Yesterday, while contemplating Republican requests to investigate the same senior EPA officials who have quietly supported his investigation of California's waiver denial, Rep. Henry Waxman was issuing yet another subpoena in that investigation. The Associated Press reports that Waxman's staff-- which has yet to receive unredacted documents substantiating EPA staffers' internal analyses of the waiver application-- is now after communications between the EPA and the White House this time:
Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., said he has found evidence that officials from the White House and the agency met before the EPA decided to block the state law. He did not disclose the evidence.
"Unfortunately, EPA has refused to disclose the substance and extent of its communications with the White House," Waxman said. The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee "must have these documents in order to understand how the agency's decision was made."
Congress Daily's Darren Goode also reported yesterday that an EPA spokesman told him that it's "unclear whether the White House will claim executive privilege to withhold the documents." This one could get interesting...
Speaking of unnecessary legal battles, last Friday, the Congressman wrote Administrator Johnson asking him to account for the extent, impacts, and cost to taxpayers of losses in court since 2001 wherein EPA was found to have acted contrary to the law. Any regular reader of this blog might understand that we're exasperated with being exasperated about this topic, so instead we'll let OMB Watch's Matt Madia do some of the talking:
[W]hile democracy may continue to function as envisioned, the decisions to ignore law in the first place are not without consequence. Important rules to protect the public from air and water pollution or global warming are delayed when litigation and regulatory mulligans ossify the process.
[...]
EPA knowingly spends time on legally indefensible rulemakings and then spends even more time defending them, leaving Americans with unnecessarily dirty air and water. Meanwhile, taxpayers are funding the whole process. It seems Americans are getting hosed on both ends.
Comments