A GOP list of positive outcomes from the shutdown is harhest on the EPA. | REUTERS GOP staffers post shutdown top 10

Even with a half-million federal workers on furlough, Republicans on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee say there’s a bright side to the government shutdown.

GOP committee staff on Tuesday published a blog post listing the “Top Ten Reasons The Government Shutdown Isn’t All Bad.” The list, which rehashes Republicans’ long-time energy and environmental talking points, reserves its harshest criticism for the EPA and even touts agency furloughs.


“Approximately 15,000 EPA employees are furloughed, making it less likely fake CIA agents at EPA will be ripping off the taxpayer,” the blog post says.

( POLITICO's full coverage of the government shutdown)

That’s a reference to John C. Beale, the former EPA senior policy adviser and bogus CIA spy who pleaded guilty last month to defrauding the government out of nearly $900,000. Republicans have pounced on the incident, hauling Beale before Congress (Beale took the fifth). And the saga has served as the perfect fodder for the the GOP’s years-long campaign against the Obama EPA.

Another shutdown bonus, according to committee Republicans: “Fewer bureaucrats at the EPA makes it less likely that they’ll make up science on new regulations.”

Sen. David Vitter (La.), the top Republican on the committee, has railed against a slew of EPA regulations, including its proposed climate rule for future power plants. Vitter and other Republicans say the EPA’s climate regulations are based on shoddy science and will harm the economy.

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EPA officials stand by the regulations, and numerous peer-reviewed studies warn of dramatic consequences if industrial nations continue to spew greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere at current rates.

The top ten list also criticizes the Interior Department’s National Park Service for closing monuments, including the World War II Memorial, as part of the government shutdown.

“World War II veterans have stormed the Normandy beaches again. (Sadly, they had to, in order to gain access to their own memorial),” the blog post says.

Veterans who tried to visit the memorial earlier this month had to initially bypass barriers blocking the entrance to the memorial, which was closed as a result of the shutdown. But the park service eventually decided to allow veterans to visit the site “to conduct First Amendment activities.”

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House Natural Resources Committee Chairman Doc Hastings (R-Wash.) and House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) have launched an investigation into the park service’s shutdown protocols and they’ll hold a hearing with NPS Director Jonathan Jarvis on Wednesday.

The GOP blog post also targets former Interior Secretary Ken Salazar for saying last week that the shutdown could slow oil and gas activity in the Gulf of Mexico, a top Republican priority.

The former Interior chief “was responsible for essentially shutting down all oil and gas production in the Gulf of Mexico when he implemented a moratorium on production in 2010,” the blog post says.

Salazar imposed a temporary moratorium on deepwater drilling of new wells in the Gulf in the aftermath of the 2010 BP oil spill, which dumped about 4.9 million barrels of oil into region. It did not shut down all oil and gas production in the Gulf.

Asked for comment on the blog post, a GOP committee spokesman said in a statement, “Sen. Vitter obviously doesn’t want a shutdown. The Committee put out the top ten to highlight how the EPA is constantly pushing a regulatory power grab under the Obama Administration when the agency is fully funded, and to highlight the humorous irony that Mr. Moratorium is concerned about Gulf energy production.”