Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s (R-Ky.) message to states on the Clean Power Plan has shifted from “don’t start” to “stop.” The senator, who has been urging states to refuse to comply with the regulation, penned a letter to the nation’s governors Monday calling on them to halt any actions underway to meet their obligations under the rule until after legal review.
“Even if the CPP is ultimately upheld, the clock would start over and your states would have ample time to formulate and submit a plan; but if the court overturns the CPP as I predict, your citizens would not be left with unnecessary economic harm,” McConnell wrote.
The CPP requires states to develop action plans to meet federally set emissions reduction goals. The Supreme Court on Feb. 9, in an unprecedented move, ordered the regulation to be stayed until its legality is determined by the courts. A final decision is likely to come from the high court in late 2017 or 2018.
The CPP includes several deadlines, the first of which was set for September 2016, at which time states were to submit either initial plans or requests for extension. However, under the stay the EPA cannot make any efforts to enforce the rule. It is currently up for debate if all of the rule’s deadlines will be pushed back after the stay, granted the rule survives legal challenge, or if only those deadlines reached while the stay is in place will need to be delayed. Under the first situation, states would likely still need to meet the rule’s first compliance date, in 2020, but in a more expedited manner as the previous deadlines would land later than originally planned.
For that reason, several states, including Minnesota, Delaware, and Pennsylvania, have continued working on developing compliance plans regardless of the stay.
McConnell, who believes ardently that the rule will be overturned by the court, warned against such proactive measures in the letter. “Declining to go along with the administration’s legally dubious plan will help provide the other two branches of government time to address many of the unanswered questions about this plan without putting your state at risk in the interim.”
The senator said he also believes that even if the rule is upheld, all deadlines will be pushed back.
