WASHINGTON — Under grilling by a hostile Senate committee Thursday, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Stephen L. Johnson defended his decision to deny California permission to implement its own global-warming law, even as legislators launched an effort to force its reversal.
"I was not directed by anyone," Johnson said at a hearing before the environment and public works committee, denying he had been influenced by political pressure from the White House or anyone else. "This was solely my decision."
Johnson failed to mollify Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), the committee chairwoman and perhaps his fiercest critic, who vowed to press ahead with her investigation into how the EPA chief reached his decision. Within hours of his testimony, she introduced legislation -- co-sponsored by 17 senators, including Democratic presidential front-runners Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York and Barack Obama of Illinois -- to overturn the decision.
In his first Capitol appearance since denying California's request late last month, Johnson drew the ire of other Democratic senators whose states also want to enact greenhouse-gas-emission standards for new cars and trucks that are more stringent than the federal government's.
"Your agency's decision to deny California a waiver just defies logic to me," Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) told Johnson. "It's clearly a decision, I believe, that's based on politics and not on fact."
Boxer called Johnson's decision "unconscionable" and accused him of going against the advice of his legal and science advisors and siding instead with the auto industry, which has resisted California's efforts to implement its tailpipe law.
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'The right decision'
Johnson responded: "I am bound by the criteria in the Clean Air Act, not people's opinions. My job is to make the right decision, not the easy decision."
Johnson's only Senate defender at the hearing was James M. Inhofe of Oklahoma, the sole Republican in attendance and perhaps Congress' leading skeptic on global warming. Inhofe dismissed the proceedings as "theater."
Thursday's hearing was intended to help build support for a legislative effort to overturn the decision, but critics may stand a better chance in the courts than in Congress. California and 15 other states have sued the administration to overturn the decision; legislation is likely to face a presidential veto.
