Last month we detailed how the Obama administration has tried invoke the authority of “science” to support their pre-existing political policy proposals, despite the fact that on issue after issue there either is no scientific consensus, or the preponderance of scientific evidence did not support their side. Today, Politico adds more details to the Obama administration’s efforts to manipulate science to support their offshore drilling moratorium:
The White House rewrote crucial sections of an Interior Department report to suggest an independent group of scientists and engineers supported a six-month ban on offshore oil drilling, the Interior inspector general says in a new report.
In the wee hours of the morning of May 27, a staff member to White House energy adviser Carol Browner sent two edited versions of the department report’s executive summary back to Interior. The language had been changed to insinuate the seven-member panel of outside experts – who reviewed a draft of various safety recommendations – endorsed the moratorium, according to the IG report obtained by POLITICO.
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Rep. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) and several other Gulf State members of Congress asked the Interior IG to investigate the moratorium and the peer review claim.“The inspector general’s finding that the blanket-drilling moratorium was driven by a politics and not by science is bitter news for families who, because of it, lost their jobs, savings, and way of life,” Cassidy said Tuesday. “Candidate Obama promised that he would guided by science, not ideology. If that were true, at least 12,000 jobs and 1.8 billion dollars of economic activity would have been saved on the Gulf Coast.”
This is exactly the kind of abuse of executive power that the next Congress must check if they are going to Get Control of Government. Presumptive-Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) is going to be very busy.