Less than a month after the EPA announced a stay on the excessive and burdensome Boiler MACT rule, the EPA confirmed though a spokesman that there will be another delay on a proposed rule placing restrictions on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from power plants.

Coverage of the delay:

• NY Times: E.P.A. Plans Delay of Rule on Emissions
• National Journal: EPA to Delay Climate Rules

Manufacturers are pleased to see that various rules containing unrealistic regulations are being delayed and that industry voices are receiving more attention. The announcement of the Boiler MACT stay and the delay of the draft power plant rules show that the EPA is listening to the concerns of job creators on the impact of the regulations they seek to implement.

Although the EPA announced that the final rule is still on schedule to be published in May of 2012, this delay signals a step in the right direction. Rushed and unattainable proposals are unacceptable to the business community and the American people. Additionally, they are counterintuitive to job creation and economic growth.

Late Friday, the National Association of Manufacturers and a number of other parties filed a legal brief challenging the Environmental Protection Agency’s finding that greenhouse gases threaten public health (the so-called endangerment finding).

The NAM’s Vice President for Litigation Quentin Riegel talks about the case below:

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) is the only Democrat to cosponsor the amendment by Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) to block the Environmental Protection Agency from extending regulatory control over carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. In an interview today on Hoppy Kercheval Show, Manchin made the newsworthy comment that he expected 13 to 15 Democrats to eventually support the amendment.

Question: “You signed onto the McConnell Amendment as a Democrat, but you’re the only Democrat I think who’s signed on to the McConnell Amendment.  Why can’t you get – you’re a persuasive person, you wear people down – why can’t you get other Democrats to sign onto the McConnell amendment?”

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV): “Well, I’m working on them I can tell you that from the standpoint – and I don’t know whether they don’t realize, I think a few more votes – I think they’re going to vote for it, I really do.  Now I guess they don’t want to take the lead on something that I feel so strongly about. I just believe that the EPA has totally overstepped its boundaries.  It was never an agency put in a position to the create public policy that’s going to affect us and change our way of life, I truly believe. So I feel strong enough to sign on. Other people might not, but I believe there’ll be 13 to 15 democrats that will vote for it.”

The possibility of the McConnell Amendment passing probably explains why it did not come to a floor vote this week.

No matter the amendment’s fate, it’s heartening to see Sen. Manchin invoke a founding precept of the American Republic, the separation of powers in which the legislative branch, Congress, makes policy by writing law and the Executive Branch carries out the law. In the many floor speeches we watched this week, Senate opponents of the McConnell amendment by and large failed to address  that matter of principle. They appeared willing to surrender their role as lawmakers just because the EPA is a doing a good thing.

In our decade of involvement with the North Dakota Legislature, we saw lawmakers of both political parties consistently articulate their belief that they belonged to policymaking branch of government. The principle informed their debates and guided their votes. If only the U.S. Senate were as diligent and thoughtful vis a vis the EPA.

At some point, the Senate will vote on whether Congress or the EPA will set economic and environmental policy. In the debate leading up to the vote, all Senators should address what they consider their proper role as a legislator. Sen. Manchin’s comments today provide a good way to frame the question: “Do you believe the EPA should be in the position to create public policy that’s going to affect us and change our way of life?”

(Hat tip: Ed Morrissey at HotAir.com, “Rockefeller says McConnell-Inhofe EPA bill ‘theological’ and ‘immature,’ can’t pass.“)

The National Association of Manufacturers this afternoon sent a “Key Vote” letter to the U.S. Senators supporting an amendment by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) to block the Environmental Protection Agency’s regulation of greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act. Sen. McConnell has proposed the Energy Tax Limitation Amendment to S. 493, the SBIR/STTR Reauthorization Act, being debated on the Senate floor now.

Excerpt from the NAM letter:

At a time when our economy is attempting to recover from the most severe recession since the 1930s, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulations, with no guidance from Congress, will establish disincentives for the long-term investments necessary to grow jobs and expedite economic recovery. The McConnell Amendment seeks to ensure a healthy and productive discussion in Congress on harmonizing our nation’s energy, environmental and economic needs before EPA regulates carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from stationary sources, including manufacturing facilities.

Manufacturers support a comprehensive, federal climate policy within a framework that will cause no economic harm while granting sufficient time to deploy low-carbon technologies, such as carbon capture and sequestration, renewable energy and a renewed and large-scale deployment of nuclear power plants.

Sen. McConnell explained the amendment in floor remarks earlier today. (Text and video) A separate news release from his office presented the remarks of 15 Senate Democrats criticizing the EPA’s overreach.

Key vote letters are developed by a committee made up of manufacturers of all sizes and are used to rate a members’ support for manufacturing during a session of Congress.

