Hi flapjack,
Let's try to keep the discussion of specific people off this thread. In general I agree with you on their tactics, but I think it's best to keep the level of our discussion here above that. Which shouldn't be difficult. -g
The NYT on recent Republican defections on environmental legislation:
July 27, 2001
House, in Rebuke to President, Bars Easing
of Arsenic Rules
By DOUGLAS JEHL
WASHINGTON, July 27 -- In a new setback for the White House
on environmental policy, 19 House Republicans joined with 198
Democrats today to bar the Bush administration from easing rules on arsenic
in drinking water beyond those set under President Bill Clinton.
The move was a defeat for the House Republican leadership, and it was
latest in a series of congressional rebukes to President Bush and his team
over such issues as offshore oil drilling, mining and energy exploration in
national monuments. In each case, handfuls of Republicans have voted with
Democrats to impose barriers to administration plans.
If upheld by the Senate, where Democrats hold a one-vote edge, today's
House vote would force the Bush administration to choose between putting
in place the Clinton rules or tightening them further, thus guaranteeing a 80
percent reduction in the arsenic standard by 2006, when the rules are due to
take effect.
The Bush administration had announced in March that it would suspend the
Clinton arsenic rules, which set the standard at 10 parts per billion. The
White House has questioned whether the decision was based on an
adequate understanding of the level at which arsenic in drinking water might
pose an unacceptable risk to human health, but it promised that its own
review would set a standard no higher than 20 parts per billion.
But the very idea of easing rules for arsenic has been assailed by the
administration's critics as a sign that the White House does not care about
the environment and health, and this political assault apparently proved
impossible for 19 House Republicans to ignore.
"This issue just has achieved a great resonance in the public and therefore in
the legislature," said Ed Hopkins, director of the environmental quality
program for the Sierra Club. "People do not want arsenic in their drinking
water, and the legislators are responding to that."
According to estimates by the Environmental Protection Agency, as many as
3.5 million Americans, most of them in rural areas, would be affected by a
decision to raise the arsenic standard from the level set by the Clinton
administration to the maximum level being considered by Mr. Bush.
But some of the communities most affected by the debate have been the
loudest critics of the Clinton rules, arguing that they would impose costs of
many millions of dollars on impoverished local water authorities.
The measure, an amendment to $113 billion appropriations bill for the
Veterans Administration, the Department of Housing and Urban
Development and many other agencies, was approved by a vote of 218 to
189. Six Democrats joined 182 Republicans in voting against the measure,
which was sponsored by Rep. David Bonior of Michigan, the Democratic
whip. The two independents in the House split their votes. |
