Sen. Carl Levin is expressing frustration with President Obama’s order to the EPA to reconsider California’s request to be allowed to set stricter mileage and emissions standards than required by the EPA under the Clean Air Act.
 

“In recent meetings with the new EPA director and the new chairman of the Council on Environmental Quality, I was personally assured that the EPA review does not begin with a foregone conclusion, and that the review will be thorough and objective. I sure hope that is true, because a separate California standard will not only create the ‘confusing and patchwork set of standards’ that President Obama today implied he wanted to avoid, but also, as the California standard is currently drafted, it is discriminatory against U.S.-made vehicles of the same efficiency as the imports.”

This issue is a difficult one for Democrats as it pits the goals of two of its traditional constituencies, environmentalists and auto unions, against one another.