Contacts:
Matt Dempsey Matt_Dempsey@epw.senate.gov (202) 224-9797
David Lungren David_Lungren@epw.senate.gov (202) 224-5642
EPW GOP MEMBERS WANT HEARING ON BROWNER'S EDITING OF MORATORIUM REPORT
Time for Transparency with Browner, Architect of Cap-And-Trade Agenda
Washington, D.C.-Senators James Inhofe (R-Okla.), John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), and David Vitter (R-La.), Republican Members of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, demanded openness and accountability from Carol Browner, the President's top climate change policy official, and architect of the Obama cap-and-trade agenda.
Inhofe, Barrasso, and Vitter called on EPW Chairman Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) to hold a hearing on findings by the Interior Department's Inspector General that an official in Browner's office edited the Interior Department's report on the Obama Administration's Gulf drilling moratorium. The official edited the report to say that independent scientists who reviewed it agreed with the moratorium when in fact they did not.
In 2008, Sen. Boxer convened a hearing examining allegations that Bush White House officials interfered with decisions at the Environmental Protection Agency and the Center for Disease Control. Senators Inhofe, Barrasso, and Vitter strongly urge Sen. Boxer to pursue similar oversight of Carol Browner and her staff.
Sen. Barrasso, Ranking Member of the EPW Subcommittee on Oversight:
"Under Carol Browner's watch, politics is trumping science. Congress must investigate the editing of scientific reports and secret meetings where nothing was put into writing. As the Ranking Member on the Subcommittee on Oversight, I will demand that hearings be held immediately. This ‘Czar' should be accountable to the people, not the other way around."
Sen. Inhofe, Ranking Member of the EPW Committee:
"For two years, Democrats refused to conduct oversight of the Obama Administration, while congratulating themselves this Administration would be different - that it would be open, transparent, and rely on the best available science. Yet we know otherwise: conducting negotiations on global warming regulations in secret, hiding the costs of its green jobs program, and now a sensitive report on the drilling moratorium manipulated to achieve political ends. This is all part of the Administration's cap-and-trade agenda, designed to raise energy prices for consumers and destroy jobs. It's time the American people fully understand what the architect of that agenda, Carol Browner, is doing with taxpayer dollars. To help with that, Sen. Boxer should conduct real oversight."
Sen. Vitter, Ranking Member of the EPW Subcommittee on Clean Air and Nuclear Safety:
"This blatant disregard by Administration officials to push their job-crushing moratorium on the people of the Gulf Coast absolutely must be further investigated. The IG report that I requested in June and that was released this week revealed that the recommendations to move forward with the moratorium were directed by politics-not science or expertise. The Administration should explain themselves before Congress so the thousands of impacted Louisianians can hear why politics was put before their best interests."
###
