Will the GOP House attack science, after all?

By Stephen Stromberg

The last time the Republicans controlled Congress, oversight hearings on energy and environmental policy were too often ideological, anti-global warming wastes of effort. Is there any hope this time will be different? It appears that Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), the incoming chairman of the House government reform committee and the Republicans' new chief investigator, is backing off of climate issues.

Politico reports that Issa has prepared his agenda for committee hearings in the new Congress. And, though earlier signals indicated that climate science and President Obama's move to regulate greenhouse gases would be targets, they're not on the list.

Issa is aiming to launch investigations on everything from WikiLeaks to Fannie Mae to corruption in Afghanistan in the first few months of what promises to be a high profile chairmanship of the top oversight committee in Congress. According to an outline of the committee's hearing topics obtained by POLITICO, the House Oversight and Government Reform is also planning to investigate how regulation impacts job creation, the role of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in the foreclosure crisis; recalls at the Food and Drug Administration and the failure of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission to agree on the causes of the market meltdown.

Of those, inquiring into executive branch regulation is probably the item most hostile to President Obama. According to the outline Politico obtained, "The committee will examine how overregulation has hurt job creation and whether the administration intends to try and abuse the regulatory process to implement regulations that Congress would reject."

This could be understood to condemn the regulation of greenhouse emissions that the Environmental Protection Agency began on Sunday. But Kurt Bardella, Issa's spokesman, insists that "EPA really wasn't what we were thinking." The committee aims to get "input from business/small businesses, especially about what, if any, regulatory impediments are impacting their ability to create long-term, permanent jobs." That's still pretty general language. This could mean that, essentially, they're going after health care, not greenhouse gas regulation. Issa's dropping of climate science from his agenda also accords with the image he wants to cultivate of an overseer more interested in rooting out waste and fraud than in throwing ideological bombs.

But, of course, in the case of climate, Issa hardly needs to do the bomb-throwing himself.



Bardella suggests that Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.), incoming chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, or Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-Ill.), incoming vice-chairman of the House Science Committee, will take the lead on the EPA/global warming portfolio.

Issa's apparent decision not to go after Obama or climate scientists on issues relating to global warming -- at least for now -- doesn't mean the House GOP caucus has suddenly become more reasonable on climate change. Quite the opposite: There plenty of prominent House Republicans who are eager to pile on.

House GOP leaders have blessed Sensenbrenner's role as climate change attack dog. Incoming House Science Chairman Ralph Hall last month admitted of Sensenbrenner, "With his background, his insistence, he can do the mean things that we don't want to do." And in a Wall Street Journal op-ed last week, Upton discussed the ways he would try to shut down the EPA.

In other words, the outlook for climate science in the incoming Congress is as bleak as ever.