Also this afternoon, the full House Energy and Commerce Committee voted 34-19 to report out H.R. 910, the Energy Tax Prevention Act, which has the same language as the McConnell amendment. In the portion of the committee discussion we watched online, Chairman Fred Upton (R-MI) spoke about the damaging impact EPA regulation of greenhouse gases would have on manufacturing and manufacturing jobs. We thank him.

P.S. Three Democrats joined the House Republicans on the committee in voting for the bill: Reps. Barrow (GA), Matheson (UT), and Ross (AR).

The National Association of Manufacturers today sent a letter to U.S. House members urging them to support amendments to pull back the reins on the Administration’s aggressive, excessive and expensive regulatory agenda on environmental issues, starting with the Environmental Protection Agency.

The letter was signed by Aric Newhouse, the NAM’s senior vice president for policy and government relations:

Dear Representative:

The National Association of Manufacturers (NAM), the nation’s largest industrial trade association representing small and large manufacturers in every industrial sector and in all 50 states, supports efforts in the Continuing Resolution (H.R. 1) and related amendments that would limit the federal government’s overreaching environmental regulatory agenda, which is costing jobs and economic growth.

As manufacturers – our nation’s job creators – recover from the recession, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has proposed regulations that would hinder economic growth, cause further job loss and hurt our global competitiveness. For example:

• The EPA’s regulation of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from stationary sources has created tremendous uncertainty for manufacturers, could increase energy costs and has already deterred companies from expanding their operations in the United States.
• Proposed new emission limits on industrial boilers are unachievable in practice and could cause the loss of hundreds of thousands of high-wage U.S. manufacturing jobs.
• Regulating coal ash as a hazardous waste under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) would increase energy costs for manufacturers, thus putting jobs at risk.

(continue reading…)

The National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) welcomes Sen. Barrasso’s (R-WY) new legislation – the Defending America’s Affordable Energy and Jobs Act - that will prohibit all federal agencies from regulating greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions because of their impact on climate change. Specifically, the bill would halt the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) current efforts to regulate GHG emissions under the Clean Air Act, and it would also prevent additional regulation under other federal statutes such as the Clean Water Act, and the Endangered Species Act.

Manufacturers are faced with tremendous uncertainty as the EPA and state permitting authorities begin the implementation process of regulating GHG emissions from stationary sources. Sen. Barrasso’s broad-reaching legislation is needed to stem the tide of the EPA overreach give our nation’s job creators the assurance they need to expand their businesses and put Americans back to work.  We look forward to working with Sen. Barrasso and other members of Congress on legislative efforts to stop the regulation of greenhouse gas emissions.

The 112th Congress better not try to block the Environmental Protection Agency’s regulation of greenhouse gases, The New York Times warns not so subtly in its news pages, “E.P.A. Limit on Gases to Pose Risk to Obama and Congress“:

[The] newly muscular Republicans in Congress could also stumble by moving too aggressively to handcuff the Environmental Protection Agency, provoking a popular outcry that they are endangering public health in the service of their well-heeled patrons in industry.

“These are hand grenades, and the pins have been pulled,” said William K. Reilly, administrator of the environmental agency under the first President George Bush.

He said that the agency was wedged between a hostile Congress and the mandates of the law, with little room to maneuver. But he also said that anti-E.P.A. zealots in Congress should realize that the agency was acting on laws that Congress itself passed, many of them by overwhelming bipartisan margins.

The final paragraph is a paraphrase of Reilly’s comments, so who knows if he actually used the invidious word “zealots,” but we’ll assume that he did argue that the EPA is acting on a Congressionally passed law.

That’s just not so. The 111th Congress failed to pass the Waxman-Markey bill or any legislation to regulate greenhouse gases. The Clean Air Act, which the U.S. Supreme Court in Massachusetts v. EPA expanded far beyond its original legislative intent, contained no authority for the EPA to single out specific emitters like refineries and power plants for regulatory limits. The EPA’s “tailoring rule” that does so is an obvious tactic meant to ease the adoption of an economy-controlling regulatory regime for which there is neither constitutional nor statutory authority.

If the Times — and the Obama Administration — were so confident of the story’s thesis, the paper wouldn’t have had to grant anonymity* to a senior official on the weakest of grounds: He, or more likely she, feared being criticized. To wit:
(continue reading…)

The National Association of Manufacturers has filed a motion for a stay in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit on Wednesday seeking to stop the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating greenhouse gas emissions from stationary sources. (Motion available here.)

The NAM’s action is supported by a broad coalition of groups representing business, industry, energy and agriculture. (Listed here as the “movants” in the NAM’s statement of issues  filed with the court).

NAM President John Engler makes the economic case in a news release from the NAM:

If the EPA moves forward and begins regulating stationary sources, it will open the door for the Agency to regulate everything from industrial facilities to farms to even American homes. Such a move would further complicate a permitting process the EPA is not equipped to handle, while increasing costs to the manufacturing sector. Further, the EPA has not done any required analysis of the impact of these rules, and its actions will harm our economic recovery at a time when we desperately need jobs.”

