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
Phil Kerpen
SOURCES:
1. Barack Obama, "Under my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket," YouTube, January 2008.
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.
4. Environmental Protection Agency, 40 CFR Part 60, "Carbon Pollution Emission Guidelines for Existing Stationary Sources: Electric Utility Generating Units," August 3, 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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