Now that Congress is back, we all need to guard ourselves and our wallets as well as the EPA is doing.
Steady yourself for this one
The GOP chairman of the House Science, Space and Technology Committee accused the Environmental Protection Agency of flouting a subpoena he issued requesting data from various public health studies.
Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas) and the EPA are battling over whether the environmental regulator has the ability to give the panel information used in studies that the agency drew upon to craft some of its regulations.
Smith and the panel’s Republicans want to make that information available to the public and other researchers. They say it would shed light on how the EPA designs regulations that industry and conservatives say damage the economy.
“EPA is using the subpoenaed data to support regulations that could cost the American people trillions of dollars. Yet EPA has refused to make the data available to Congress or the American people. Regulations based on secret data have no place in a democracy,†Smith wrote in a letter to EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy on Tuesday.
But the EPA says it can’t extract that data because the agency didn’t conduct the studies in question, and because those efforts didn’t receive federal funding.
Per the EPA, they use privately funded “studies” to make policies and regulations that cost everyone extra time and money (and since time IS money, this means you essentially get hit twice).
Because they do this, the public and the rest of the government cannot discover how the “studies” were conducted, because in most cases, the EPA won’t even disclose which “studies” they have used to make said policies and regulations.
So the EPA’s reply is basically “sit back like a good little peon and let us tell you what is good for you.”
Representative Alexander has threatened to take a hatchet to the EPA’s budget in the past. If this obfuscation continues, he should shut them down.
