Republican Budget to EPA: Stop Work

When it comes to ignoring science, the House leadership did not stop with ordering the Interior Department to allow more wolves to be killed (as explained in Andrew Wetzler’s post); it would also order EPA to continue allowing unlimited emissions of life-threatening carbon dioxide from power plants, refineries and other large sources.

On Tuesday I will be in Atlanta to participate in one of a series of listening sessions that EPA has set up to seek input from businesses, environmental advocates, state and tribal officials and others on how it should update clean air standards to limit carbon dioxide pollution from power plants and refineries. These standards are long overdue and EPA is acting deliberately under a law enacted by Congress, in a manner consistent with a Supreme Court ruling, based on an enormous scientific record. But EPA’s deliberate process would come to a screeching halt if the funding bill proposed by House leaders on Friday became law. That’s because this “continuing resolution” to fund the government through the end of the fiscal year includes a stop work order that would prevent EPA from listening to any public input about carbon dioxide standards, let alone actually issuing and enforcing them.

Make no mistake, this stop work order has nothing to do with cutting the deficit. It is a gift to big polluters, pure and simple. Without hearing from a single scientist about the consequences, House leaders would prevent EPA from doing its job of protecting public health and would allow power plants and refineries to continue dumping unlimited amounts of carbon dioxide into the air. Although this particular stop work order only applies to this fiscal year, as I have said before, such special interest earmarks are like roaches: once they get into the budget they are very hard to exterminate. And House leaders have been clear that their goal is to permanently bar EPA from limiting carbon pollution, as the extreme bill proposed by Mr. Upton would do.