On March 19, in a major economic policy address, Mitt Romney painted a portrait of a real-life "victim" of the Obama Administration’s supposed overregulation:
This administration’s burdensome regulations are even invading the freedom of everyday Americans. Mike and Chantell Sackett run a small business in Idaho. They saved enough money to buy a piece of property and build a modest home on it. But days after they broke ground, an EPA regulator told them to stop digging. The EPA said they were building on a wetland. But the Sacketts’ property isn’t on the wetlands register. It sits in a residential area.
Nevertheless, the EPA wouldn’t let them appeal the decision. It told the Sacketts they weren’t allowed to go to court. An unelected government bureaucrat robbed them of their freedom.
They were given no recourse, no remedy. They could do what the EPA wanted, or they could risk millions of dollars in fines.
The New York Times report that afternoon on the speech, by Ashley Parker, noted some important information that the Romney camp either missed or ignored:
However, Mr. Romney did not mention that the Sacketts encountered their run-in with the EPA under President George W. Bush’s administration, not under Mr. Obama.
A spokeswoman for Mr. Romney’s campaign did not respond to questions about the discrepancy.
Oops!
Apart from the convenient fact-mangling, there’s also the question of whether EPA had, in fact, actually wronged the Sacketts, but I’m not going to get into that here (see our coverage of the case, by Nina Mendelson, Holly Doremus, and Joel Mintz, and analyses post-decision by Mendelson and Mintz; see also the documents NRDC obtained via FOIA shedding light on the plaintiffs’ story).
You might guess that after the New York Times piece, we wouldn’t be hearing this anecdote from candidate Romney anymore. Why bother repeating a false story when there are so many other victims out there? Why not just tell the tale of someone else that the Obama Administration has wronged by regulatory overreach?
But then here was Romney speaking to the NRA on Friday:
Mike and Chantell Sackett have seen firsthand how the Obama government interferes with personal freedom. They run a small business in Idaho. They saved enough money to buy a piece of property and build a home. But days after they broke ground, an EPA regulator told them to stop digging. The EPA said they were building on a wetland. But the Sackett’s property isn’t on the wetlands register. It sits in a residential area. Nevertheless, the EPA wouldn’t even let them appeal the decision. Fortunately, the Constitution confronted the Obama administration: the Supreme Court ruled unanimously for the Sacketts and against the Obama EPA.
Wait, really?
Factcheck.org picked up on the issue Tuesday, saying:
We’re not offering any judgments about the proper reach of wetlands regulations, or what EPA did in this case. But this wasn’t solely an “Obama EPA” battle, as Romney said. It was an enforcement action initiated by the EPA under the Bush administration, and a legal dispute over a ruling made by a Republican-appointed federal judge during the Bush administration. Moreover, it was a ruling that had been reached at least four times by other federal courts over the last two decades.
Care to try a different example, Mr. Romney?
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Ben Somberg | April 19, 2012
On March 19, in a major economic policy address, Mitt Romney painted a portrait of a real-life “victim” of the Obama Administration’s supposed overregulation: This administration’s burdensome regulations are even invading the freedom of everyday Americans. Mike and Chantell Sackett run a small business in Idaho. They saved enough money to buy a piece of […]
Aimee Simpson | April 18, 2012
CPR Member Scholar Noah Sachs and I submitted comments yesterday to FDA regarding the American Chemistry Council’s (ACC) petition to the agency on BPA. In September, the ACC petitioned FDA to remove approval for the use of BPA in “infant feeding bottles and certain spill-proof cups” (Rena Steinzor and I explained at the time the […]
Joel A. Mintz | April 12, 2012
Last week, members of the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) union at EPA released an internal Agency memo describing the Agency’s proposed plan to cut back on specific areas of enforcement in response to looming budget cuts in FY 2013. The memo, by Larry Starfield, EPA’s Deputy Assistant Administrator in the Office of Enforcement […]
| April 11, 2012
a(broad) perspective Today’s post is second in a series on a recent CPR white paper, Reclaiming Global Environmental Leadership: Why the United States Should Ratify Ten Pending Environmental Treaties. Each month, this series will discuss one of these ten treaties. Previous posts are here. Annex VI on Liability Arising from Environmental Emergencies to the Protocol […]
Matthew Freeman | April 9, 2012
One of the many ways that the slow and agonizing contraction of the newspaper industry is felt is in the depth of coverage that papers provide their readers. It’s a matter of simple math, really. As newsrooms shrink, reporters are stretched ever thinner. So a newspaper that 15 years ago had separate reporters covering elementary […]
Rena Steinzor | April 6, 2012
The White House’s Cass Sunstein has found another poster child for his crusade to eliminate costly regulation under President Obama’s Executive Order 13563. The order requires agencies and departments to “look back” at existing requirements in order to kill unnecessary health, safety, and environmental requirements. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), complying dutifully with the […]
Thomas McGarity | April 5, 2012
Congress usually enacts new public protections following a major crisis or series of crises that focus attention on the failure of existing laws to protect the public or the environment from abuses by companies pursuing economic gain. Most of the protective regulatory programs of the Progressive Era, the New Deal, and the Public Interest Era […]
Aimee Simpson | April 4, 2012
Last Friday, the FDA denied the Natural Resources Defense Council’s (NRDC) citizen petition requesting that the agency ban Bisphenol A (BPA) as an approved food additive and food contact substance. The agency took nearly three years to issue this decision, and did so only under a court’s order. The FDA’s denial of the petition was […]
Ben Somberg | April 2, 2012
When the United States signed NAFTA, it also signed the North American Agreement on Environmental Cooperation (NAAEC), which allows, among other things, for citizens to submit complaints to the Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC) with claims that their own governments are failing to enforce environmental laws. That key provision is in danger, a group of […]