Administration Lobbied Against Clean-Air Waiver

By David Whitney, McClatchy Newspapers

The White House approved a Transportation Department campaign to lobby against California’s application for a waiver to combat global warming through auto emissions limits tougher than federal standards, a lawmaker charged Monday.

In a letter to James L. Connaughton, the head of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., the chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, called the campaign an “inappropriate use of taxpayer money” and asked Connaughton to repudiate it.

Waxman said the campaign “sends an unmistakable message: The administration is trying to stack the deck against California’s efforts to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from motor vehicles.”

(Original Article)