Find the Scandal
The left thinks it’s scandalous that EPA administrator Stephen Johnson acted contrary to the advice of his senior staff when he declined to grant the State of California a waiver allowing it to set its own tailpipe emissions standards distinct from those of the federal government. One might have thought that policy decisions like this one are for agency heads, appointed by the democratically elected president and confirmed by the democratically elected Senate, to make in the first instance. But for liberals, that’s only true during Democratic administrations. During Republican administrations, agency heads are expected to defer to the entrenched career bureaucrats who, almost invariably at agencies like the EPA, are liberals. Otherwise, they must answer to the liberal MSM and, when the Democrats have a majority, to Congress.
So it is in this case. In fact, California Senator Barbara Boxer is so scandalized that Johnson didn’t follow the advice of his senior bureaucrats that she’s investigating. According to Congress Daily (registration required), “Boxer's aim is to show that some senior EPA staff disagreed with Johnson's decision to deny California's request for a waiver from the Clean Air Act.” Imagine that.
Actually, there is a scandal here, just not the one that Boxer and other leftists purport to discern. It turns out that two top EPA staff members were so intent on having their way that they prepared talking points for former EPA administrator William Reilly (Bush 41’s guy) to use when lobbying Johnson to grant the waiver. Among the talking points, prepared for Reilly by Chris Grundler, deputy director of EPA’s Office of Transportation and Air Quality,Margo Oge, the director of that office, was this:
From what I have read and the people I have talked to, it is obvious to me that there is no legal or technical justification for denying this. . .You [Johnson] have to find a way to get this done. If you cannot, you will face a pretty big personal decision about whether you are able to stay in the job under those circumstances. This is a choice only you can make, but I ask you to think about the history and the future of the agency in making it. If you are asked to deny this waiver, I fear the credibility of the agency that we both love will be irreparably damaged.
Thus, in essence, a pair of bureaucrats contrived to have a respected outsider lobby their boss by advising him that he might have to quit his job if he didn’t comply with their policy preference. Amazing stuff, even by Washington standards.
And quite possibly illegal. That’s the view (as reported by Congress Daily) of Sen. James Inhofe, ranking member of the Environment and Public Works Committee. Questioning the legality of EPA staff resources being used to help a former administrator, Inhofe said: "If this is true, at a minimum it's an improper use of agency funds and possibly a violation of the Hatch Act."
Reilly says he didn't use many of the EPA staff talking points. But that seems irrelevant at several levels, including for purposes of the Hatch Act.
JOHN adds: This appears to be one more instance of the biggest scandal of the last seven years; that is, the effort by countless entrenched bureaucrats, almost all of them Democrats, to undermine the policies of the United States government as set by the people who were elected democratically. The bureaucracy is no more entitled to carry on its own policies in the domestic sphere, in opposition to the elected government, than in foreign policy.
