Huff Post: Latest Sell-Out: Dems Moving to Gut Chemical Security Bill, Risking 100 Million Lives

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/art-levine/latest-sell-out-dems-movi_b_217793.html

Art Levine

Contributing editor of The Washington Monthly
Posted: June 19, 2009 05:32 AM

Democratic members of the Homeland Security Committee are moving to gut a key chemical security bill today that's been attacked by Republicans and the chemical industry for purportedly costing jobs and profits. That legislative retreat worries environmental advocates and concerned Hill staffers outside the committee, as committee Democrats have apparently been cutting their deals with their industry-backed Republican colleagues while freezing out unions and environmental groups from negotiations.

It's an all-too-familiar tale of selling out the Democrats' strongest supporters, including unions, similar to the the way some Democrats this year have waffled or caved on everything from closing Guantanamo to the Employee Free Choice Act to today's back-pedaling by centrists on health-care.

If House Democrats accept the chemical industry-favored exemptions to the new bill, Rick Hind, Greenpeace's toxic expert and legislative director, says, "You could very well have lots of facilities that would be able to be exempt -- and represent Bhopal-magnitude catastrophes," a reference to the chemical disaster in India in 1984 that killed up to 10,000 people within 72 hours. Today's potential disasters could even be worse than Bhopal, environmentalists say, if current laws remain in force.


It now seems that some Democrats have apparently been cowed by intensive industry lobbying and Republican legislators' talking-points at recent hearings denouncing the new bill as a jobs-killer; these pro-industry opponents of tough oversight have also supported the current (weak) industry-written regulations and an interim law. They're also calling for making permanent that toothless legislation essentially written by the chemical industry in late 2006.

(The secret deal-making underway now is eerily similar to events in 2006: I described the industry's crafty undermining of an earlier strong bill, and the role of then-DHS counsel Philip Perry in flacking for industry, in "Dick Cheney's Dangerous Son-in-Law" for The Washington Monthly. )


As a result of the weakness of the current interim law supported by the chemical industry, Greenpeace and Congressional reformers say, "According to the EPA, there are about 100 chemical plants in the U.S. that each threaten a million or more people. Homeland Security has identified 7,000 U.S. chemical plants as 'high risk.' Currently, legislation is pending in Congress that would protect Americans by requiring more widespread use of safer chemicals or processes by chemical plants."

FULL story at link.

[Triana]

1. And just WHO are these "Democrats"

We need a running list of "Democrats" on DU - who keep supporting REPUBLICAN polices - so we can get rid of their sorry asses.

[Omaha Steve]

2. Kick