Dick Cheney: Difference between revisions - Wikipedia

By combining unwavering ideological positions with a deep practical knowledge of the federal bureaucracy, Cheney has had a significant impact on the Bush Republican administration's approach to everything from air and water quality to the preservation of national parks and forests. The vice president, for example, pushed to make Nevada's Yucca Mountain the nation's repository for nuclear and radioactive waste which was, according to his aides, a victory for the nuclear power industry over those with long-standing safety concerns. And his office was also a powerful force behind the White House's decision to rewrite a Clinton-era land-protection measure that had put nearly a third of the national forests off limits to logging, mining and most development, former Cheney staff members said.

'''Clashes with the judicial branch'''

Cheney's pro-business drive to ease regulations, however, has often set the administration on a collision course with the judicial branch. The administration, for example, is appealing the order of a federal judge who reinstated the forest protections after she ruled that officials did not adequately study the environmental consequences of giving states more development authority. And in April 2007, the Supreme Court rejected two other policies closely associated with Cheney:

* It rebuffed the effort, ongoing since the resignation of Christine Todd Whitman, to loosen some rules under the Clean Air Act;

* The court also rebuked the administration for not regulating greenhouse gases associated with global warming, issuing this ruling less than two months after Cheney declared that "conflicting viewpoints" remain about the extent of the human contribution to the problem.

'''Working though loyalists'''

Cheney sometimes makes his environmental views clear in public but generally he prefers to operate with stealth, aided by loyalists who owe him for their careers. One example that can be cited to support this is when the vice president heard about a petition to list the cutthroat trout in Yellowstone National Park as a protected species and turned to one of his former congressional aides, Paul Hoffman, who landed his job as deputy assistant interior secretary for fish and wildlife after Cheney recommended him.<ref>''The Washington Post'', Maintaining Connections, [[http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/graphic/2007/06/27/GR2007062700422.html]]</ref> In an interview, Hoffman said the vice president knew that listing the cutthroat trout would harm the recreational fishing industry in his home state of Wyoming and that he "followed the issue closely." In 2001 and again in 2006, Hoffman's agency declined to list the trout as threatened.

Hoffman, now in another job at the Interior Department, said: "His (Cheney's) genius is that he builds networks and puts the right people in the right places, and then trusts them to make well-informed decisions that comport with his overall vision." <ref>''The Washington Post'', 'Leaving No Tracks', June 27, 2007, [[http://blog.washingtonpost.com/cheney/chapters/leaving_no_tracks/index.html]]</ref>

'''Pro-Industry stance'''

Amid rolling blackouts in California in 2001, Vice President Cheney pushed Bush to abandon a campaign pledge to impose mandatory reductions on carbon emissions from power plants. And it was Cheney's insistence on easing air pollution controls, not the personal reasons she cited at the time, that led to Christine Todd Whitman resignation as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (stated in an interview with ''The Washington Post'') <ref>''The Washington Post'', 'Leaving No Tracks', June 27, 2007, [[http://blog.washingtonpost.com/cheney/chapters/leaving_no_tracks/index.html]]</ref>. At stake was a provision of the Clean Air Act known as the '''New Source Review''', which requires that older plants - which produce millions of tons of smog and soot each year - install modern pollution controls when they are refurbished in order to decrease emissions. Power generation officials (whose companies had been major donors to the Bush campaign) complained to the White House that even when they had merely performed routine maintenance and repairs, the Clinton administration hit them with violations and multimillion-dollar lawsuits.

Cheney's energy task force ordered the EPA to reconsider the rule, believing that the EPA's regulations were primarily to blame for keeping companies from building new power plants. As Whitman has stated, she "... was upset, mad, offended that there seemed to be so much head-nodding around the table." Whitman said she had to fight "tooth and nail" to prevent Cheney's task force from handing over the job of reforming the New Source Review to the Energy Department, a battle she said she won only after appealing to White House Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr. This was an environmental issue with major implications for air quality and health, she believed, and it shouldn't be driven by a task force primarily concerned with increasing production. Whitman agreed that the exception for routine maintenance and repair needed to be clarified, but not in a way that undercut the ongoing Clinton-era lawsuits - many of which she believed was positive.

Whitman wanted to work a political trade with industry by eliminating the New Source Review in return for support of Bush's upcoming 2002 "Clear Skies" initiative, which outlined a market-based approach to reducing emissions over time. But Clear Skies went nowhere. Whitman said there was never any follow-up and, moreover, there was no reason for industry to embrace even a modest pollution control initiative when the vice president was pushing to change the rules for nothing. Finally summoned to the Oval Office in March 2001, Whitman was prepared to argue but Bush had made up his mind. As she left, she saw Cheney picking up a letter already signed by Bush announcing the decision.<ref>''The Washington Post'', 'In Bush's Final Year, The Agenda Gets Greener', 29 December, 2007 [[http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/28/AR2007122803046_2.html?sid=ST2007122803098]]</ref>

The end result - which Whitman has confirmed written at the direction of the White House and announced in August 2003 - vastly broadened the definition of routine maintenance. It allowed some of the nation's dirtiest plants to make major modifications without installing costly new pollution controls. By that time, Whitman had already announced her resignation, saying she wanted to spend more time with her family. But the real reason, she said, was the new rule which she said she could not sign: "The president has a right to have an administrator who could defend it, and I just couldn't." <ref>''The Washington Post'', 'Leaving No Tracks', June 27, 2007, [[http://blog.washingtonpost.com/cheney/chapters/leaving_no_tracks/index.html]]</ref> A federal appeals court has since found that the rule change violated the Clean Air Act. In their ruling, the judges said that the administration had redefined the law in a way that could be valid "only in a Humpty-Dumpty world."<ref>''The Washington Post'', 'Leaving No Tracks', June 27, 2007, [[http://blog.washingtonpost.com/cheney/chapters/leaving_no_tracks/index.html]]</ref>

==Health problems==