Patrick Leahy: “Earth Day usually marks the beginning of the President's and his green team's migration out to our Nation's parks…”

“Earth Day usually marks the beginning of the President's and his green team's migration out to our Nation's parks, forests, and wildlife refuges. Since this is an election year, I am sure they are ramping up their efforts to greenwash their environmental record with very nice photo ops. Greenwash, like whitewash, doesn't stick. You have only to open the daily newspaper to see the laserlike focus the Bush administration has taken to rolling back our environmental laws, and while doing so rewarding special interests and corporate polluters. The starkest example is their outright assault on the most bipartisan environmental law of the 20th century, the Clean Air Act. I say bipartisan because leading Republicans and leading Democrats across the political spectrum, in the House and in the Senate, came together to pass the Clean Air Act. My predecessor, the senior Senator from Vermont, Bob Stafford, was one of those leaders. You would think of all acts, one that would be put together by Republicans and Democrats would be safe from assault by this Administration. That is not the case. By stealthy executive fiat, the Administration has dismantled the Clean Air Act bit by bit to let polluting industries off the hook when it comes to cleaning up dirty coal-fired powerplants that each year belch hundreds of thousands of tons of soot and toxic pollutants-- pollutants like mercury.”