The removal of Rep. Tom DeLay from second-in-command of Congress may seem like a breath of fresh air for the environment, but his fill-in as House majority leader is quickly quashing that notion.
DeLay, indicted this week on campaign-finance charges in his home state of Texas, is a former pest exterminator who calls EPA “the Gestapo of government,” as CNN’s Candy Crowley pointed out yesterday.
But DeLay’s temporary – and possibly permanent – replacement in the Republican leadership post, Rep. Roy Blunt of Missouri, is no environmentalist either. DeLay and Blunt both received zero ratings on the most recent League of Conservation Voters scorecard, and both were heavily financed in the 2004 election by energy companies and other industries with the biggest pollution problems.
About the best that can be said is that Blunt accepted only a third of the amount that DeLay received from oil and gas companies in 2004, $56,299 for Blunt compared to $143,245 for DeLay.
Just last week, Blunt formed a congressional task force to investigate high gasoline prices, and one of its first acts was to request an EPA waiver from requirements for cleaner fuels in smoggy areas, according to Associated Press.
The request is strikingly similar to a provision Blunt tried unsuccessfully to get into the energy bill last year. Blunt and Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., proposed allowing EPA to indefinitely waive Clean Air Act requirements whenever there was “a significant fuel supply disruption in any area.”
As the Center for American Progress said at the time, “This sweeping authority would be especially disturbing in the hands of the Bush administration, which has a long track record of undoing environmental protections by administrative fiat.”
Blunt is now in a better position than ever to assist in those efforts.