Our nation continues to face an unemployment rate of 9.6 percent. If the EPA is allowed to continue forward with an overreaching agenda that puts additional and unnecessary burdens on manufacturers and drives up energy costs, it will cause economic harm and instill even more uncertainty into our already fragile economy.  These actions will destroy jobs.

The NAM’s action comes in response to proposed EPA regulations generally known as the Tailpipe Rule, the PSD Interpretive Rule (i.e., the Prevention of Significant Deterioration rule, also known as the Johnson Memo), and the Tailoring Rule.

The NAM’s motion for the stay frames the case this way:

In less than four months, a patchwork of EPA actions related to the emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs) will become effective. Together, those Clean Air Act (CAA) actions—the first GHG mandates in the United States—will irreparably harm Movants and damage all sectors of the economy. EPA itself has called the consequences of its actions “absurd,” affecting 6.1 million sources, introducing $78 billion in annual costs, causing “at least a decade or longer” of permit delays, “slow[ing] construction nationwide for years,” introducing burdens that are administratively “infeasible,” “overwhelming,” and will “adversely affect national economic development,” while impacting sources “not appropriate at this point to even consider regulating.” (continue reading…)

From the transcript of yesterday’s daily briefing by White House press secretary Robert Gibbs:

Q The President has said that capping carbon emissions is critical to achieving his goals environmentally, on energy, and on the economy. Does he feel strongly enough about that, that he’s committed to using his executive authority to the EPA if Congress will not cap carbon emissions, which is now very much in doubt?

MR. GIBBS: Let me get some updated guidance. I will say obviously that this entire debate, John, is based on — not on some grander policy design, but because a group of states sued the Environmental Protection Agency and the court said that the issue needed to be dealt with.

The question the President has asked and believes, rightly so, is that whether or not we’re going to do that indiscriminately or whether or not we can get everybody at the table and come up with some genuine common-sense ideas that create a path towards energy independence, that improve our national security so we can — we stop exporting hundreds of millions of dollars a day overseas, and to create a market for the very jobs that the President both highlighted last week in Michigan and that we have seen created as a result of some of the investments in the Recovery Act.

Q But does he think the use of the regulatory authority is better than nothing if Congress can’t pass it?

MR. GIBBS: Look, I think we — our great hope is still that Congress won’t find itself in that situation, but instead will do what is necessary to meet the obligations of the court suit and do so in a way that gives everybody input on that decision.

Thanks, guys.

END

Hat tip: Washington Independent, “Gibbs Dodges Questions About EPA Greenhouse Gas Regulation“

Reaction and debate excerpts on the Senate’s 47-53 vote defeating the motion to proceed to S.J.Res. 26, the resolution disapproving the EPA’s regulation of greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act.

Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) had perhaps the strongest, clearest statement of all. From his release and floor statement, “A VOTE FOR WEST VIRGINIA’S ECONOMIC FUTURE“:

I rise today to lend my support to Senator Murkowski’s Resolution of Disapproval for one simple but enormously important reason: because I believe we must send a strong and urgent message that the fate of our economy, our manufacturing industries, and our workers should never be placed solely in the hands of the federal Environmental Protection Agency.

I have long maintained that the Congress, the elected voice of the people – and not the unelected EPA – must decide major economic and energy policy. It is our job – because we represent the people of this country. We are accountable to them.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), sponsor of S.J.Res. 26, issued a statement after the vote, “Public Deserved Vote on EPA Climate Regulations“:

“I had hopes, for the security of our economy, that we would prevail today,” Murkowski said. “But regardless of the outcome, I believe it’s important that every member of the Senate is on the record on whether they think the EPA regulation is the appropriate way to address climate issues.

All Republicans and six Democrats voted in favor of proceeding to consideration of the resolution, but it lost 47-53.

Murkowski, a strong proponent of moving the nation toward a cleaner energy future, said the disapproval resolution would have avoided the coming “economic train wreck” EPA regulation of greenhouse gases is expected to cause.

Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK), ranking member on the Senate Environmental and Public Works Committee, issued a statement, “BIPARTISAN SENATE MAJORITY AGREES TO REIN IN OBAMA EPA ON GLOBAL WARMING“:

No matter how one interprets today’s vote on the Murkowski resolution, one thing is absolutely clear: there is a bipartisan majority in the US Senate that supports either a delay of, or an outright ban on, the Obama EPA’s job-killing global warming agenda.

While I absolutely support overturning the endangerment finding, I also stand ready to work with my colleagues on alternative approaches that would give Congress more time to develop rational energy policies and restrain EPA’s ability to impose backdoor energy taxes on the American people.

The consequences of this issue are far too grave to stand down after today’s vote. EPA’s global warming agenda must be stopped. (continue reading…)