Posted on 10/16/2013 12:40:24 PM PDT by Tailgunner Joe
The head of the Senate panel overseeing the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) said that the agency’s chief is committed to restarting its operations as soon as possible once the government shutdown ends.
“Knowing Gina McCarthy the way I do, Administrator McCarthy, she will get up and running as fast as she can,” Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) said at a press conference on Wednesday.
“And knowing the workers as well as I know them, they care deeply," she added. "Their morale is low, but they know that America is behind them."
Boxer’s comments came as House and Senate leadership was scrambling to put the finishing touches on a bill to fund the government and raise the country’s debt ceiling before a Thursday deadline.
About 94 percent of the workers at the EPA have been furloughed, halting the vast majority of the agency's operations for more than two weeks during the shutdown.
On Tuesday, Republicans on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee highlighted 10 reasons why the government shutdown “isn’t all bad,” noting that furloughed EPA workers “makes it less likely that they'll make up science on new regulations,” among other effects.
Democrats on Wednesday disagreed, and said that the furloughs amounted to cops being taken off the beat to protect public health and the environment.
“How would we like to live in a community where there’s no police officers, expecting everybody would be just fine? That’s not the real world,” said Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.).
They noted that infrastructure projects have been halted by the shutdown, and communities reliant on tourism have been hurt by closures to national parks and wildlife refuges.
“It’s killing the tourism business in so many parts of our nation, right before winter hits. It’s hurting people now,” Boxer said.
The shutdown, Democrats said, has prevented the Army Corps of Engineers from permitting new infrastructure projects. Among those projects stuck in bureaucratic limbo is a proposal to dredge the Pearl Harbor naval base in Hawaii.
“This is where our navy ships come in,” Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii) said. “This affects national security.”
Boxer said that the effects of the shutdown should discourage lawmakers from allowing funding to run out ever again.
“We want to make the record clear so that this never happens again,” she said. “There’s a reason why the government hasn’t been shut down since the '90s. It’s because the pain that was inflicted on our country.”
Now y’all ya’ll get yur gas tax hike.
NOT THIS SH!T AGAIN.
Keep it shut down, please please please.
“And knowing the workers as well as I know them, they care deeply
GAG!Alert
Welcome to the Warsaw Ghetto.
MORE BAD NEWS !!!
It’s comforting to know we’re going to be made even more miserable than we already are.
I can hardly wait.
Now they can get back to regulating businesses to death, being a less productive use of tax dollars than firewood and uprooting families and ruining lives on even the slightest suspicion that they are harming a wetland or endangered species.
That’s too bad.
Of all of the Government agencies we can do without the E.P.A. can disappear and now one will even notice.Prior to the activation of the E.P.A. an agency of that type was needed to protect our environment.Those days are now over as each state has its own environmental protection unit.
The E.P.A. should have been disbanded or at the very least had its funding cut by 50 percent.That way those S.O.B.’s would stay out of trouble.
Soon: I can't afford to heat and cool my home because of the EPA
Uh-huh, Boxer. I hope one of the first things the next conservative President does upon taking office is put a moratorium on EPA rules.
The states never delegated to the feds, via the Constitution, the specific power to regulate the environment.
Thank goodness! I almost bought some incandescent bulbs in a suicide attempt.
Interesting question. I'm going to have to do a cost/benefit analysis and get back with you...
knowing the workers as well as I know them, they care deeply,” she added. “Their morale is low, but they know that Americans lay helpless before them”.
*”Their morale is low, but they know that America is behind them.” *
We are NOT behind them.
The only reason to be behind an EPA employee would be to watch them to make sure that they don’t steal any office supplies as you are walking them to their car with the cardboard box.
DEFUND THE VILE ECONOMY DESTROYING LYING SOCIALIST EPA AND FIRE THEM ALL!!!
That’s a scary thought being on the cusp of Halloween.
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