President Obama's newest effort to address climate change mainly calls for plotting strategies, but that didn't stop Republicans from attacking it as an escalation of regulatory actions aimed at bypassing Congress.
"The president continues to go around Congress because he knows the American people don't support his climate-change policies that threaten economic growth and jobs," Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., told National Journal Daily on Monday. "This new executive order will fulfill the president's extreme goal of ingraining climate change into the mission of every federal agency. By putting this in place, it's clear that this administration wants every decision to be done through the lens of climate change."
The chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Energy and Power Subcommittee, Rep. Ed Whitfield, R-Ky., similarly derided the administration for failing to engage members of Congress in implementing the president's second-term climate-change agenda.
"Not surprisingly, the Obama administration continues to be less than transparent on its government-wide actions on climate change," Whitfield said. "This is another example of the pattern of conduct by the Obama administration where — when they do not get their own way — they simply choose to bypass Congress and the democratic process through their ongoing use of executive orders."
