When the Environmental Protection Agency moved to fight against the right of a large number of states to set greenhouse gas emissions higher than the national average, thus protecting the environment, it struck many people as odd. Senator Barbara Boxer was among them.
Senator Boxer requested that the EPA explain its anti-environmental actions. That’s within her power, given that the Constitution gives Congress the power to oversee the activities of the Executive Branch, of which the EPA is a part.
However, in spite of the Constitution (yes, really in spite of it), the EPA told Senator Boxer that it would not give her all the documents that she requested. Why? Here’s what the Senator Boxer was told: “EPA is concerned about the chilling effect that would occur if agency employees believed their frank and honest opinions and analysis expressed as part of assessing California’s waiver request were to be disclosed in a broad setting.”
Let’s unpack what that sentence of explanation means. It means that under George W. Bush, the EPA believes that if the Congress is allowed to exercise its constitutional powers to oversee what happens at the EPA, it will produce a chilling effect on the activities of the EPA. It means that the Bush EPA believes that if the American people were to find out what EPA agency employees are really up to, it would have a chilling effect on the EPA employees’ activities.
That’s not a good excuse for denying the documents to Senator Barbara Boxer. In fact, it’s a good reason to give the documents to Senator Boxer, and to let the American people know what’s really going on in the EPA.
If EPA agency employees are engaged in activities that they would not engage in if they believed that any one else found out about, that’s a damned good sign that those activities should never have happened in the first place.
Unfortnately, that’s not how the Bush Administration sees things. The way that George W. Bush and his underlings see things, it’s a good thing if government employees engage in activities that they would be embarrassed for the American public to find out about. The way that the EPA under Bush sees things, government employees who engage in shameful behavior should be protected with a cloak of secrecy, even if it means violating the Constitution.
I say that it’s time that this kind of behavior in the Bush Administration be exposed to the strongest chilling effect possible. Everyone involved in this coverup ought to be arrested for contempt of Congress, and if President Bush resists the authority of Congress to do so, he ought to be impeached.
The rest of Congress ought to take Barbara Boxer’s example, and grow a backbone. It’s long past time for the Democratic Congress to stand up to the illegal totalitarianism of George W. Bush.
