Question:
While Congress and the country have been debating high-profile environmental
issues, like whether to drill for oil in the Arctic, President Bush has been
quietly filling key subcabinet posts with conservative activists and
industry lobbyists who have spent their careers criticizing the laws they
are now sworn to uphold.
These appointments should dispel any doubts about Mr. Bush's intention to
weaken the strong environmental protections he inherited from the Clinton
administration. Unlike his father, who reached into academia and even the
environmental community for some of his appointments, Mr. Bush seems
determined to return to the Reagan era, when ideologues like James Watt ran
the Interior Department and most of the important regulatory jobs were
filled with representatives of the businesses being regulated.
Answer:
Nowhere is Mr. Bush's strategy clearer than at Interior, the agency most
responsible for protecting the country's natural resources. The department's
new deputy secretary, J. Steven Griles, was a top lobbyist for the oil, gas
and coal industries, which contributed heavily to Mr. Bush's campaign last
year and this year helped shape an energy strategy that would open the
public lands to drilling. The new solicitor, William Myers III, was a senior
employee of the National Cattlemen's Beef Association and represented the
nation's grazing interests in lawsuits challenging federal policies that he
will now be required to uphold. Bennett Raley, the new assistant secretary
for water and science, is likewise a longtime servant of the big landowning
and irrigation interests. Lynn Scarlett, the new assistant secretary for
policy, was president of the Reason Foundation, a libertarian think tank
opposed in principle to most government regulation.
All four have won Senate approval. However, there are others with similar
professional or ideological pedigrees who have yet to be approved for jobs
that wield great power over day-to-day policy. Senate environmentalists will
want to pay closer attention to these nominees lest they wake up one morning
to find a fox in every coop.
