“Bush holdover” is career civil servant hired during Clinton

by Marlo Lewis
May 14, 2009 @ 5:22 pm

Team Obama was embarrassed earlier this week when a leaked interagency memorandum acknowledged that EPA’s proposed finding that greenouse gases endanger public health and welfare could impose severe economic burdens on small business. The memorandum said, in part:

Making the decision to regulate CO2 under the CAA [Clean Air Act] for the first time is likely to have serious economic consequences for regulated entities throughout the U.S. economy, including small businesses and small communities. Should EPA later extend this finding to stationary sources, small businesses and institutions would be subject to costly regulatory programs such as New Source Review.

An unnamed Administration official dismissed the memo on the grounds that it was written by a “Bush holdover.”

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), Ranking Member on the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee, takes issue with the Administration’s spin on two counts. First, the “holdover” put-down is an ad hominem argument–as if merely being associated with Bush is sufficient to discredit whatever the memo author has to say.

Second, and more importantly, it is untrue! The so-called Bush holdover, Issa reports, is “a career civil servant who was originally hired during the Clinton Administration and worked at one time for a Democratic Member of Congress. Shawne Carter McGibbon is now Acting-Chief Counsel, keeping the office running until a Chief Counsel for Advocacy is confirmed by the Senate.”

Kudos to Mr. Issa for setting the record straight–and to Ms. McGibbon for speaking truth to power.

From http://www.globalwarming.org/