Biden Can’t Blame Congress for These Climate Failures
Newsletter 98: Executive actions can help save the planet
Thousands of people are protesting at the White House this week to demand Biden end the fossil fuel era. The “People vs. Fossil Fuels” actions align with a core idea — that we don’t have to wait for Congress to act, that Biden can be a climate president all on his own.
Climate Finance:
We wrote in the American Prospect about how, outside of rhetoric, Biden is failing to be the climate president we so desperately need. While the infrastructure and reconciliation fights rage within Congress, Biden is ignoring powers he has throughout the executive branch to take immediate climate action. Tools like directing his Army Corps of Engineers to revoke necessary permits for the illegal Line 3 pipeline and refuse permits to Line 5 and the Mountain Valley Pipeline, or directing his Interior Department to allow the IPCC’s recent “code red” report to influence its Environmental Impact Statements for oil and gas lease sales in the Gulf of Mexico. He should also declare a national climate emergency, require his Department of Justice to withdraw Trump-era fossil fuel defending legal briefings, and utilize the Defense Production Act to speed the transition away from fossil fuels.
Next Monday, we expect to see the Financial Stability Oversight Council’s long-awaited report on climate-related financial risk. If the report led by Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen is adequate, it will confront the realities of our fossil fuel economy presenting an enormous risk to the financial system. It should both make plans to protect the financial system from climate-related risks, and utilize the many available regulatory tools to stop driving the risks inherent to a fossil fuel economy.
Governance:
After unexpectedly finding itself in the public’s crosshairs early this summer, Merrick Garland’s Justice Department appears to have managed an escape. Some of that may be due to forces beyond Garland’s control; the seemingly never ending reconciliation fight, for example, has presented other worthy targets for the public’s ire. But the DOJ has also taken some recent steps that are worthy of genuine praise. Its actions to oppose the Texas abortion ban come to mind, as do its recent moves towards withholding grants from local law enforcement agencies that are found to be discriminatory.
Those genuinely positive developments notwithstanding, however, many of the problems that we spent the summer highlighting remain. Namely, Merrick Garland’s DOJ continues to defend aspects of Trump’s legacy and many of the anti-democratic stances that the Department advanced well before the start of the last administration. Just last week, DOJ attorneys argued before an appeals court that defrauded student borrowers could not depose former Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos for information related to her role in the Department’s “mishandling of thousands of student loans.” In the Senate Judiciary committee’s probe into President Trump’s effort to overturn the election, another DOJ attorney sharply limited the questions to which witnesses provided answers. More broadly, the DOJ has recently argued that “the public ha[s] no right of access under the First Amendment to secret decisions issued by” the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which decides on government surveillance requests.
This continued refusal to sufficiently challenge either Trumpian or departmental orthodoxy does not inspire optimism that Garland will rise to his biggest test on Trump accountability yet. Late last month, the House select committee on the January 6th attack issued subpoenas for testimony from Mark Meadows, Daniel Scavino, Kashyap Patel, and Stephen Bannon. Several have already indicated that they do not intend to appear as requested later this week. If they follow through and defy the subpoenas, several select committee members have already confirmed that they will send criminal referrals to the DOJ. At that point, it will be up to Garland whether the Department pursues them. Will he prove our skepticism wrong?
Independent Agencies:
When it comes to the ethics scandals at the Federal Reserve, we at Revolving Door Project are confident that the public still doesn’t know the half of it. As my colleague Max Moran explained in the American Prospect yesterday, the centralization of power in the hands of the Chair and one particular bureaucrat -- Powell’s chief of staff and the woman in charge of everything from public affairs to congressional relations, Michelle Smith -- has made the institution “ripe for ethical lapses and scandals.” Meanwhile, Smith’s tight control over access to the Chair and the hints at market-moving information for which outlets are so hungry, has made it more likely that the media misses or downplays these stories. That begs the question: what else might still be hidden?
Finding answers to that question will require an investigation that is removed from the Fed’s complex, hidden webs of power. As we speak, the Fed is attempting to paint an Inspector General’s investigation as just such an independent inquiry. As I explain in a recent blog, however, the Inspector General -- who is appointed by the Chair and can be fired by a two-thirds majority vote of the board -- can hardly be called “independent” in any meaningful sense of the word. His probe is no substitute for the genuinely independent DOJ, SEC, and congressional investigations that advocates like ourselves have demanded.
Want more? Check out some of the pieces that we have published or contributed research or thoughts to in the last week:
The Little-Known Power Brokers at the Federal Reserve
How Biden Can Take On the Climate Crisis by Himself
Is Brainard Responsible For The Fed's Oversight Failures? In A Word, No.
Chevron Firm Which Hounded Donziger Has Allies In The Biden Administration
Watchdogs Request Fed Leadership's Contacts With Ethics Office
Is the Federal Reserve's Inspector General Really Independent?
Fed Chair Jerome Powell Faces Reappointment Amid Tumult
Biden and big business: It's complicated
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