Report: Bush administration rolling back enviro regs
The Bush administration showed a "pre-determined hostility" toward regulation in reviewing, and in some cases weakening, environmental protections adopted under President Clinton, according to a new report, entitled "Rewriting the Rules," released by Sen. Joseph Lieberman (D-CT), chairman of the Governmental Affairs Committee.
On President Bush's very first day in office, his chief of staff, Andrew Card, issued a memo directing that agencies halt all regulatory activity pending a review of Clinton-era rules by Bush political appointees. After sifting through thousands of documents turned over by the administration, committee staff found that this review was "characterized by a troubling lack of respect for long-established regulatory procedures, an attempt to give short shrift to public input when possible, and to discount the science or record that supported the rules under review," according to the report.