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President Obama’s decision to undercut EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson by cancelling a long-overdue update to smog standards was a mistake on both the politics and the policy. For smart takes on the politics of this, you can read Steve Benen and Paul Krugman. For smart takes on the policy implications, read Brad Plumer, Kate Sheppard and David Dayen.
In assessing the implications of policy decisions, it is useful to consider how various individuals and organizations respond. To that end, I’ve compiled some key reactions to President Obama’s announcement.
So far I’ve found 7 Republican politicians and 7 industry groups that are supportive of the President’s decision, and 2 Democratic politicians and 12 public interest groups that are critical of the decision. If you know of other statements that should be included here, please let me know.
Notably, even as the Republicans and industry groups praised the decision, many of them managed to include an attack on the President in their statement as well.
| Person or Organization | Supportive Statement | Critical Statement |
| Senator Mitch McConnell | X | |
| House Speaker John Boehner (spokesman) | X | |
| Reps. Fred Upton and Ed Whitfield | X | |
| House Majority Leader Eric Cantor | X | |
| Chamber of Commerce | X | |
| American Petroleum Institute | X | |
| American Enterprise Institute: | X | |
| Senator Jim Inhofe | X | |
| Senator Pat Toomey | X | |
| Senator John McCain | X | |
| Electric Reliability Coordinating Council: | X | |
| Heartland Institute | X | |
| National Petrochemical & Refiners Association | X | |
| Electric Power Generation Association | X | |
| Greenpeace | X | |
| American Lung Association | X | |
| Sierra Club | X | |
| Friends of the Earth | X | |
| Natural Resources Defense Council | X | |
| Senator Barbara Boxer | X | |
| Rep. Ed Markey | X | |
| League of Conservation Voters | X | |
| Move On | X | |
| Center for American Progress | X | |
| Center for Biological Diversity | X | |
| American Thoracic Society | X | |
| Health Care Without Harm | X | |
| The Trust for America’s Health | X |
13 Comments
Allow me to politically “bottom line” this for you: if Obama walks away after this obvious lap in the face to the people (groups) who supported him to appease the ones who “actively” worked against him the left and the environmental community will make themselves politically immaterial!
We need to lose the, “we love you Obama, but could you please not twist the knife when you stick it in our backs?”
Well, flying out of the window go some of the positive talking-points that he should have been lining up for the campaign. Particularly, sad is the fact that these walk-backs on environmental issues will have disproportionate effects on the working poor, and unemployed who are cursed to live in or next to industrial-use zoned areas.
I am increasingly of the mind that he is going to green-light the Keystone XL pipeline, under the banner of “It will create jobs, here in America, for Americans.”
For her own sanity, I hope Linda Jackson resigns — it must be disheartening to be constantly undermined by your President on political, not scientific merits. Might as well hire Summers to do the job. He’s no physical scientist, but I bet he’d make a good penny selling a lot of that seemingly useless lab equipment.
“…he is going to green-light the Keystone XL pipeline …”
Of course he is. Was there really ever any doubt?
Yes,just about 2 weeks ago EPA said that not enforcing the regulations were criminal…….
How can anyone with a conscience vote for Obama again,he has no credibility,says 1 thing does another.
The list of betrayals is a mile long. Obama is nothing but a congenital liar and a scam artist.
Very nice list. I think this is a good way to document his atrocities.
One thing that upset me about this is the fact that both Huffington Post and Associated Press lied about it in their headlines and the story’s lead: Both called the proposal to reduce smog “controversial”, which was lying, because all Americans want less smog(except President Obama and others receiving bribes from the Oil industry), therefore, it isn’t controversial to reduce smog: Huffpo & AP were lying.
HP subtly sugarcoating Obama’s misdeeds? That’s unpossible!
It’s an all too common sight among the soft hitting criticisms of Obama from progressives. “Mr. President, your policy on smog is terrible! … but I’m still going to vote for ya!”
“Both called the proposal to reduce smog “controversial”, which was lying, because all Americans want less smog(except President Obama and others receiving bribes from the Oil industry), therefore, it isn’t controversial to reduce smog”
This is what I expected to be the case. However, in this case, the title of this diary is somewhat misleading, because people can easily read “conservative” as “most conservative people”. This is the sort of non-stop conflation that makes the development of trans-partisan efforts very difficult.
Some over-zealous individuals, on both the left and the right, may not care about this, but will their fanatacism ease their slide into serfdom, perhaps accompanied by asthma?
Better to engage conservative rank-and-file, and drive wedges between the rank-and-file and the corrupted politicos. See Progressives are Stupid if they don’t seize their opportunity to educate their Republican neighbors about ALEC – here’s why
Can we get past the shock already? Obama is a fraud. He manipulated a lot of us to get elected. The only real response is to not show up to vote for him, not donate a cent to him, and make it clear to everyone why.
Word!
I agree. If we only have Progressives, we lose the election.