Whitman's Last Controversy - Are Seniors Worth 3/5ths of a Person?

WashingtonPost.com -- The acrimony that developed at meetings in Tampa, Pittsburgh, Iowa City, San Antonio and Los Angeles prompted EPA Administrator Christine Todd Whitman to cut her losses when she took the podium in Baltimore. Before any seniors could upbraid the agency again, Whitman said the EPA would no longer use the analysis that attaches less value to lives of senior citizens when it does calculations to figure out the benefits of environmental rules.

Normally, the EPA uses $6.1 million as the value of life in all its calculations, regardless of age. The alternative approach first prominently used in a clean-air policy initiative early last year reduced that value to $3.7 million per life, and then $2.3 million for citizens over 70. Critics seized upon it as the "senior death discount."

"They [the Bush administration] use a number of techniques that result in the loss of value of all lives," said David Tuft, director of special projects for Breakthrough Technologies Institute, a nonprofit that promotes technology with environmental benefits. "The agenda is to weaken the justification for rules."