Monday, August 3, 2015

OBAMA COLLUDES WITH EPA TO RUIN AMERICA - SUPPORT REINS ACT!!!

Conservatives,
It might be the only promise Obama has kept – when he said he would make your electricity bill “necessarily skyrocket.”1  He didn’t care that Congress rejected his cap-and-trade plan, or that dozens of Democrats who voted for it were defeated by the voters.  Now, the EPA has just released the final so-called “Clean Power Plan” to coerce the states into implementing caps on greenhouse gas emissions – and it’s even more draconian than expected.2  It’s a scheme Obama’s own constitutional law professor, ultraliberal Laurence Tribe of Harvard even called “burning the Constitution.”3  And it’s a disaster.

Last week, we celebrated House passage of the REINS Act, which would bar agencies like the EPA from adopting rules like this one without the approval of Congress.  President Obama promised to veto it, because he enjoys abusing federal agencies and his infamous pen and phone to thwart the will of the American people.  Today’s EPA rule is one of the most outrageous examples, and Congress simply must use all of the tools it has to fight back.  Oversight. The Congressional Review Act.  Appropriations.  They must fight and win because the stakes are too high not to.
This 1,560 page monstrosity4 released by the EPA will deal a final blow to the coal industry, which in the past three years has seen the value of its largest companies crushed from $25 billion to just $1 billion.5  That’s 96% of the wealth of a vital American industry already wiped out.  But it’s more than that, because it also means sharply higher electric bills, sharply higher natural gas bills (because so much more of it will be used in the power sector to replace coal), and economy-wide job losses as these higher costs ripple.
It is highly likely that this new regulation is illegal, and will eventually be struck down in court.  But if states comply in the meantime, all of the damage will already be done.  In June, the Supreme Court caught the EPA failing to even consider billions of dollars in costs, and struck down another expensive anti-coal rule.  The EPA’s response was a smug press release saying the illegal rule had already accomplished its purpose: “investments have been made and most plants are already well on their way to compliance.”6
Now the stakes are much higher, and we simply must spur Congress to act.
Thank you for your continued support,
Phil Kerpen
SOURCES:
2. Colleen McCain Nelson & Amy Harder, "EPA Emissions Rule to Mandate Limits Beyond Proposed Targets," The Wall Street Journal, August 2nd, 2015.
3. Laurence H. Tribe, Testimony before the House Committee on Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Energy and Power, "EPA's Proposed 111(d) Rule for Existing Power Plants: Legal and Cost Issues," March 17, 2015.
5. John W. Miller & Dan Frosch, "Coal Miners Pressed on Cleanup Costs," The Wall Street Journal, July 17th, 2015.
6. Timothy Cama & Lydia Wheeler, "Supreme Court overturns landmark EPA air pollution rule," TheHill.com, June 29th, 2015.
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