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Public Citizen Claims Cheney Engineered Mileage Standards

Email records show Cheney's influence, group charges

By Joe Benton
ConsumerAffairs.com

September 9, 2007

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A proposed overhaul of fuel economy standards was created not by the federal agency in charge of regulating fuel economy, but instead by Vice President Dick Cheney's office and White House operatives, according to the advocacy group Public Citizen.

Public Citizen, which sued to block the standards, said it based its claims on data gathered through a Freedom of Information Act request showing Cheney's staff members attending at least 45 meetings on fuel economy standards between 2001 and 2003.

Public Citizen claims that the Bush administration devised the 2006 change in fuel economy standards for trucks that eased requirements on automakers with little or no input from federal auto industry and safety regulators.

"The scheme is sheer folly," said Robert Shull, Public Citizen's deputy director for auto safety and regulatory policy, who co-authored the report. "The Cheney scale is the last thing we need, especially given that tough CAFE standards would be such a smart solution to move us away from our dangerous addiction to foreign oil."

The “National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has claimed that its officials came up with the sliding scale. But e-mail records and calendar entries obtained by Public Citizen show significant influence on the development of the sliding scale by senior administration officials, including staff from the Office of the Vice President,” the report said.

"Dick Cheney has used his unprecedented power to interfere in many policies, especially environmental and energy policies, to the public's detriment," said Joan Claybrook, president of Public Citizen. Claybrook was administrator of NHTSA from 1977 to 1981 and set the first-ever Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards.

"The Cheney sliding scale is bad news for consumers," Claybrook added. "It definitely fits Cheney's pattern of using behind-the-scenes influence to gut environmental measures."

The standards published in 2006 changed the way regulators calculate how an automaker meets a fuel economy rule. While the old system averaged the fuel economy of all the vehicles an automaker sold, the new version sets a standard that varies based on a vehicle's size.

There was no immediate response from the White House.

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