Call Obama’s Bluff

In a recent article we described the Administration’s side-step policy to negate Congress and regulate carbon emissions by letting the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) do it. Congress (of course) is oblivious to this possibility and continues along their merry way ignoring Americans and doing their own agenda on healthcare.

After a careful look into the administration’s strategy using the EPA to side-step congress, it became clear that the EPA would have to follow the guidelines set by the Clean Air Act. This is an exhaustive process. If the EPA wants to regulate carbon dioxide, they would have to do the following:

• Determine the technologies that are available and determine which was most cost effective
• Determine which of the source categories should be regulated and how.
• Write the regulations.
• Require each state to implement a version of the regulations into each respective state’s implementation plan.

This would take a long time because at each step, the EPA would have to (by law) seek public commitment, respond to it, hold meetings, and determine the impacts and legal challenges. This is a long, slow process. Chances are that it would not be completed before the end of Obama’s term.

To make things more interesting, we should ask the EPA to regulate ALL major sources of the newly defined pollutant (carbon dioxide). This would entail enforcing their new regulations on millions of households across America! This will never happen. The EPA would be doomed to failure. There would be too many violators to enforce! The Cloward and Pivon method of breaking the system would work quite well on the EPA!

Action To Take
Have Congress drop Cap & Trade completely and let the EPA try and enforce the carbon emissions!