Steve Johnson - Another No Show

Meet Steve Johnson. Steve Johnson should be in jail. Steve Johnson refused to show up to testify last week in a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing.

A little background on Steve Johnson.

Steve Johnson is currently the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). He was nominated to the position on March 4, 2005 by George W. Bush. In order to be confirmed to the position, his appointment had to be approved by the Senate. Steve Johnson's appointment was not a smooth one because of a pesky issue: He was refusing to cancel a planned and paid for study to test pesticides on babies.

The study was called The Children's Environmental Exposure Research Study, nicknamed CHEERS. The idea behind the study was to find out the effects that certain residential pesticides have on young children, but in order to study the effects, the EPA needed volunteers. They distributed fliers. According to the New York Times:

A recruiting flier for the program... offered $970, a free camcorder, a bib and a T-shirt to parents whose infants or babies were exposed to pesticides if the parents completed the two-year study. The requirements for participation were living in Duval County, Fla., having a baby under 3 months old or 9 to 12 months old, and "spraying pesticides inside your home routinely.

Sam Malone would not endorse this CHEERS.



But Steve Johnson did. During his April 6, 2005 confirmation hearing, Senator Barbara Boxer of California grilled Steve Johnson about this study asking him why such a clearly morally reprehensible study was still being planned by Steve Johnson's EPA (at the time Steve Johnson was already the acting Administrator even though he had not been confirmed for the position). Steve Johnson defended the idea behind the study, which was partially funded by the chemical industry, and refused to promise to cancel the study (watch the questioning here). It was only after three Senators threatened to block his confirmation in the following days that he finally canceled the CHEERS study on April 8th.

So that's the kind of guy we're dealing with.

Fast forward to the present.

The state of California has been trying since December 2005 to raise the emissions and mpg standards for the cars sold in its state beyond the pathetically inadequate standards proposed by the Bush administration. They applied for a waiver from the EPA which would allow them to do so. In the past, these types of waivers have always been granted to the states by the EPA because they only help the environment. But this is George W. Bush's America. Reason and common sense have nothing to do with legislation.

Steve Johnson's EPA dragged its feet on the waiver, refusing to say yes or no to California for 2 years before finally rejecting the waiver in December 2007.

It is believed by many members of Congress who are not on Team Republican that the reason Steve Johnson denied the waiver was because the White House ordered him to do so. From the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform website:

New documents and testimony obtained by the Committee show that EPA career staff unanimously supported granting California’s request for a waiver to enforce its greenhouse gas emissions standards for cars and trucks. EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson also supported granting the petition, at least in part, until he communicated with the White House.

The White House then used a claim of executive privilege to stonewall Congress's attempts to confirm their suspicions. But I'll let Henry Waxman tell you about that:



It has been recently discovered that not only is the White House refusing to cooperate with Congress, but Steve Johnson has apparently taken an extra step and ordered the entire EPA to join in on the fun. From The Guardian

In response to the California controversy, the EPA told employees not to talk to internal auditors, Congress or the media, according to a leaked email released yesterday by green campaigners.

In the June 16 email, obtained by the campaign group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (Peer), the EPA told its officials not to answer questions on pollution enforcement - even those from the agency's in-house auditors.

"If you are contacted directly by the [auditors'] office or [congressional investigators] requesting information of any kind … please do not respond to questions or make any statements," the email said.

In response to this information, on Tuesday, July 29th four Democratic Senators made a plea to the Justice Department requesting an investigation into Steve Johnson for perjury and obstruction of Congress. Knowing that Attorney General Micheal Mukasey, chief stonewaller for the Bush administration, would not grant the request for such an investigation (since he has announced that he will block any attempt to prosecute Bush officials for contempt of Congress), the Senators also issued a request for Steve Johnson's resignation.

Apparently, Steve Johnson is not too scared of Congress. The very next day, on July 30th, the Senate Judiciary Committee canceled their hearing titled, "Is the White House Interfering with EPA and Impeding Congressional Oversight?" because of "Administrator Johnson's refusal to attend".

Another F.U. to from a loyal Bushie to Congress. Will they do anything about it?


Have they done anything to Harriet Miers, Josh Bolton, or Karl Rove?