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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.
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.
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.
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.
CUT TAXES! CUT TAXES!
No, see, really. See. If you cut taxes, you know, step 3, profit!
Every time I've been exposed to the operational aspects of a government agency (and, unfortunately, most large non-profits and even some large corporations) I see things being done in a way that costs around five times as much as we would do it in small- to mid-scale private industry, and even at that expense level the quality of work is outright appalling. When you start working with the management of these organizations, they simply don't care about setting appropriate standards for what they can achieve on a certain budget and then squeezing things to make do with what they have. Quite the contrary, their incentives are structured around having as much budget as possible. So bloat is everywhere, and the response to any additional "needs" is to demand more money. This is an endless cycle - giving them more money will never achieve their goals, because that would harm management's careers.
Privatizing these functions is its own can of worms - it's often far cheaper (see: SpaceX vs. NASA), but still a long way away from excellent, and rife with corruption and politics (see: Military-Industrial Complex, Prison-Industrail Complex, etc).
If I really wanted to have the EPA catch these things the best method I can think of would be to offer bounties paid on caught cheaters. This creates incentives to check everything everywhere, and retains the incentives to maximize efficiency.
Help save the critically endangered Blue Iguana
Because they didn't have enough money to test the cars properly in 2002...
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.
I don't read AC A human right
To be fair, the EPA has been very busy cleaning up rivers in Colorado.
No, it wouldn't the first time. Nor the first hundredth time. This is one of Congress's favorite tricks. Can't get rid of an agency outright? Papercut it to death.
NASA, EPA, NRC and pretty much anything that doesn't blow things up or walk around in the dark....
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
VW was not given a free pass by any means. VW cheated. Even with a larger budget you might not have caught this.
VW is a shining (well, maybe not shining) example of what happens when you allow industry to self-regulate.
It wasn't an inflation adjusted basis since 2002. The EPA has a smaller budget than in 2002 as they are DISCOUNTING (not even counting) inflation. If it was to be actually equal to the 2002 budget it would need to raise by ~1.02^13 (29%). If the budget hadn't been cut in 2010, then the EPA's budget would actually be on par with the 2002 figures.
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
and where are "private independent companies" going to get their funding? You do realize that the "free market" doesn't just print more money, right?
Its really strange that you go from "don't bash the EPA for congress not funding them" to "EPA has proved that they are useless" with an even more extraneous "yet again" (as you don't mention any previous EPA failures).
I'm just trying to understand your jump from facts to fiction.
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!
But this is the kind of thing where someone in Congress will stand up and say "This is why we need to get rid of the EPA."
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
The extreme right wants to prove that any government regulations are wasteful and ineffectual. To make certain that all programs fail they insist on severely under funding the programs at which point they do become wasteful and ineffectual. There followers are so stupid that they can't even see what is actually going on.
Never mind that the legislation for the EPA was created by "congresscritters making the laws and rules" and signed by America's greatest environmentalist, President Richard Nixon.
Right, especially since we just found out that Coca-Cola has been found to be paying the Nutionists Association to look the other way on sugary drinks.
Yea, he had you with the "don't bash" bit. Then he took the mask off.
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
I'm thinking "neo-con antics" might suffice.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Yes, all libertarians I know love lawsuits, and truly believe this country would be better off with fewer clearly defined rules, and more lawsuits.
Hold on, my sarcasm meter just broke down.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Who signs off on the budget?
The 535 members of Congress who voted for or against the 12 appropriation bills that make up the budget before sending it to the president for his signatures. AFAIK, the House Republicans haven't written a single appropriation bill that was due at the end of the fiscal year two days ago. This is why the Congress voted on a Continuing Resolution to maintain government funding at existing levels and the president signed to keep the government open until mid-December. If blaming Obama makes you feel good, by all means blame Obama.
you're commenting under a story in which the EPA is underfunded and as a result is unable to do it's job, and so a corporation got away with polluting on a massive scale
and your response is: disband them, and only *clean up* messes, instead of *prevent* them
seriously? you're not trolling or making a sarcastic joke?
