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EPA Gave Volkswagen a Free Pass On Emissions Ten Years Ago Due To Lack of Budget
An anonymous reader writes: A new report suggests that continuing cuts to the Environmental Protection Agency's budget contributed to Volkswagen being able to cheat on its emissions tests. When the test scripts were developed the department — which can still only conduct 'spot tests' on 20% of all qualifying vehicles — was forced to concentrate on heavy machinery and truck manufacturers, which at the time had a far higher incidence of attempting to cheat on vehicle standards tests. Discounting inflation the EPA's 2015 budget is on a par with its 2002 budget (PDF), and has been cut by 21% since 2010.
Probably because the legislative process forces portions of their budget be used for only certain things, and restricts how much can be spent on other things. The process is referred to as an earmark. Sometimes these work out well, if a legislative law compels an agency to do something that really needs to be done that the Executive doesn't want to do, and other times it works out badly, when an Executive needs to do something but the legislative law prohibits or restricts that thing from being done.
To put it into human terms, it's like if you have a $100,000/year salary, but you are not allowed to spend more than $10,000/year on rent. You're probably not going to be very happy with that kind of income but being limited to a residence that costs $833/month or less.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Because they didn't have enough money to test the cars properly in 2002...
Implicit collusion. They're likely all cheating, on something. So if they report VW, VW reports w/e they're cheating on. So no one tattles.
Exactly. Mod parent up.
Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't goin' away. - Elvis Presley (source: imdb.com)
That's the essence of the Republican "shrink [government] down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub" strategy.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
It can get even more complicated. Consider that there are always static costs - it takes a certain amount of money to just keep the lights on, the management staff paid and kept in offices, etc...
In short, if you cut a department's budget by 20%, without implementing additional measures to control FWA and/or otherwise reduce expenses, you should expect to see more than a 20% drop in performance.
To be fair, the 2010 budget was higher because of specific requests that year for the clean water state revolving fund, drinking water state revolving fund, and the great lakes restoration initiative). Comparing against that year is not apples-to-apples, since that wasn't supposed to set a new baseline.
On average, the budget has increased over the years. Picking those two as comparisons is great for a headline, though!
Nixon was very much conservative. However the definitions change over time. The meanings today are almost the reverse of what they were a century ago. Reagan would not be considered conservative enough by today's Tea Party for example.
Nixon was also very practical. And being practical is anathema to idealogues who think that compromising is traitorous. Lowering the voting age should not have been a conservative vs liberal issue, it's just plain fair and practical to extend voting age to those we were drafting to fight and die for us. Negotiating with China may not have been the Goldwater approach, but to accuse Nixon of being pro-communist is ridiculous, the negotiation was practical and good for the country and the president's FIRST job is to govern. He created the EPA but the environment at that time was an utter shambles and the EPA was needed. Some of the most conservative people I know are very staunch environmentalists, though they'd never use that word - they hate garbage on the side of the road, they don't want pollution runoff onto their lands, the love national parks, and to use a Christian idea they want to be good stewards of the land. Back when Nixon was president, the environment was not a conversative vs liberal litmus test like it is today. Ballistic missile treaties is about wanting peace and safety, and any good liberal or conservative should want those.
Remember, Nixon helped to get the segregationist southern Democrats to switch ranks and become Republicans, which caused a strongly conservative change of direction in the party. Nixon was the ultimate authoritarian figure to the younger free speech movement and anti Vietnam war protesters, more so than any of the Democratic leadership. Nixon was for the New Federalism to give more power to local governments, an idea embraced by conservatives.
It will however be impossible to convince some people of that, especially those who think John Boehner was not conservative and secretly a democrat in disguise. Those people are a hopeless cause because they'd rather rant than think.