NEWS: BUSH'S EPA CHIEF RESIGNS!!!!!!!
[ed: Resignantions increasing. Most of any US president. Abandon the Titanic...]
msnbc.com
May 21 — Environmental Protection Agency chief Christie Whitman on Wednesday announced that she would step down from the top environmental spot in the Bush Cabinet. In her letter of resignation, the former governor of New Jersey said “it is time to return to my home and husband in New Jersey.”
“I LEAVE knowing that we have made a positive difference and that we have set the agency on a course that will result in continued environmental improvement,” she wrote to President Bush.
In a follow-up memo to EPA staff, Whitman said she had met with the president Tuesday to personally deliver her resignation, effective June 27.
The resignation letter highlights what Whitman considered the administration’s chief accomplishments in protecting the environment. “Our work has been guided by the strong belief that environmental protection and economic prosperity can and must go hand-in-hand,” she wrote.
However, many of those policies have been attacked by environmentalists as rollbacks in protecting the nation’s air, water and land.
TRACK RECORD
Whitman, 56, made no mention of any differences with the president or his Cabinet.
But early on in the Bush administration, Whitman also reportedly tried but failed to get the president to take a more accommodating stance toward European allies on climate change policy. The president withdrew the United States from the Kyoto climate change protocol, and opposes mandatory reductions in carbon dioxide and other gases that many scientists fear are warming the Earth.
And last month, Whitman pushed back against a Bush administration regulator who had asked that the EPA incorporate a new method for estimating the value of the lives of senior citizens when drafting environmental polices. The method would have valued the life of a senior citizen at less than that of younger Americans.
Environmentalists took advantage of Whitman’s resignation to take another stab at the Bush administration.
“No EPA administrator has ever been so consistently and publicly humiliated by the White House,” Phil Clapp, head of the National Environmental Trust, said in a statement.
“Even though Gov. Whitman achieved two important victories — cleaning up the PCBs in the Hudson River and starting a process to reduce diesel emissions — the White House listened more often to industry lobbyists than to its EPA administrator,” Clapp said.
WHO NEXT?
Speculation about who Whitman’s replacement might be began almost immediately. One name floated about was David Struhs, head of Florida’s environmental protection department and a brother-in-law of White House chief-of-staff Andrew Card.
Struhs’ philosophy — “more environmental protection with less process” — reflects the president’s thinking.
“Government can increase protection of Florida’s air, water and land, while reducing the time, cost and paperwork of environmental management and regulation,” Struhs notes on the Florida agency’s Web site.
Struhs was previously head of Massachusetts’ environmental agency from 1995-1999.
A nominee seen as hostile by environmental groups could alienate swing voters when the president runs for re-election in 2004. Conservative Republicans, on the other hand, could become bitter if they feel a nominee is soft.
Whitman’s resignation follows that of White House press secretary Ari Fleischer, who said Monday that he would step down in July.
Fleischer noted that, with the president gearing up for a re-election campaign, now is the time to either recommit or step down. |
