking, cutting the budget means nothing: why else would the GOP care to keep the Bush era tax cuts? Why would they leave Social Security and Medicare untouched?

Another question while the GOP tosses the blame for job losses to environmental protection: do the Republicans practically speaking care any more about jobs than they do about the budget deficit? Not with a straight face: while the National Association of Manufacturers claims rather ludicrously that ozone regulation will cost America 7 million (!) jobs, the Republicans don't flinch when they learn that their proposed budget would cost 700,000 jobs through 2012, according to Moody's Analytics.

Environmental policy indeed merits consensus between Congress and the President; the most effective such policies of the last 40 years have had this. Was the Obama administration ever interested in such consensus? Perhaps so, perhaps not. Another question now arises, however: are House Republicans interested in environmental protection at all?

M.A.