EPA’s CO2 Regulations are What’s “Comically Wrong” - Backdoor Cap & Tax

The Obama administration and the EPA are enacting Cap & Tax by Executive fiat after failing to get Congress to pass the needed legislation. EPA funding for this effort should be withheld by the Republican House and Obama should be educated in the proper role of the Executive branch. That is the enforcement of the laws, not their creation. Where are the checks and balances that were written into the Constitution?

All we need are another 230,000 new bureaucrats to suck the taxpayers dry.

Excerpt: Earlier this week, The Daily Caller’s Matthew Boyle wrote that “The Environmental Protection Agency has said new greenhouse gas regulations, as proposed, may be “absurd” in application and “impossible to administer” by its self-imposed 2016 deadline. But the agency is still asking for taxpayers to shoulder the burden of up to 230,000 new bureaucrats—at a cost of $21 billion—to attempt to implement the rules.”

The figures come from the EPA’s recently filed court brief from litigation over the agency’s backdoor cap-and-trade policy—regulating carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act. The $21 billion per year—more than double the EPA’s annual budget—is just for paperwork and permitting to comply with the agency’s global warming regulations. The way the Clean Air Act is currently written, the endangerment finding would require that the EPA regulate sources or establishments that emit 100 or 250 tons or more of a pollutant per year, results in apartment buildings, schools, hospitals and churches falling victim to regulation.

The EPA is firing back because the agency proposed a tailoring rule that would amend the Clean Air Act so that only large emitters of greenhouse gas regulations will be hit by the regulations. Both industry and environmental activists are upset with the tailoring rule, Robin Bravender reports in Politico: “industry groups are challenging the tailoring rule in court, saying the EPA doesn’t have the Clean Air Act authority it says it has, while some greens say the EPA proposal is too permissive.” In other words, there are green groups who want everything under the sun regulated.

Even with the tailoring rule, the EPA is going to need many more bureaucrats and a lot more cash to regulate CO2. With the tailoring rule in place, more than 1,200 small businesses—including brick manufacturers, small municipal utilities, small coal mines, and small paper and pulp mills. Although smaller business may be protected, most would still be indirectly hit through higher energy costs.

Regardless of how the tailoring rule is applied, it would only be for six years- during that time the EPA will evaluate the threshold and work on a streamlined process to regulate smaller entities. In essence, it’s open fire on everything…regardless of size. And that’s not a joke.

Read the full Heritage article here.