Republicans Gunning For ‘Progressive’ EPA
Republicans in the House (and even some Democrats) are hell-bent on undermining Obama’s environmental agenda. Which explains why this week they’re working to strip the Environmental Protection Agency of its power to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, air quality, and much else. Republicans have never been friendly toward the EPA, but they’ve really hated it since the Obama-appointed Lisa Jackson took the helm Why? Maybe because, as Tim Dickinson explains in a Rolling Stone profile from last year, Jackson’s EPA is one of the few federal agencies “where the hope and hype of the campaign trail… transitioned seamlessly into effective governance.” More:
With a minimum of fanfare, new EPA administrator Lisa Jackson has established herself as the agency’s most progressive chief ever — and one of the most powerful members of Obama’s Cabinet. In her first year on the job, Jackson has not only turned the page on the industry-friendly and often illegal policies of the Bush era, but has embarked on an aggressive campaign to clean up the nation’s air and drinking water. Under her leadership, the EPA has sought stricter limits on toxic pollutants like mercury, moved to scrub emissions of arsenic and heavy metals from coal-fired plants, and revoked a permit for the nation’s largest mountaintop-removal coal mine. “The American people can be outraged when we’re not living up to the P part of our name,” Jackson says. “The protection part.”
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