Leavitt to get Cabinet status?
That could make Utah Gov. Mike Leavitt, who is nominated to head the EPA, the first formal secretary of the environment.
Presidents George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush have all invited their EPA administrators to sit as informal members of their Cabinets since 1989. The Bush administration said Tuesday the time has come to make it a formal, permanent part of the Cabinet.
"The Bush administration strongly supports elevating EPA to a Cabinet department," James L. Connaughton, chairman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, told the House Government Reform Subcommittee on Energy Policy, Natural Resources and Regulatory Affairs.
"EPA carries out the work of a Cabinet department," he said, adding that it would give higher profile and importance to the environment.
Meanwhile in the Senate, developments continued Tuesday that could complicate Leavitt's yet-to-be-scheduled confirmation there.
Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., and Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., blasted the administration's response to their demands for better explanations of why the White House apparently stopped the EPA from warning that dust after the 9/11 attacks in New York was toxic.
In the House committee hearing, acting EPA Administrator Marianne Horinko testified that most industrialized nations already include a minister of environment in their presidential cabinets — and doing so in America could increase the prestige and influence of the EPA abroad.
Two bills are pending before the House that would elevate the agency. Similar bills have come and gone since 1988.
One current bill, sponsored by Rep. Sherwood Boehlert, R-N.Y., would simply elevate the agency to the Cabinet without making substantive changes to its current organization. The other, by subcommittee chairman Doug Ose, R-Calif., would overhaul its structure significantly.
"I believe that EPA's structure, as it currently exists, lacks adequate oversight and coordination of its offices to ensure that science, policy and implementation are integrated throughout the EPA," Ose said.
He noted the EPA currently has a "stovepipe" structure in which all regional offices and assistant administrators report directly to the EPA administrator. Ose proposes having only three deputies report to him, and to have them separately oversee policy, science and enforcement.
Ose said that would separate EPA regulators and scientists and help avoid situations that others have said led to political-driven science.
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