A Majority of a Third of a Majority Running EPA
posted by Frank Pasquale
A cover story by Margaret Kriz at the National Journal asks “Where is the EPA?”
At a time when the nation’s top environmental regulators face increasingly complex pollution problems, [the] administration’s strained, pro-industry interpretations of environmental laws have repeatedly been laughed out of court, and the White House is widely perceived to be running roughshod over agency scientists and lawyers.
Environmental law expert Dan Esty states that the EPA is now “off to the extreme end of the right-wing perspective on the environment, reflecting not even a consensus within the Republican Party but the views of some who are particularly hostile to the agency’s historic mission.” Is Esty being fair here? A recent analysis of party politics by Michael Tomasky suggests that as little as a majority of a third of the party in power in the executive branch may effectively control important policy.
Consider Tomasky’s analysis of the Republican coalition:
[T]he party is still in the hands of three main interests: neoconservatives; theo-conservatives, i.e., the groups of the religious right; and radical anti-taxers, clustered around such organizations as the Club for Growth and Grover Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform. Each of these groups dominates party policy in its area of interest—the neocons in foreign policy, the theocons in social policy, and the anti-taxers on fiscal and regulatory issues.
If this is indeed the arrangement, we can easily imagine policy at the EPA being made on the basis of views held by less than 1/12 of the population. This is one reason why the legitimacy of the administrative state rests not only on political “accountability moments,” but on scientific expertise and legal regularity. To the extent these latter two ideals are abandoned, there is little point to giving the executive the expansive powers it’s grown accustomed to.
Photo Credit: Pfala.
April 15, 2008 at 9:08 pm
Posted in: Administrative Law
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Responses (3)
Ron Legro - April 22, 2008 at 12:24 pm
Call it what it is: The long, slow coup.
Ron Legro - April 22, 2008 at 12:24 pm
Call it what it is: The long, slow coup.
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