OF WHITE HOUSE FURNITURE AND DIESEL SULFUR

Feb. 23, 2001
An industry group is trying to fix part of the mess former President Bill Clinton made on his way out of office.

An industry group is trying to fix part of the mess former President Bill Clinton made on his way out of office.

The US has not in modern memory experienced anything quite like Clinton's serial shamelessness, which infused policy-making while administration cheerleaders ignored dissent as mere blather of "Clinton haters."

More recently, His Impeached Eminency and the wife made off with White House furniture that had to be returned. He tried to get taxpayers to fund a luxurious office in Manhattan then retreated under pressure to more-modest quarters in Harlem.

He stirred up a client revolt at Morgan Stanley by charming an over-ambitious someone into agreeing to pay a six-figure speaking fee for what he used to do as part of the job.

And there are the pardons, the improprieties of which inspired Hamilton Jordan, an aide to former President Jimmy Carter, to write a Wall Street Journal article in which he described the Clintons as "the First Grifters."

Former supporters are appalled at the Clintonian grabbiness. Where were they when Clinton was trashing not only the presidency with consistent disregard for the rule of law but also national interest with regulatory abandon?

White House dignity wasn't the only thing kicked overboard in the twilight months of the just-past presidency.

In December, the out-of-control Environmental Protection Agency published a final rule cutting the allowable sulfur content of diesel fuel by 97%.

It didn't have to be 97%. In fact, the refining and other industries supported sulfur reduction-just not so much. The difference in environmental terms between what industry supported and what EPA proposed was inconsequential.

Yielding to the Clintonian urge to stretch legal tolerance, EPA regulated to the maximum extent possible anyway.

Now a group of industry associations not limited to oil and gas is challenging the rule.

"We believe that a revision of the rule is warranted," the group said in a letter to the new EPA administrator, "because of the likelihood that the rule in its current form will result in a shortage of highway diesel fuel."

The letter cites a Charles River Associates study estimating that EPA diesel-sulfur rule will a produce a 12% nationwide shortfall of the fuel and that EPA greatly underestimated the cost to consumers.

"We are concerned that here, as in the case of California's electricity market, policy-makers have taken energy supply for granted in an attempt to attain other policy objectives," says the letter to Christine Todd Whitman.

Indeed. Clinton administration policy-makers pandering to environmental extremists took energy supply for granted just as Clinton took presidential prerogative for granted.

The industry letter gives the new EPA administrator a chance to repair some of the energy-supply damage inflicted by her zealous predecessor's excess.

And it is beginning to look like public opinion might after all fill some of the voids Clinton left in whatever there is of a national conscience.