Nearly two years after the Great Recession officially ended, unemployment still stands at a troubling 8.9 percent, economic growth remains sluggish, gas prices are high and rising, consumer sentiment is falling. And none of it is expected to get much better any time soon.
You'd think that in this context politicians — particularly those hoping to keep their jobs after 2012 — would be doing everything they can to kick away burdensome rules and regulations that would threaten growth and jobs. A good place to start would be blocking the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating greenhouse gas emissions.
By all accounts, letting EPA control emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases said to contribute to global warming would amount to, as Time magazine put it, "the most far-reaching environmental regulatory scheme in American history."
And, despite the pleadings of environmentalists, there's little question that these rules will push economic growth down and energy costs up.
The American Council for Capital Formation puts the cost of EPA's greenhouse gas rules at 46,000 to 1.4 million lost jobs and $25 billion to $75 billion in lost capital investment by 2014, along with a $500 billion reduction in GDP by 2030, all while boosting gasoline and electricity costs by 50%.
Which is no doubt why just about everyone — from Republicans to Democrats to EPA itself — is busy trying to delay the agency's greenhouse gas regulatory regime from getting started.
On March 1, EPA announced that it's putting off greenhouse gas reporting rules scheduled to kick in at the end of this month until later this summer. Earlier in the year, the agency said it would delay implementing greenhouse gas rules for biomass facilities for three years.
Democrats are worried, too. Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.V., is pushing a bill (S. 231) that would for two years block EPA from regulating greenhouse gases from power plants and other stationary sources.
A bill by Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., (S. 236) would exempt agriculture sources from EPA's greenhouse gas rules, and prevent the agency from regulating large stationary sources that don't exceed other pollution limits. Even trade unions are worried about the political and economic fallout of the agency's massive new regulatory push.
They all have good reason to worry. Voters are in no mood to back politicians who show little regard for their top concern — creating jobs. In fact, voters fired more than a dozen lawmakers in 2010 who'd backed the so-called "cap and trade" greenhouse gas bill.
Jobs and the economy are still top concerns — global warming barely registers in these polls—and given the low expectations for economic growth between now and Nov. 2012, that's almost certain to continue into the next election.
This should all be of particular concern to Democratic senators up for reelection that year — especially so for those from industrial and coal-heavy states, like Michigan's Debbie Stabenow, Pennsylvania's Robert Casey, and Nebraska's Ben Nelson — whose loss would turn control of the Senate over to Republicans.
On Tuesday, these Senators will have the opportunity to show that they truly have their priorities straight. That's when Sen. Mitch McConnell's "Energy Tax Limitation Amendment" comes up for a vote.
Unlike Rockefeller's and Baucus' unacceptable half measures, McConnell's amendment, based on a bill (S. 482) introduced by Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., would strip EPA of its authority under the Clean Air Act to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, and would also repeal several EPA rules and actions, including greenhouse gas emission reporting rules.
But while McConnell's amendment has a chance of passing the Senate, it currently doesn't have enough votes to sustain an expected presidential veto.
That needs to change. As Inhofe, McConnell, other Republicans and some Democrats rightly note, deciding when and how to limit greenhouse gases will affect virtually every corner of the nation's economy, and that's something best left to elected officials, not unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats.
(Although it has been said many times before, the Congress never intended the CAA to cover greenhouse gas emissions.)
In the end, blocking EPA's effort to vastly increase its regulatory empire will be both good politics and good policy. Hopefully, other lawmakers will realize this before it's too late.
— O'Keefe, chief executive officer of the George C. Marshall Institute, is president of Solutions Consulting Inc.
No comments:
Post a Comment