Committee Republicans Advance Anti-Science Legislation to Undermine EPA
(Washington, DC) – Today, the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology held a markup of H.R. 4012, the Secret Science Reform Act of 2014.
Ranking Member Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-TX) said in her opening statement, “This bill is an insidious attack on the EPA’s ability to use the best science to protect public health, and this markup is the culmination of one of the most anti-science and anti-health campaigns in the history of this esteemed Committee.”
She continued, “The genesis of this legislation is the Majority’s longstanding obsession with two seminal scientific studies conducted by Harvard University and the American Cancer Society which linked increasing air pollution with death and disease. The Majority has harassed the EPA for more than two years in an attempt to get access to the raw data used in those studies. Since those studies involved hundreds of thousands of human volunteers who submitted sensitive personal health information to the researchers, the raw data is stringently protected from public disclosure. The EPA explained this to the Chairman, but he nonetheless issued a subpoena to the EPA Administrator to turn over data that the EPA had no legal right to access and for which there are strict legal prohibitions against public disclosure. The Majority’s solution to this ‘problem’--a problem of their own creation-- is H.R. 4012.” View her opening statement in its entirety here.
Ranking Member of the Environment Subcommittee, Suzanne Bonamici (D-OR) said in her statement for the record, “The language of this bill creates unnecessary and prohibitive administrative burdens for EPA, prevents the agency from considering the best science available when constructing among other things air and water quality standards, and finally, it has the potential to impact scientific research due to concerns over patient confidentiality. My colleagues and I, along with much of the scientific community, are concerned that the bill before us today will undermine EPA’s ability to fulfill its missions to protect human health and the environment. It is worth having a real discussion about how we can improve transparency and public access across the federal government, but this punitive bill is not the way forward.”
Democratic Members of the Committee offered two amendments in an attempt to improve the bill. Both amendments failed by voice vote. View the amendments here.
Discussion during the markup was dominated by whether the data that the Republicans are seeking can be sufficiently de-identified. After the markup, Ms. Johnson said, “Like I pointed out last August when we first began this charade, Science magazine quoted C. Arden Pope of Brigham Young University, who is one of the original authors of the studies in question, stated, ‘It’s extremely hard to give a data set that will allow you to replicate the results in these studies that doesn’t include information that then allows you—with an Internet search of obituaries—to quickly figure out who the people were.’ In other words, you cannot replicate these studies with de-identified datasets. As written, H.R. 4012 ensures that EPA, and the American people, will not have the best science at work to protect the air they breathe or the water they drink. Perhaps the only transparent part of this bill is its intent – to stop EPA from taking any action to protect the health of the American people.”
Ms. Johnson introduced into the record a number of letters and statements opposing the bill including from the American Lung Association and the American Thoracic Society, the Union of Concerned Scientists, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Center for Progressive Reform, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Association for Justice, the Center for Effective Government, and a letter from several environmental groups, Clean Water Action, Earthjustice, Environment America, the Environmental Defense Fund, Friends of the Earth, the League of Conservation Voters, the Natural Resources Defense Council, and the Sierra Club. View the letters and statements here.
H.R. 4012 passed the Committee on a party-line recorded vote.
View documents related to the Committee’s subpoena to the EPA here.
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