[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 159 (2013), Part 5]
[House]
[Pages 6924-6925]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                         POLITICAL BIAS AT EPA

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Kentucky (Mr. Whitfield) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. WHITFIELD. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to express in the very 
strongest terms possible my disapproval of a pattern of conduct of the 
Obama administration that is of great concern to all of us, a pattern 
of conduct in which this administration rewards its friends and 
punishes its opponents.
  Now, when our Founding Fathers wrote the Constitution many years ago, 
there were some basic principles in that Constitution. One was equal 
protection under the law, and the other was protection from 
discriminatory practices. Well, we all know about the IRS being accused 
of going after groups that they disapprove of.
  Today and late yesterday afternoon, two more incidents arose that 
show that this administration is about punishing their opponents and 
taking care of their friends. The first incident revolves around the 
Environmental Protection Agency. There is a system in the Federal 
Government called the Freedom of Information Act in which individuals, 
groups, and other entities can request of the Federal Government to 
obtain information about regulations, things that the Federal 
Government is doing; and if the group asks for

[[Page 6925]]

a waiver of fees to obtain that information, they can obtain the 
information free.
  Well, because of a lawsuit filed by the Competitive Enterprise 
Institute, we now find out that EPA routinely grants fee waivers to its 
favored left-wing groups who demand a more intrusive and powerful EPA, 
but systematically deny waivers for free information from any group 
that EPA disagrees with. In fact, the headline says that EPA gives 
information for free to groups it agrees with 92 percent of the time, 
but it denies fee waivers for groups that it disagrees with 93 percent 
of the time. We cannot afford a government that systematically goes 
against groups that it opposes and yet rewards groups that it favors.
  I want to give you another example that came about yesterday. More 
than 573,000 birds are killed by the country's wind farms each year, 
including 83,000 hunting birds such as hawks, falcons, and eagles. Now, 
nearly all the birds being killed are protected under the Federal 
environmental laws which prosecutors have used to generate tens of 
millions of dollars of fines and settlements from businesses, including 
oil and gas companies and electricity generators over the past 5 years. 
As a matter of fact, BP oil company was fined $100 million for killing 
and harming migratory birds during the 2010 gulf oil spill. And 
PacifiCorp, which operates coal plants in Wyoming, paid more than $10.5 
million in 2009 for electrocuting a number of eagles along power lines 
in its substations.
  Yet this administration has never fined or prosecuted a wind energy 
company, even those that flout the law repeatedly. Instead, the 
government is shielding the industry from liability and helping to keep 
the scope of the deaths secret.
  So there is clearly a double standard in this administration. If you 
kill an eagle and you happen to be a private business or you are a 
power generator or you're an oil company or a chemical company, you're 
going to be fined. But if you're a wind energy company, even though the 
bird you killed may be protected under the Endangered Species Act, 
you're going to be protected. America will not stand for a government 
that rewards its friends and punishes its opponents in this 
discriminatory fashion.

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