Obama EPA Scandal Intensifies

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D. C. Clothesline:

Obama EPA Scandal Intensifies

Posted on May 25, 2013 by Tim Brown

 

Currently on the front burner of scandals in the Obama administration are Benghazi, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) targeting of conservative groups, and the AP scandal. Of course, Fast and Furious is also still very much alive. However, over the past week, two more scandals are coming to light and may be just as big as the others. One of those involves the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

 

A letter was sent by Republican Senators David Vitter (R-LA), Jim Inhofe (R-OK), and Chuck Grassley (R-IA) along with Representative Darrell Issa (R-CA) to Acting EPA Administrator Bob Perciasepe last Friday. They have accused the agency of continuing to make conservative think tanks and state and local governments pay full price for obtaining documents under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), but routinely waiving those fees for environmental groups.

 

The committee reviewed over 1,200 pages of EPA correspondence between January 1, 2012 and April 26, 2013 and discovered that the EPA “manipulated the FOIA fee waiver process. Among the groups that had their fees waved were National Resources Defense Council, EarthJustice, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, Sierra Club, and National Wildlife Federation.

 

In contrast EPA denied ninety-three percent of the requests from the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a free market think tank. Overall fee waivers were only granted to other think tanks twenty-seven percent of the time. The EPA also denied nearly every request for a fee waiver from states and localities.