Waxman blocks climate czar investigation

House Energy & Commerce Committee chairman Henry Waxman (D-Hollywood) has outsmarted House Republicans yet again.

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As we reported last week, House Republicans accused Obama climate czar Carol Browner of deliberately violating the Presidential Records Act by ordering a shroud of secrecy around the development of Obama's CAFE standards and the EPA's CO2 endangerment finding. To satisfy Republican demands for an investigation into Browner's activities,  Carbon Control News reports that Waxman...

...is pledging to "monitor" and potentially hold hearings on the decision-making process behind EPA's proposed finding that carbon dioxide endangers public health...

Carbon Control News also reported that,

Democrats...may be willing to investigate the issue given their own interest in obtaining Bush-era EPA documents...

So chalk up another victory for the wily Waxman over dim-witted congressional Republicans. Waxman has protected Carol Browner while giving up nothing except vague promises. And if Waxman is somehow forced into investigating the Obama-Browner endangerment finding, he'll drag the Bush administration into the investigation -- something he's wanted to do for years and something he knows House Republicans wouldn't want to happen. Carol Browner, an acknowledged socialist, also continues her streak of Republican-trouncing. She single-handedly defeated congressional Republican efforts at regulatory reform in 1995, thumbed her nose at the Republican-controlled Congress in issuing the infamous junk science-fueled 1997 air quality standards and, now in 2009, has twice dodged congressional scrutiny of her White House activities -- earlier this year,  she also ducked congressional confirmation hearings. Waxman, Browner and the Democrats play to win -- and win they do. I'm not sure why the Charlie Brown-like congressional Republicans play at all.