GOP cabinet boycott reaffirms Senate is archaic embarrassment

[DonViejo]

Republicans try the "you did it first" defense after attempting to sabotage yet another Obama appointee

BY ALEX PAREENE

Republicans on the Senate Environment and Public Works committee yesterday unexpectedly boycotted a vote to confirm Gina McCarthy, President Barack Obama’s pick to head the Environmental Protection Agency, denying the committee a quorum and preventing McCarthy from moving to a full confirmation vote. The move, announced Thursday morning, was unexpected. It made Democrats mad. It shouldn’t have been unexpected.

The issue is that Republicans won’t sign on to McCarthy — or any EPA administrator — until she agrees to force the EPA to submit everything they do to a very “business-friendly” (time- and money-intensive) analysis. Here’s how Politico explains it:

Republican leaders were unmoved, though, saying the Obama administration deserves blame for the impasse by refusing to fully answer questions that GOP nominees have posed about McCarthy and EPA. They include questions about the “underlying data used to justify EPA’s job-killing regulations,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said in a statement to POLITICO.

Here’s how the New York Times editorial page’s Robert B. Semple Jr. explains it:

full article
http://www.salon.com/2013/05/10/gop_boycott_of_epa_head_reaffirms_senate_is_archaic_embarrassment/

[modrepub]

1. Would it surprise anyone her that McConnell's Request Violates the Law?

From EPA's recent revision of the SO2 National Ambient Air Quality Standard:

In setting standards that are ‘‘requisite’’ to protect public health and welfare, as provided in Section 109(b), the EPA’s task is to establish standards that are neither more nor less stringent than necessary for these purposes. In doing, the EPA may not consider the costs of implementing the standards.

So basically the Clean Air Act (Section 109(b)) prohibits what the Representative from Ky is asking for; EPA can only establish standards based on health based analyses.

[Myrina]

2. The GOP is an archaic embarassment.

n/t