Obama’s green team comes out swinging as election proceeds

President Obama's top energy and environmental officials are casting their work as a core piece of White House efforts to boost the economy while using rough-and-tumble language to parry Republican attacks. Four speeches over four days by Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson signal a political all-hands-on-deck approach to defending the White House’s economic record ahead of the 2012 elections. The tactic signals the extent to which the White House response to criticism over high gasoline prices, green-energy spending and environmental rules is extending well beyond a recent series of speeches by the president. It also arrives amid signs of continued economic sluggishness that’s likely to worry the White House heading into the fall campaign. Jackson, in remarks Thursday and Friday, made perhaps her most direct argument to date that the administration’s green agenda has an economic focus, repeatedly invoking the president’s call for an economy “built to last.” Salazar, in speeches on Tuesday and Wednesday, blasted House Republicans for claiming his department is stifling energy production. He accused them of pursuing “fairy tale” energy policies aimed at scoring election-season political points and spreading falsehoods about the administration’s energy record...more