First, I would like to say that I have no problems with either of the nominees. I would like to welcome Ms. Udall and congratulate her on her renomination, I am sure her father would be proud of the work she has accomplished on behalf of the Morris Udall Foundation.
Mr. Guzy, while I believe you will do a good job as the General Counsel of the EPA and I intend to support your nomination, I am concerned about how the Agency has handled lawsuits over the last six years, supporting those who sue the EPA.
Just last week in the Washington Times, a columnist wrote a very disturbing article on the EPA's wasteful grants. In fact, I would like to enter the article into the record. The article details how the Agency provides millions in grants to organizations who turn around and immediately sue and lobby the Agency. The appearance is that the Federal taxpayers are subsidizing these lobbying efforts and lawsuits.
In addition, I am also concerned how the Agency enters into these so-called "consent agreements" where the EPA determines Agency policy in backdoor negotiations.
The appearance is that this Administration funds lawsuits by environmental organizations who sue the Agency with taxpayers funds. Then the EPA turns around and enters into backdoor negotiations with these groups, producing consent agreements that bind the Agency outside the normal notice and comment process.
Because of these concerns, and your role as the General Counsel for the EPA, I am requesting that you provide the Committee the following information, and I will withhold my support for moving your nomination forward until we have received the information.
2. I would like a list of all parties to any "consent agreements" that the EPA entered into over the last six years. Please include a description of what was agreed to in the consent agreements, and which parties were present during the negotiations.
I want to thank you in advance for cooperating with this request and I look forward to supporting your nomination once we have received the information.
EPA's Wasteful Grants
By Deroy Murdock
The EPA gets by with a lot of help from its friends.
Since President Nixon gave birth to the Environmental Protection Agency, its budget has skyrocketed from $384 million in fiscal 1970 to $7.3 billion in fiscal 1998, outpacing inflation by 456 percent
One secret behind EPA's ballistic budget trajectory is its support of non-profit organizations. Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) recently released a report titled "Phony Philanthropy" by David E. Williams and Elizabeth L. Wright. They explore more than $236 million in EPA grants given to 839 non-profit groups in 1995 and 1996. Like a squad of taxpayer-funded cheerleaders, many of these outfits waved their pom-poms and lobbied Congress for higher EPA spending.
EPA grants also squandered tax money on corporate welfare, silly ethnic diversity schemes and projects best reserved to states and localities. These highly politicized boondoggles clean up little pollution and beg to be excised with a budgetary ax.
The EPA, for instance, gave $166,888 to the American Lung Association. The ALA lobbied Congress for increased EPA funding, including new money for lung research. Who would you guess that might benefit?
The Consumer Federation of America received $380,275 from the EPA to promote "indoor air quality awareness." The CFA then asked Congress to maintain funding of the EPA's indoor air quality activities.
The National Rural Water Association received a healthy $14,436,634 from the EPA. It returned the favor by charging its lobbying expenses to the EPA and the US. Department of Agriculture. It organized lobbying by state associations and even incorporated a full-time, taxpayer-funded EPA employee in its legislative efforts through the Intergovernmental Personnel Act, a sort of borrow-a-bureaucrat program.
The National Senior Citizens Education and Resource Center may be the EPA's most notorious grantee. This offshoot of the National Council of Senior Citizens received a shocking 99.7 percent of its budget from federal grants in 1995-1996 including $6,074,800 from the EPA. From 1992-1996, it gave $460,043 in campaign contributions--all to Democrats. The Federal Election Commission fined the group $12,000 for campaign violations in 1996. Wearing T-shirts that read, "SHAME," about 20 NCSC members were removed by the Capitol Police after they disrupted a Sept. 23, 1995, House Ways & Means Committee hearing on Medicare.
When the EPA isn't spending your money to ask Congress for more money, it showers your money on industries with lots of money. It gave $432,840 to the International Association of Lighting Management to "test, validate and, if necessary, revise the decades old data underlying Luminaire Dirt Depreciation (LDD) curves used in current lighting system design." As anyone who has cleaned up for house guests knows, dusty lampshades are a domestic nightmare. But couldn't General Electric or the folks who sell Mr. Clean perform this vital research?
And the EPA's $1,397,718 grant to the Geothermal Heat Pump Consortium to underwrite a "National Earth Comfort Program" sounds lovely, but why not leave that to the home heating industry?
Sometimes it seems the EPA's left hand doesn't know what its far-left hand is doing. What else could explain an $81,391 grant to the Lawyer's Committee for Civil Rights? It is assisting two "environmental justice" lawsuits against the EPA. In short, the EPA is using your money to help lawyers sue the EPA. The circle of life is complete!
As if there were no 10th Amendment, the EPA occasionally resembles a giant city hall. The San Francisco League of Urban Gardeners, aka SLUG, received $35,515 from the EPA for "urban greening, neighborhood beautification and local food production." Next time, SLUG members need money they should call San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown at 415-554-4000.
Perhaps most troubling is the EPA's support for non-profits with race-tinged agendas. It gave $11,000 to Boston's Environmental Diversity Forum, for example. EDF's mission is to "protect the environment by advocating racial, cultural and economic diversity at all organizational levels and in all policies and programs of the environmental movement." One hundred thousand dollars in EPA funds went to the Korean Youth and Community Center in Los Angeles for "linguistically and culturally appropriate community education, technical and small business assistance to find healthy alternatives to perchloroethylene, a dry cleaning agent." The EPA should focus on pollution and leave multiculturalism to the Rev. Jesse Jackson and its other champions.
The GOP Congress should hold oversight hearings on these and scores of other fishy EPA grants that CAGW has exposed. Then, with this nonsense clearly on the record, it can begin to slash EPA's budget accordingly.
Deroy Murdock is an MSNBC columnist and a senior fellow with the Atlas Economic Research Foundation in Fairfax.