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Barrasso: This Is Not Your parents' EPA

Speech to The American Action Forum


May 5, 2011


 

When talking about the changes in EPA policy over the past 40 years, there’s really only one sentence that comes to mind:

This is not your parents’ EPA.

Your parents’ EPA was focused on obvious problems with clear solutions. This EPA is focused on murky problems with unclear solutions. Your parents’ EPA practiced what it preached. This EPA says one thing and does another. Your parents’ EPA focused on rebuilding the environment. This EPA is focused on remaking society. Your parents’ EPA applied the law evenly. This EPA skirts the law. Your parents’ EPA knew how to learn from its mistakes. This EPA is repeating them.

Looking at this EPA, I’m reminded of William Ruckelshaus, the first Administrator of the EPA. There’s a connection between William Ruckelshaus and the University of Wyoming – we have the Ruckelshaus Institute. Well, despite starting as an idealist, Administrator Ruckelshaus said that activist EPA policy leads to failure. He warned against arrogance – especially when you think you have all the answers.

Administrator Ruckelshaus warned us to look before we leap. This EPA has ignored that warning.

They have pursued an agenda without knowing all the facts, and without caring if their assumptions are correct. Your parents’ EPA would never have allowed this to happen. They knew their work was too important.

When the EPA got started, environmental action was essential. Our country faced undeniable environmental disasters. The waters of Love Canal seethed with toxic waste. Industrial cities like Cleveland and Detroit choked in smog. Lake Erie caught fire, as the safety of its surrounding communities went up in smoke. Environmental disasters killed people and jobs with equal force.

Something absolutely had to be done. Facing these kinds of abuses was morally necessary.

So Congress passed laws. The Clean Air Act kept toxins out of the air we breathe. And the Clean Water Act kept them from our streams. EPA’s job – and primary focus – is enforcing necessary laws like this, and we trusted them to do it. We should be able to trust them to do it now. Your parents’ EPA understood their duty. They did their job.

This is not your parents’ EPA.

This EPA is distracted. This EPA has tried to regulate almost everything. It has made it so American businesses can do almost nothing. This EPA is fixated on eliminating every conceivable environmental risk – no matter how small or minor the risk and regardless of how expensive or pointless the solution.
A few years ago, people used to talk about some companies being too big to fail. This EPA is too big to succeed. Don’t take my word for it. It’s all there in the data.

Your parents’ EPA knew how to do a lot with a little. They cleaned up the rivers. They stopped the smog. They made the beaches, canals and lakes safe again. And they did it all on a budget of slightly more than $2 billion.

This EPA spends a lot more, and accomplishes a lot less. Since coming into office, President Obama’s average EPA budget has been roughly $4 billion more than under President Bush. The EPA budget for last year alone was $11 billion/ This year, the President decided to pay lip service to cutting spending, and budgeted just slightly less than $9 billion for the EPA. And he is requesting $10 billion for next year.

So how does the EPA spend this money? I’ll give you a recent example. This week, the EPA put out another item encouraging Americans to conserve energy. It was a little unusual. It’s actually a rap song – a rap song - about the benefits of public transportation and reducing carbon emissions. There must be more essential uses for taxpayer dollars than that.

On top of wasting money writing rap tunes, the EPA is producing policies where only small businesses take the rap. These regulations are making our economy worse.  A new study by the Phoenix Center shows that for every million dollars more that the government spends on regulation, an additional 420 jobs are lost.

Yet the EPA is uninterested in honestly assessing the economic impacts of its regulations. Following last fall’s election, the EPA issued new guidelines to its employees. Among the changes, it instructed those tasked with economic analysis to take factors like “social justice” into account. I don’t see how you can quantify something as abstract as “social justice.” How much does “social justice” cost?

When you look at the EPA’s regulatory regime, the numbers are much clearer. Since its inception, the EPA’s economically significant activity has been steadily increasing. And I use that term – “economically significant” – in a very specific way. While everything the EPA does affects the economy, only those regulations that cost our economy $100 million or more to enforce are considered “economically significant.”

Previous administrations were wise to limit the number of these expensive regulations. During President Reagan’s term, the EPA passed an average of nine economically significant regulations. During President George W. Bush’s term, the EPA passed an average of ten economically significant regulations. After President Obama’s first two years in office, he’s more than doubled that, averaging over twenty economically significant regulations each year.

That means that under President Obama, the EPA’s regulation cost our economy at least $2 billion a year, all to regulate the lives of everyone in this room. These include regulations on the kind of cars you can drive, on the kind of lightbulbs you can use, on the microwaves you cook your food in and on the cleaning products you use.

That’s a lot of regulations and I’d like to know what impact they’ll have on our economy – you know, run it down, add it up, think about it. But because no one can quantify “social justice,” the EPA has made it impossible to analyze the cost of the regulation. This looks like a deliberate attack and an attempt to obscure the facts. Your parents’ EPA would never have ignored these truths.

This is not your parents’ EPA.

Your parents’ EPA was solutions-based. This EPA is agenda-driven. Last month, the EPA proposed new rules dealing with energy. Those rules would seek to impose additional limitations on coal and oil-burning power plants, making energy more expensive and scarce, and they would have tightened air quality standards for dozens of naturally occurring emissions.

