The Audacity of Obstruction – Obama Style

WASHINGTON – U.S. Reps. Joe Barton, R-Texas, ranking member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Greg Walden, R-Ore., ranking member of the Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee, today asked Committee Chairman Henry Waxman, D-Calif., and Oversight Committee Chairman Bart Stupak, D-Mich., to begin an investigation on the process the Environmental Protection Agency used in developing its endangerment finding.

The endangerment finding, if formalized by a rule, would allow the EPA to regulate carbon dioxide under the Clean Air Act, something U.S. Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich., once called “a glorious mess.”

“It appears the administration and EPA administrator rushed to issue the proposed endangerment finding without considering fully substantive analysis and views of senior EPA career staff within the agency,” Barton and Walden wrote. “The attached EPA emails raise serious questions about the process for developing the proposed endangerment finding, whether analysis or information was suppressed because it did not support the administration and/or administrator’s proposed finding, and/or whether there is a fear within the agency that there will be negative consequences for offices that offer views critical of the prevailing views of the administrator and the administration.”