Washington, DC

U.S. Sen. David Vitter (R-La.), top Republican on the Environment and Public Works Committee, has been working to increase transparency at the administration, and criticized the attempt to hide the recent release of their semiannual Unified Agenda of Federal Regulatory and Deregulatory Actions (Unified Agenda), which was released right before the Thanksgiving holiday. The Fall 2013 Agenda lays out 134 rules specific to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Vitter said these new rules listed in the Unified Agenda will have a substantial impact on the future of this country’s energy production and independence.

The U.S. Environmental Agency (EPA) proposed a draft guidance in April 2011, defining the “waters of the U.S.” under the Clean Water Act (CWA) and giving EPA broad authority over regulating bodies of water, even on private property. Since the draft has been proposed, there has been significant criticism surrounding the guidance’s expansive interpretation of CWA jurisdiction. Instead of clearly abandoning the contemptuous guidance document outright, EPA has since doubled-down on one of the most significant private property grabs in U.S. history, with the development of a new rule that would give the federal government outright permitting authority over virtually any wet area in the country and would provide a new tool for environmental groups to sue private property owners.

U.S. Sen. David Vitter (R-La.), top Republican on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, has been scrutinizing the Obama Administration's problems with transparency, specifically focusing on secret "sue-and-settle" deals that Administration officials will make with far-left environmental groups to enact unnecessary and burdensome regulations without any input from those who will be affected, including States, local governments, and private citizens.

During yesterday’s Environment & Public Works Subcommittee on Oversight hearing, U.S. Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) pressed Sarah Dunham, Director of the Office of Atmospheric Programs within the Office of Air and Radiation for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), for substantial answers on the Agency’s involvement in developing the Administration’s updated Social Cost of Carbon (SCC) estimates. Ms. Dunham admitted that her office assisted the Interagency Working Group, providing technical analysis and modeling for developing the SCC estimates. As these estimates are used to justify the benefits of Agency rulemakings, Sen. Vitter wants to know who this anonymous group of people includes, what exact role they played in the broad interagency effort, and wants the EPA to be more transparent in how these estimates were developed.