|
"Having served as E.P.A. administrator
under both Presidents Nixon and Ford, I can state categorically that
there never was such White House intrusion into the business of the
E.P.A. during my tenure. The E.P.A. was established as an
independent agency in the executive branch, and so it should remain.
There appears today to be a steady erosion in its independent status
. .
. the
interest of the American people lies in having full disclosure of
the facts, particularly when the issue is one with such potentially
enormous damage to the long-term health and economic well-being of
all of us."
Russell Train, a
Republican who served as head of the EPA under Presidents Nixon and
Ford. This is an excerpt from his June 21, 2003 letter to the
editor of the New York Times, titled "When Politics Trumps
Science," on Bush administration's removal of
key information from an EPA report on air pollution. [New York Times]
A majority
of Americans support policies that protect
their families' health - anything else would make us a
failure as citizens and parents. A recent Yale University poll on
American's attitudes regarding health and the environment
showed that a two-thirds
majority of Americans support stronger safeguards against
polluters. [Yale Poll]
"Do you think the United States government
in Washington does too much, about the right amount, or not
enough for the environment?" [Yale Poll]
|
Too
much |
 5% |
| About
right |
 24% |
| Not enough |
 67% |
|
Don't
know |
 4% |
|
|
"The Environmental Deficit," Yale University, May
2004. MoE ±
3.1. |
Turning its back on this broad public support
for environmental health protections, the Bush
administration has removed some of our
fundamental safeguards. The projected consequences are
staggering - for example, Bush's "Clear Skies" plan
will cause approximately 4,000
premature deaths a year.
Bush's rollback of the Clean Air Act is
only one of over 50 changes Bush has made to environmental policies.
[Miami Herald] Another key policy affecting
Americans' health is his much-criticized Medicare plan.
PROTECTING AMERICA'S HEALTH
ARCHIVE
The Rollback of the Clean Air Act | Medicare
| Other Health
Issues
The Rollback
of the Clean Air Act
Archived
7/13/04:
Bush's "Clear Skies"
plan will cause 4,000 premature deaths per
year
The Bush administration's "Clear Skies"
Plan will eliminate New Source Review, a central part of
the Clean Air Act. Here is a brief explanation of
New Source Review from the Environmental Defense's
website:
| In 1970 Congress had assumed that older
industrial facilities, such as power plants and refineries,
would be phased out of production, so they were exempted
from the legislation. But when these big polluters continued
to operate and emit pollution at much higher levels than new
facilities that were built with modern pollution-control
equipment, lawmakers knew they had to act. The resulting New
Source Review requires older industrial facilities that want
to expand to undergo an EPA assessment and install pollution
control technologies if their planned expansion will produce
significantly more emissions. Alternately, these facilities
can opt to offset the increased emissions by lowering them
in other units they own. This way, older plants will not
impinge on the cleaner air more modern plants are
responsible for. [Environmental
Defense] |
According to a study conducted by the
major research firm Abt Associates, Bush's Clear Skies plan
will result in approximately 4,000 additional premature deaths a
year, as compared to the current law. [Power Plant Emissions PDF]
Many Americans
are surprised to learn how serious air pollution
is. A 20-year study published in the Journal of American
Medical Association during 2002 put the cancer risk in
cities with heavy particulate matter pollution on par with
long-term exposure to second-hand smoke. [USA Today] The Abt Associates "Dirty Air,
Dirty Power" study found that fine particulate matter from power
plants cuts short the lives of 24,000 Americans each year. [Dirty Air, Dirty Power]
According to the
EPA report "Benefits and Costs of the Clean Air Act," if the Clean
Air Act had not been in effect between 1970-1990:
| . . . an additional 205,000 Americans
would have died prematurely and millions more would have
suffered illnesses ranging from mild respiratory symptoms to
heart disease, chronic bronchitis, asthma attacks, and other
severe respiratory problems. In addition, the lack of the
Clean Air Act controls on the use of leaded gasoline would
have resulted in major increases in child IQ loss and adult
hypertension, heart disease and stroke. [EPA] |
American Cancer Association,
American Heart Association, and American Lung Association sign
letter against Bush's "Clear Skies"
Policy
These leading
health groups and others signed a letter from Americans for Clean Air, stating that they
"vigorously oppose" Bush's rollback of the Clean Air Act, because it
will "harm public health." [Americans
for Clean Air]
The American Lung Association on the Clean
Air Act
The organization's "Defending the Clean Air Act"
page provides a good comparison of the Clean Air Act and
the Bush Administration's proposal. [American Lung Association]
History of the Clean Air
Act
The Clean Air Act
of 1970 was passed by Congress in reaction to the
growing national concern over air pollution. The bill
passed unanimously in the Senate, and was signed into law
by President Nixon on December 31, 1970. [Environmental Defense]
For more information on the law itself, see the
EPA's "Plain English Guide to the Clean Air Act" from 1993 [EPA]
Medicare
Archived 6/22/04:
The National Review: Bush
administration's cover up of Medicare cost may have violated at
least five federal laws
The
National Review Online's June 1, 2004 article "Cover-Up Costs"
provides a thorough review of the Medicare cost scandal from a
conservative perspective:
| Democrats complain most loudly
about this outrage. Republicans, conservatives, and
libertarians, however, should be at least as furious that
federal bureaucrats in a GOP administration used coercion
and lies to engineer a $534 billion expansion of the welfare
state. [National Review
Online] |
Note
that two of the documents mentioned in the article, the
Congressional Research Service memo, and the withheld page of the
cost projection, are available through our Download For
Democracy campaign.
GAO calls the Bush
Administration's "covert" news reports on
Medicare illegal
|
In its decision released
yesterday, the General Accounting Office (GAO) said that the
Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), the agency
that oversaw the production of the videos, had illegally
used appropriated funds to make the “video news releases,”
or VNRs . . .
The investigators said they
used three general criteria to decide the legality of the
materials: whether they are “self aggrandizing, purely
partisan in nature, or covert as to source.” The report
concluded that the story segments of the VNR were “covert”
because they could be misleading to the audience, which
might think they were produced by a news organization. [The
Hill] |
Bush's Medicare cards
don't go over well . . .
anywhere
"Trapped in the discount drug maze"
[AARP]
"Medicare cards don't impress
Idahoans" [AP]
"Medicare mess adds to health
frustrations" [Kansas City
Star]
"New Medicare cards aren't
popular here" [The
Californian]
"Picking Medicare cards is a
daunting task" [Arizona
Republic]
"Residents question, criticize
Medicare changes" [Mobile
Register]
"No hurry to get Medicare
cards" [Minot Daily News]
Other Health
Issues | 
