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Actually, the Clear Skies law doesn't do any of this. The act, in fact, delays required emission cuts by as much as 10 years, usurps the states' power to address interstate pollution problems and allows outdated industrial facilities to skirt costly pollution-control upgrades. The Environmental Protection Agency ensured that few people would notice this last regulation by announcing the change on the Friday before Thanksgiving and publishing it in the Federal Register on New Year's Eve. Still, nine northeastern states immediately filed suit against the administration; their case is pending. Meanwhile, Bush's commitment to clean water is just as murky. Despite saying last October that he wanted to "renew our commitment" to building on the Clean Water Act, he's instead decided to "update" it by removing protections for "isolated" waters and weakening sewage-overflow rules, which could significantly increase the potential for waterborne illnesses.
It's hardly surprising to learn that big business is behind a lot of these changes. The Washington Post recounted a meeting between Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) Administrator John Graham and industry lobbyists during which the latter were encouraged to identify particularly onerous rules -- and ultimately created a regulatory "hit list." "There is a stealth campaign that's going on behind closed doors to twist the anti-regulatory process into a pretzel so that the public will be unaware that they are bottling up these protections," says Wesley Warren, the National Resources Defense Council's senior fellow for environmental economics. A good chunk of the 57-item list fell under the EPA's jurisdiction. One by one these rules have been submitted to OIRA under the Paperwork Reduction Act for cost-benefit analysis, a regulatory accounting technique that often ends up justifying watered-down rules.
Even as EPA Administrator Christine Todd Whitman announced that global warming is a "real phenomenon," Bush refused to sign the Kyoto Protocol to reduce carbon-dioxide emissions. His decision weakened the treaty's effectiveness because the United States produces 25 percent of all greenhouse-gas emissions.
The former Texas oilman, who made one environmental promise after another on the campaign trail, has slashed the EPA's budget by half a billion dollars over two years, cut 100 employees and rolled back regulations on a near-weekly basis. "There has never been anything to compare this to," says Greg Wetstone, director of advocacy at the National Resources Defense Council. "Even in the days of Reagan, there was never an administration so willfully and almost obsessively concerned with finding ways to really undermine the environmental infrastructure."
Whitman, the administration's supposed environmental champion, is also contributing to the weakening of protections. Although she said the administration was working to put in place a standard to "dramatically reduce" levels of arsenic in drinking water, she later tried to lower the existing regulation, saying that even the 10-part-per-billion federal benchmark was too tough. The EPA rolled back the standard until a report warning of health risks (and public outcry) forced the agency to reinstate the old limit.
Here's another classic Bush whopper: In his State of the Union address, the president proposed $1.2 billion in research funding to develop hydrogen-powered cars, in part to make the United States less reliant on foreign oil. What he didn't say is that the technology and infrastructure needed to mass produce such cars won't be available until at least 2020. If Bush truly cared about immediate relief, he might start by acknowledging existing hybrid vehicles or supporting more stringent Corporate Average Fuel Economy Standards for light trucks and SUVs. Neither is likely to be part of a Republican energy package this year.
Democrats in the Senate dealt Bush a rare blow when they voted down his proposal to drill for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in March, although House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas) plans to bring the issue back. Still, many lawmakers, especially in the House, feel they can do little except try to fend off the administration's attacks on the environment. "There is an absolute hostility toward any positive strengthening of environmental law," says Rep. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), a member of the Committee on Energy and Commerce. "It is a wholesale turning over to corporate America the governing of this country."
Hypocrisy has been defined as the tribute that vice pays to virtue. George W. Bush lied about all these policies because the programs he pretends to favor are far more popular than the ones he puts into effect. But unless the voters and the press start paying attention, all the president's lies will have little political consequence -- except to certify that we have become something less than a democracy.
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