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.

Comments

Endlessly Increasing Budgets

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do we assume that all government agencies need an endlessly increasing budget to do their job? Why do we accept endlessly increasing government budgets? We have a kneejerk belief that money fixes everything, but it seems only to bring more corruption, entitlement and fewer freedoms.

More like "lack of clue" instead?

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

I bought a VW diesel in 2005, the last year of the "old" line. When VW came back with their "clean diesel" a little over a year later, it came with a huge advertising campaign, and, as posters have noted in other forums, other car manufacturers publicly and privately wondered "how did VW do a clean diesel" without seeming to have changed their technology.

>> Byron Bunker, director of the Environmental Protection Agency’s vehicle compliance program, says: “We can’t do a 100 percent check of every data point for every modelWe focus on new vehicles, new technologies or those where we have a concern.”

So...if that didn't raise a flag for "new vehicle or new technology" in the mid-2000's, one has to wonder what kind of dark place the EPA's head was in then.

Re:Hmm...

[__aaclcg7560]

It wouldn't be the first time that Congress told an agency to do something, provide no money and then complain that the agency wasn't doing the job. A fine example of that is U.S. soldiers using scrap metal to reinforce military vehicles against road bombs in the Iraq War. Took Congress awhile to pony up for that one.

Re:Hmm...

[Firethorn]

The question is, did they have enough money to fulfill their charter or did they just say screw it and do nothing because they didn't get what they asked for?

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.

Re:ooh, ooh, I know how to fix this problem

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

No you don't. 25% is the highest tax bracket you qualify. I am in 36.9% bracket. My effective tax rate including AMT is around 24%. Your effective federal tax rate is likely to be around 15% or less. You will end up paying more under many of the proposed flat tax proposals, 17% of ALL your income instead of 25% of the income in the top bracket. Newt Gingrich's effective rate was 29%, he was making 2 million a year. Mitt Romney's effective rate was 14%, he was making 22 million a year. Warren Buffet's effective rate was 15%. Same way you pay 8% after all the deductions and lower slabs to the state. There your effective tax rate is likely to be 5%.

Property taxes depends on property value, not income. Typically around 2% of the value of the property. Sales and gasoline taxes are around 8% of what you spend, not what you earn. Add ALL your taxes and divide by ALL your income, to get your effective tax rate. Most likely under 20%

You will be surprised by how much goods and services you get from the Government, direct and indirect for the low taxes you are paying.

Remember the onus is on the Government to protect ALL your property rights and all other rights too. If you were forced to protect your own property using your own dollars, you would find the taxes to municipality cheap for the policing you get. FBI chasing down all violent criminals everywhere is the reason why the crime is low in your neighborhood.

Of course you are not likely to be convinced your taxes are actually low, and you will benefit if tax rates are increased for incomes of the top 0.5% of the incomes. You will benefit a lot if capital gains rate is made equal to earned income rates. You need to have income over 1 million dollars a year to shuffle your income to rename it. You create shell companies owning shell companies and funnel the income through them and you can call your income anything you want, earned income, interest income, capital gains, dividend, qualified dividend, distribution etc etc. They can game the system. You can't.

But you will not worry about all these things. You will continue to claim in every forum that you pay 60% of your income. You will know it is a lie, but you will continue to say it. Probably because it allows you to entertain the fantasy that the high tax rates are the only reason you are in 25% tax bracket being subjected to the indignity of being schooled a liberal in 36.9% tax bracket on taxes.

but does that excuse VW and others from cheating?

[WindBourne]

Seriously, the neo-cons have been gutting EPA and any form of gov that they hate.
HOWEVER, that does not give VW, Audi, Mercedes, Samsung, etc license to cheat at will.

I prefer that we block these companies from selling in the states, but next up, would be fines so large that they can fund these groups.