OMB director: News of opposition to EPA report ‘unfounded’

Suggestions that the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) was opposed to the findings of an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) report on greenhouse gases are “unfounded,” OMB’s director said late Tuesday.

An OMB memo leaked Tuesday had indicated that conclusions in the EPA report were based on potentially faulty evidence, and that regulations as a result of the report would likely harm the economy.

“Any reports suggesting that OMB was opposed to the finding are unfounded,” OMB Director Peter Orszag wrote in a blog on the White House’s website.

He said that the OMB’s report simply reflected a variety of other agencies’ opinions, and don’t necessarily reflect the views of the OMB.

“In other words, we simply receive comments from various agencies and pass them along to EPA for consideration, regardless of the substantive merit of those comments,” Orszag wrote. “In general, passing along these types of comments to an agency proposing a finding often helps to improve the quality of the notice.”

Orszag said his office wouldn’t have concluded its review of the EPA report if it were concerned about its consistency with the law or “underlying science.”