profoundly, amazingly stupid
i always wondered at the source of this form of idiocy: "government isn't doing it's job, so destroy it" rather than gee, i dunno, fix the fucking problem preventing them from doing their fucking job?
because if no one does the job government is supposed to do, the world will be better? how does that work? no need to regulate markets. no need to prevent pollution, no need to police the food or drug supply? because as history clearly shows, nevermind current fucking events like bp oil spill, this volkswagen story, the peanut salmonella case x1,000,000 other examples: when corporations can get away with crime, *they do*
why are there so many morons like you in this world who see government as the problem, and not the corporations doing all the actual, criminal wrong?
look at the comments under this story
1. industry cheated na dpolluted
2. government is underfunded so it fucked up
and what do we have... criticisms of govt, no criticisms of industry, and calls to disband the very agency tasked with policing the scumbags in industry fucking up
how... the... fuck
"corporation {xyz} did horrible thing dumping pollution... but that's not the problem, the epa screwed up the clean up, that's the real problem!"
really?
seriously, how can people be so fucking stupid on this point?
how can this incredible blindness about the repeated malfeasance and ineptitude in business escape your attention or derision, but only government, which you fucking need to prevent and control and punish these corporate assholes, is always the culprit?
this guy:
https://www.washingtonpost.com...
he's real
he exists. he'll poison your children, he'll kill you, he'll render vast areas uninhabitable. all to make $10 more
time and time and time again throughout history, there's millions of examples of this
but no, he's not the problem: government screwed up the investigation, the cleanup, the prevention. therefore, let's focus all our rage there and ignore the criminals out there screwing up your lives and your communities
WTF?
why are you morons and assholes so blind to this?
you rage at government and give industry a pass: why???
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Cut the budget to zero and we can all be free of government organizations ran but unelected bureaucrats interfering with the noble purpose of free enterprise. *cough,cough*.
Cough, cough is right.
Except the current congress is very much pro-pollution. Having independent agencies can be a good thing as you don't get politicians mucking with them.
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.
That seems to be a large goal of some far right conservatives - utterly destroy all government. Neo-anarchists. They think local government will work better, but then they revoke local rights if the state government ends up being more conservative than the locals. They're stuck in a fantasy world where everything can go back to the good old days as long as the government stops doing stuff to screw it up. We can be the 50s nuclear family and watch Father Knows Best forever and ever, the kids never grow up and leave, the lawn never turns brown, and the wife never gets old.
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.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
"totalitarian statist"
it's like talking to social retards who think socialism is the same as gulags and toilet paper lines communism
even though actual socialist countries: canada, denmark, norway, etc., are richer, healthier, happier, and *freer* than the usa: no financial parasites funneling money out of their society via cozy relationships paid for by corrupt elections, for nothing in return, because regulating corporations and plutocrats is "against freedom". aw, those poor abused corporations and rich people
you think in a simpleton's moronic binaries, when the truth is a range of thousands of government types exist. a democracy being one of the better forms
but the act of me accepting government exists and must be worked with, becomes exactly like being a complete authoritarian dictator, in your mind. because your mind can only understand complete anarchy or complete subjugation. because you're a moron. objectively, as demonstrated in the quality of your comments. any intelligent commentary on this concept lies in between anarchy or totalitariansm, government where only necessary, such as with corporations who pollute when not policed, as demonstrated by the fucking subject you are commenting under
stop talking about what you don't understand
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
No, we've had generations and generations who've been taught to believe that profit is the only virtue and it's your land so you can do whatever you want. Maybe it's time to realize that there may be things other than economic growth to consider when deciding what to do with land. Sure, you maximize profits by strip mining an entire mountain but it's also probably that it is more beneficial for everyone as a whole, now and in the future, to leave the mountain standing.
The EPA didn't just start as a hippie liberal idea. Many conservatives were pissed off at other people polluting their land, air, and water, and harming their families, crops, and livestock. Conservatives also enjoy seeing wildlife and visiting parks and monuments. It was later that the environment was rebranded as a liberal concept, and in two-party America where every issue must be phrased as a battle between us and them.
rather than fix the problems, burn the whole thing down and replace it with something that is exactly the same but with the tiny problems fixed
ok, got it retard
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it