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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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
There is this concept of inflation. It works for the universe and pretty much everything else except, apparently, intelligence.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
VW is a shining (well, maybe not shining) example of what happens when you allow industry to self-regulate.
Exactly. The cumulative rate of inflation between 2002 and 2015 was about 32%. Kind of hard to get the same value out of the 2002 level budget when everything costs 32% more.
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!
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.
So you're saying the 2002 budget should cover the 2015 expenses because... productivity? The EPA isn't running out to walmart to buy a bunch of mass market testing equipment. Their work requires highly specialized training and equipment, productivity doesn't significantly enter into it. Their methodology has to change year to year to match regulations and changes in technology. I don't know how strongly their expenses track the CPI but facility, utility, salary, transportation and training costs are all affected by the inflation rate. The idea that they should be able to provide services at the same cost over a 13 year period without a budget increase is ludicrous.
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
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.
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.