Bush Receives “F” For Environmental Issues on LCV 2003 Presidential Report Card
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
JUNE 24, 2003
11:16 PM
CONTACT: League of Conservation Voters
Josh Galper, Dan Vicuña (202) 454-4678
WASHINGTON - June 24 - League of Conservation Voters President Deb Callahan announced today that LCV gave President George W. Bush an “F” on the organization’s 2003 Report Card on the administration’s performance on environmental issues.
The Report Card, which focused on Bush’s performance from the beginning of his term through the midway point, calculated the failing grade by taking into account a number of factors, including appointments, administrative and executive actions, and legislative initiatives.
LCV is the leading, nonpartisan political voice of the national environmental movement, and it periodically issues a report card on the performance of the president, both Democratic and Republican alike.
“President Bush is well on his way to compiling the worst environmental record of any president in the history of our nation,” said Callahan. “Bush’s dismal Report Card is dominated by a disturbing trend: time after time, Bush favors corporate interests over the public’s interest in a clean, safe and healthy environment. Under the Bush administration, corporate polluters have been allowed to write the laws.”
The Report Card found that, since taking office, Bush has assaulted environmental protections on all fronts, including air, water, land and wildlife. In particular, the Bush administration has attacked, weakened or undermined laws providing clean air, clean water, and toxic waste cleanups. Primary beneficiaries of these actions have been timber, mining, oil and gas, and real estate development companies.
The Bush administration has waged this campaign through funding cuts, arcane procedural methods, and deceptive rhetoric to advance its anti-environment, pro-corporate agenda, according to the Report Card.
For example, the Bush administration has cut enforcement for key environmental programs through steadily slashing budgets. Consequently, environmental laws that should otherwise be enforced by the Bush administration lie dormant on the books for lack of funding.
In the case of toxic waste, for example, the Bush administration has opposed requiring polluters to clean up their own messes at toxic waste sites – unlike Presidents Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton. In fact, Bush has begun to use taxpayer money to pay for the mess of corporate polluters and to cut back overall on cleaning up existing sites.
The Bush administration has also targeted a series of complex regulations that barely register on the American public’s radar screen to drastically reduce clean air and water protections, and increase industry exploitation of public lands, the Report Card reveals.
The administration has proposed regulatory changes, for example, to weaken a significant provision of the Clean Air Act called “new source review,” which currently requires older, more polluting industrial plants to upgrade pollution controls when they renovate or expand in such a way that increases emissions of pollutants.
Meanwhile, fraudulently named legislation has become the norm. In 2002, Bush proposed the “Clear Skies” initiative, which would weaken public health protections of the current Clean Air Act, while replacing them with insufficient standards and actually increasing toxic emissions like mercury and sulfur.
Another initiative, the so-called “Healthy Forests” proposal, would open up 20 million acres of national forests to logging and waive environmental laws.
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