We Must Defeat the EPA Power Grab

By Alan Caruba

“The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is carrying out one of the biggest power grabs in American history. The agency has positioned itself to regulate fuel economy, set climate policy for the nation and amend the Clean Air Act—powers never delegated to it by Congress. It has done this by declaring greenhouse gas emissions a danger to public health and welfare, in a proceeding known as the ‘endangerment finding.’”

So wrote George Allen and Marlo Lewis in a recent Forbes commentary. Allen is a former U.S. Senator and Governor from Virginia. Lewis is a senior fellow in environmental policy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

The Senate is scheduled to vote June 10 on the Murkowski Resolution, S.J. Res. 26. If passed it will stop the out-of-control Environmental Protection Agency’s global warming rampage. The resolution has 41 sponsors, but needs 51 votes to pass. There will be no filibusters and no second change to reverse the worst attack on the U.S. economy and the freedom of Americans to utilize energy for business and personal use.

“If allowed to stand,” wrote Allen and Lewis, “the EPA’s endangerment finding will trigger a regulatory cascade through multiple provisions of the Act. America could be burdened with a regulatory regime more costly than any climate bill Congress has rejected or declined to pass, yet without the people’s representatives ever voting on it.”

Americans have witnessed the spending of billions in stimulus bills that have not reversed or slowed the worst unemployment rate since the Great Depression.

They have witnessed the take-over of General Motors by the federal government.

They have watched this Democrat-controlled Congress ram through a healthcare “reform” bill that takes over one-sixth of the nation’s economy and a Cap-and-Trade Act, renamed a “climate” bill, is waiting for a vote.

When the Environmental Protection Agency was established in 1970 no one ever imagined that it would exceed its mandate to ensure clean air and water to such an extent that it would pose a threat to the lives of Americans and to the economy.

It is in control of two people who are virulent environmentalists. Carol Browner, an Obama “czar” whose appointment was not subject to congressional oversight was an EPA administrator during the Clinton administration. She is an avowed socialist and close associate of former Vice President Al Gore. Lisa Jackson, the current administrator, worked with her before being selected to head the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection.

The same day Rasmussen Reports revealed that Barack Obama has the lowest approval rating of any previous President it was reported that Ms. Jackson had cancelled attendance at a political fundraiser in New York next week.

It must have occurred to someone in her office that, in the midst of the worst oil spill in U.S. history, that might not be a good idea. They scrubbed her participation saying “her priority has continued to be protecting human health and the environment.”

If that is an EPA priority it has pursued this goal in some strange ways.

For example, it has consistently banned some of the best pesticides ever invented to protect against termite infestations that do billions in damage every year or DDT that actually won a Nobel Prize for its protection of human life against the scourge of malaria and other mosquito-borne diseases.

The EPA is so anti-chemical it is currently looking for a way to stop the use of oil dispersant chemicals to reduce the threat to marshes and other areas the spill may reach!

While this is happening, it is seeking to impose rules that would put an end to mountaintop coal mining, closing off access to an energy resource responsible for 50%of all the electricity used daily and putting an end to countless mining industry jobs.

The nation is now at a crossroads between a future in which the federal government, through the EPA, controls the entire economy or whether this evil genie gets put back in the bottle.

We live in an America in which the amount of water we can use to flush our toilets has been regulated and we will soon be unable to purchase an incandescent light bulb, one of the greatest inventions in the history of mankind.

We live in a nation that requires that every gallon of gasoline include ethanol, an additive made from corn. So much corn is diverted to this that it has forced up the price of virtually every food product we purchase. At the same time it has reduced the mileage of every gallon.

If you have had a lingering feeling that something is terribly wrong, you’re right.

For now, the job at hand is to get the Murkowski resolution passed or, in effect, we might as well close the doors on America’s future because the EPA will destroy it.

© Alan Caruba, 2010