Browner, Barrasso spar over green influence in 2012

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.”