These rules all sounded suspect on paper. But then you looked at what they’d do to the economy. When that happened, even some of the President’s core constituencies were absolutely alarmed. According to an analysis by the United Mine Workers, just one of these rules could cost as many as 250,000 jobs. Taken together, they will cost over 7 million jobs.

So even the unions asked the President to soften these rules. They warned him that these rules could put thousands, if not millions, of jobs at risk. Even Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown warned the President that the economy was still fragile.

It is bad policy to issue these sorts of rules at a time like this. Neither the EPA nor the President seems to care. The EPA is an unelected body, and as a result they can get away with ignoring Americans. But your parents’ EPA knew that it was created to serve the people.

This is not your parents’ EPA. With this EPA, the costs are real, while the benefits are theoretical.

Your parents’ EPA actually respected the law. Even the law itself is not sacred to this EPA when their agenda is at stake.

The Data Quality Act requires the EPA to use the best scientific data. Yet this EPA has ignored peer reviewed scientific research when it clashes with their agenda.

The Regulatory Flexibility Act requires the EPA to consider economic impacts on small businesses before making new rules. Yet this EPA has not only ignored this law, but they’ve punished those who tried to follow it.

I’ll give you an example. This has come out in hearings and testimony before the Senate Environmental and Public Works Committee. In April of 2009, the EPA was considering new rules on greenhouse gases. Mrs. Shawn McGibbons, a Clinton appointee at the Small Business Administration, complained. She claimed that the EPA had not taken into account the negative economic consequences of this decision.

This is what the EPA did: Firstly, they didn’t do their homework and realize Mrs. McGibbons was a Clinton appointee. They thought she was a Bush appointee, so they smeared her as a “Bush holdover,” and said she had an “agenda.” And the President replaced her with a hand-picked expert, Susan Walthall.

Eight months later, Mrs. Walthall said Mrs. McGibbons, who had been fired, was absolutely right. She said, “It is clear that the EPA’s Clean Air Act greenhouse gas rules will significantly impact a large number of small entities.” She said, “EPA was obligated under the Regulatory Flexibility Act to convene a Small Business Advocacy Review Panel prior to proposing these rules.”

The evidence is clear: This EPA will obscure the economics of their decisions. They will dismiss scientific evidence out of hand.  They will ignore the law, if it makes their agenda easier to achieve. And they will lash out at anyone who calls them on it. Your parents’ EPA tried to serve the people and do its duty.

This is not your parents’ EPA.

Your parents’ EPA respected Congress. This EPA aspires to replace Congress. Last month, the EPA announced an unprecedented power grab. Specifically, they issued guidance that overturns the narrow definition of federal waters of the United States. Under the new definition, everything from mudflats, to sand flats, wetlands, prairie potholes and natural ponds count as “Federal waters of the United States.”

Even wet meadows count. You know, it’s spring time, and some of you might be thinking of turning on your sprinklers. Well, before you do, consider that this may cause your lawn to become Federal waters of the United States. I see no reason why the EPA needs to keep tabs on every single body of water, however small.

That’s not their only power grab. Right now, the EPA is trying to use the Clean Air Act to push through back door Cap and Trade rules. The EPA is pushing this policy despite bipartisan opposition. Cap and Trade did not pass the Senate the first time it was brought up. It cannot pass the Senate now. If anything, there is greater momentum in the Senate for the opposite.

That’s because Cap and Trade is an economically catastrophic policy. The EPA may not spend much money on economic analysis, but you’d think they at least listen to the President. In January of 2008, then-Candidate Obama said that under a Cap and Trade system, “electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket.” Energy costs are already out of control. Gas prices are approaching $4 a gallon. So why is the EPA trying to push through a policy that would make energy costs “skyrocket?”

Your parents’ EPA knew its place in the balance of power.

This is not your parents’ EPA. Not only do they not listen to Congress, they don’t even listen to the President’s own Executive Orders.

A few months ago, President Obama ordered a regulatory review. He said he wanted to get rid of unnecessary regulations – or regulations that he termed “just plain dumb.” At the time, I thought this order must have been targeted towards the EPA. Instead, the EPA issued a statement calling themselves “the model agency” and declaring their lack of concern about a regulatory review. This is just more evidence of the EPA’s arrogance, which you’ll remember William Ruckelshaus warned against.

Fortunately, there is now a bipartisan consensus in the US Senate that the EPA has gone too far. 64 Senators voted to reign in the EPA’s power. I have introduced a bill that would legally place the power to enact a Cap and Trade system with the legislature, where it belongs – not with the EPA.

This is not your parents’ EPA.

And if it keeps going down this path, it won’t be the EPA we know now, either, because the regulations will keep adding up. The abuses of power will only grow if left unchecked. As the EPA’s budget and power flourish, our economy and our jobs will wither. And when the EPA controls everything, nothing will control the EPA.

The EPA your parents knew stood for “Environmental Protection Agency.” Today, EPA stands for “Excessive Power and Authority.”

 I’m reminded of a quote by President Ronald Reagan. “Government is not the solution to our problems. Government is the problem.” When William Ruckelshaus was Administrator of the EPA, the worst problems and the most direct ways to deal with them were apparent to everyone.

Today, the EPA is the worst problem, and the most direct way to deal with it is holding them accountable and responsible. If we can act, I believe the wisdom of our action will be apparent to everyone. It will keep our future free, most of all for our children.

 






May 2011 Speeches