Browner, Barrasso spar over green influence in 2012

President Obama’s former climate czar and a top GOP critic of the White House green agenda locked horns Wednesday over whether Republican efforts to block environmental regulations will boost the party politically in 2012.

Carol Browner, the energy and climate aide who left the White House this year, bashed Republican spending legislation currently on the House floor that would limit federal rules on air pollution, mountaintop mining and other matters.

She called it a political loser for Republicans that harkens back to the House GOP’s aggressive agenda when the party took over in 1995, and accused Republicans of trying to “hide” their agenda through policy riders attached to spending bills.

“I’ve seen this movie before,” said Browner, who headed the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) at the time, speaking at an energy forum hosted by Politico.

“You know what the American people said? They said, ‘Hold on a second, we want an environmental cop on the beat, we want clean air, we want clean water.’ I don’t think you are going to see some sort of change in what the American people want in this election,” Browner said.

She noted that Republicans, including some GOP White House contenders, “have been out there saying, ‘You have got to get rid of EPA, you have got to constrain EPA.’

“This is a good issue for the president, because Americans are not going to go to the polls and vote for dirty air and dirty water,” said Browner, now a senior fellow at the liberal Center for American Progress and a senior counselor at the Albright Stonebridge Group.

But Sen. John Barrasso (Wyo.), a member of the Senate GOP leadership team, said efforts to thwart the EPA will be politically helpful next year.

“The Environmental Protection Agency to me is fixated — fixated on removing any minutely small environmental potential risk, no matter how high the expense to the country in terms of a debt of $14 trillion and 9.2 percent of Americans who can’t find an employer,” Barrasso said, speaking at the same event.

“I’ll tell you, the president loses this one,” Barrasso added.

Countered Browner: “We don’t have to choose, we can have both. They are linked — a strong economy helps a clean environment; a clean environment drives us toward a strong economy.”