The politics of attack

Saturday, Feb. 12, 2011 | 2:01 a.m.

Republicans in the House of Representatives opened an assault on the Environmental Protection Agency this week, calling for more than $1.6 billion in budget cuts and introducing legislation to undercut the agency’s authority.

On Wednesday, a House panel held a hearing on a bill that would prevent the EPA from considering rules to curtail greenhouse gases due to concerns about climate change. As The New York Times reported Thursday, EPA chief Lisa Jackson testified for more than two hours, enduring questioning that was often hostile and rude.

Republicans said the EPA was wrongly trying to regulate greenhouse gases and claimed that the science supporting climate change, which is accepted in the scientific community as fact, was essentially a hoax. In the process, they attacked Jackson, her agency and President Barack Obama’s administration. Their charges were often ridiculous. For example:

• Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, claimed the “EPA and the Obama administration have decided that they want to put the American economy in a straitjacket costing us millions of jobs and billions of dollars a year.” Barton can’t really think that any president would want to intentionally hurt the economy, can he? Of course, Barton is the congressman who fawned over BP executives, apologizing to them because the president last year rightly demanded the company clean up the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

• Rep. John Shimkus, R-Ill., wanted to know if Jackson believed in the law of supply and demand, as if she didn’t have enough sense to understand basic economics. After Jackson, who has a master’s degree in chemical engineering from Princeton, told him she had been trained in it, he demanded, “But do you believe that as costs go up, supply goes down?” Jackson’s response was priceless: “It depends on the elasticity of the cost curve.”

• Rep. Lee Terry, R-Neb., asked her if she liked puppies. When she started answering the ridiculous question that, yes, she does like puppies that are housebroken, she was rudely interrupted. Terry said he was just mocking Democrats’ friendly questioning.

Seriously? This is what passes for a hearing in Congress?

Republicans need to do better than this. If they don’t like the law or the way the administration is carrying it out, that’s one thing. But they’re only trying to make the administration look bad to further their own agenda, and that’s terrible.

The fact of the matter is that Republicans don’t have facts on their side, nor do they have the public’s best interest in mind. They want to erase scientific findings and roll back regulations to protect their supporters in industry who whine when government approves a regulation. The oil industry, which has a champion in Barton, says that regulation hobbles its work and creates a tremendous financial burden. Yet that hasn’t stopped oil companies from making huge profits.

Slashing the EPA and then legally barring it from doing its job is dangerous, but Republicans have fought science for years whenever it crosses their ideological beliefs, as Nevadans have witnessed firsthand with Republican efforts to place a nuclear dump in Nevada despite serious scientific problems with the site. They can’t just wish that science would go away, so they try to undercut it or distract people’s attention from the facts by using dubious “scientific” claims trumped up by industry-backed groups.

The result is that issues get confused and bogged down in politics. The science on climate change is clear, but regardless, isn’t it good to have clean air and water? Shouldn’t the government be protecting both given that pollution can cause major health problems, which, in addition to the physical and emotional tolls, cost people and the economy money?

Instead of dealing with these issues honestly, Republicans’ disingenuous attacks are wasting time and needlessly holding the country back from improving standards. They should be embarrassed.