Anti-Regulation Cheney Aide is Front Runner for Energy Dept. PostF. Chase Hutto III, a senior aide to Vice President Dick Cheney with a long history of promoting anti-environmental regulation policy, is a top choice for a post at the Energy Department, the Washington Post reports today.
Hutto, who is being considered for the position of assistant secretary for policy and international affairs, has been a contact within the administration for the oil and gas industry on energy and environmental issues.
The administration’s controversial decision to delay action on regulating greenhouse gas emissions was shaped in part by Hutto.
From a July 11 article in the Washington Post:
Hutto, a former Cato Institute intern and Bush campaign volunteer during the Florida vote recount in 2000, whose grandfather patented at least seven piston inventions for the Ford Motor Company, has “an anti-regulatory philosophy and concern about what regulation means for the American way of life. He would talk, for example, about not wanting greenhouse gas controls to do away with the large American automobile,” said the meeting participant.