A significant assault on health and environmental protection is underway in Congress. Lawmakers must pass 12 spending bills for fiscal 2012 to fund the government, and some House Republicans are seizing this opportunity to jam through unpopular anti-environmental policies that have nothing to do with spending. These anti-environmental provisions are called “riders” because they ride along on spending bills even though they do not cut federal spending one cent. They are bad policies pushed forward through a bad process.
Riders are an end-run around Congressional procedures; they are designed to limit scrutiny and to push through policies that would otherwise never make it into law. Riders generally are not subjected to hearings or full debates. And by adding riders, Republicans are trying to take the spending bill hostage. They are saying to the Senate, “Go along with these anti-environmental policies, or we’ll keep the government from getting funded.”
On the final spending bill for 2011, House Republican leaders and Tea Party legislators attached 19 riders to block protections for clean air, clean water, wilderness lands and wild life. Because of this broad assault on the environment, the House 2011 spending bill was branded “the worst environmental bill in history.” Thanks to resistance from Senate Democratic leaders and President Obama, most of those riders didn’t make it into law.
Now, Congress is starting to consider spending bills for 2012, and the Republicans in the House are at it again. This page will track what riders are being added, their impact on the public, and who’s responsible.
From NRDC President Frances Beinecke: The Choice Is Clear: Public Health vs. Polluters
Posted May 4, 2012 by Rocky Kistner in Curbing Pollution, Environmental Justice, Living Sustainably, Moving Beyond Oil
TransCanada’s latest Keystone XL tar sands pipeline plan filed with the U.S. State Department has done nothing to quell local Nebraska opposition to the controversial project to pipe tar sands oil all the way to the Gulf for export. Nebraska residents say...continued→
Posted May 3, 2012 by Anthony Swift in Moving Beyond Oil, Solving Global Warming, U.S. Law and Policy
The House is once again jeopardizing an important transportation bill by attaching non-related amendments, including a measure that would approve the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline that the President rejected in January. The bill is going into conference next week...continued→
Posted February 8, 2012 by Anthony Swift in Moving Beyond Oil, Solving Global Warming, U.S. Law and Policy
The House Energy and Commerce Committee approved a deeply flawed bill that would use Congressional authority to permit TransCanada’s Keystone XL tar sands pipeline. The bill, H.R. 3548, would force the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to grant a permit for Keystone...continued→
Posted January 25, 2012 by Susan Casey-Lefkowitz in Curbing Pollution, Moving Beyond Oil, Saving Wildlife and Wild Places, Solving Global Warming
Yesterday, hundreds of “referees” gathered on Capitol Hill and blew the whistle on the proposed Keystone XL tar sands pipeline. Those referees were back in action this morning at the House energy subcommittee hearing on a proposal by Representative...continued→
Posted January 24, 2012 by Susan Casey-Lefkowitz in Curbing Pollution, Moving Beyond Oil, Saving Wildlife and Wild Places, Solving Global Warming
In giving the official Republican response to tonight’s State of the Union address, Indiana Governor Daniels pushed a tar sands pipeline that would put our health and safety at risk to benefit the oil industry. Echoing the wildly exaggerated jobs...continued→
Posted January 24, 2012 by Anthony Swift in Moving Beyond Oil, U.S. Law and Policy
The Republican leadership’s latest gambit to force through TransCanada’s Keystone XL tar sands pipeline is a measure proposed by Rep. Lee Terry (R-NE) in December. GOP leadership apparently decided to rally behind Terry’s bill, H.R. 3548, after discussing various options...continued→
Posted January 20, 2012 by Susan Casey-Lefkowitz in Curbing Pollution, Living Sustainably, Moving Beyond Oil, Solving Global Warming
Local communities are on the frontlines when it comes to the impacts of climate change and for the past few years we have seen mayors speaking out on the need to move off of high carbon fuels such as tar...continued→
Posted January 18, 2012 by Susan Casey-Lefkowitz in Curbing Pollution, Moving Beyond Oil, Solving Global Warming
Today, President Obama changed the rules of the game: he stood up to Big Oil’s bullying and rejected the massively destructive Keystone XL tar sands pipeline. The pipeline was rejected for all the right reasons. President Obama put the health and...continued→
Posted January 12, 2012 by Susan Casey-Lefkowitz in Curbing Pollution, Moving Beyond Oil, Solving Global Warming
The facts show that the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline will not help the American economy. Yet, in this morning’s State of American Business speech at the US Chamber of Commerce, once again the Keystone XL pipeline project was put...continued→
Posted December 31, 2011 by Daniel Rosenberg in Curbing Pollution, Environmental Justice, Health and the Environment, The Media and the Environment, U.S. Law and Policy
In which a group of Senators pen fact-challenged letters on behalf of formaldehyde and styrene, currying favor with the chemical industry and undercutting government health agencies. In my last post, I discussed how EPA was compelled by the collaboration of...continued→
