Monday, July 02, 2012

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 fact is we can’t create an economy that is built to last by putting our nation into a race to the bottom, a race for the weakest health protections and the most loopholes in our environmental laws,” Jackson said Friday in criticizing GOP proposals to kill or delay several regulations. 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...more

No comments: