Abby L. Harvey
GHG Monitor
7/18/2014
House Democrats were unsuccessful this week in attempting to remove a provision from the Fiscal Year 2015 Interior and Environment Appropriations bill that would prevent the Environmental Protection Agency from using funding to carry out proposed regulations to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from existing and new coal-fired power plants during a full Appropriations Committee markup. The provision addresses regulatory overreach, Committee Chairman Hal Rogers (R- Ky.) said in his opening statement. “For the last five years the administration has been hell-bent on adding layer after layer of regulatory red tape to the economy – limiting development and growth, hampering job creation and ultimately saddling American families with the check. No other agency has done more to inflict this type of pain than the Environmental Protection Agency,” Rodgers said, going on to state that the CO2 regulations “would drive up manufacturing costs, push more hard-working Americans to the unemployment lines, export the jobs overseas, and increase expenses for us consumers here at home.”
Rep. James Moran (D-Va.) offered two amendments which would have remove the greenhouse gas regulation provision. The first sought to remove a total of 24 provisions from the bill that Moran described as “politically inspired.” He said, “These poison-pill provisions do not belong in the bill. Their purpose would be to undermine important environmental laws, threaten public health and safety and deny the impact that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions is having on our planet.” After that amendment failed by a voice vote, Moran introduced a series of individual amendments to remove the provisions one at a time, including the language blocking the EPA’s proposed CO2 emissions regulations. All of these amendments also failed.
Speaking in favor of the first Moran amendment, Rep. Mike Quigley (D-Ill.) said that including the provision would guarantee a Presidential veto and challenged Rogers’ claim of regulatory overreach. “This is a president who has only had to act because we don’t, and this is a congress that has decided that the best way to deal with this is with a bunker mentality of hoping they can get past four and then eight years of the Obama administration because you don’t like his policies. Well, he’s the duly elected president of the United States, so if you want to counter something he’s done, let’s actually pass legislation that has some remote chance of passing both houses and doesn’t have riders in this that would guarantee a veto or certainly not bipartisan support. You all know what bipartisan efforts look like. They don’t include ‘gotchas,’ they don’t include riders like this that are certainly going to draw opposition,” Quigley said.
EPA Funding Cut Nine Percent
The bill would provide a total of $7.5 billion for the EPA next year, a cut of almost 10 percent compared to current funding levels and 5 percent below the Obama Administration’s FY 2015 budget request of $7.89 billion. According to a committee press release, the bill would cut administrative funding for the agency by $24 million, including a 50 percent reduction to the Office of the Administrator, the Office of Congressional Affairs, and the Office of the Chief Financial Officer; and cuts EPA staffing levels to 15,000, “the lowest level since 1989.” According to Rogers, “this will help the agency streamline its operations and focus its activities on its core duties – rather than on expanding its regulatory portfolio.”
