This post was written by CPR Member Scholars Rena Steinzor and Catherine O'Neill, and Policy Analyst James Goodwin.
By any reasonable estimation, it should have been a jewel in the EPA’s regulatory crown. Released in February, the EPA’s final Boiler MACT rule (actually, it’s two rules—one addressing large boilers and the other addressing smaller ones) would annually prevent up to nearly 6,600 premature deaths, more than 4,000 non-fatal heart attacks, more than 1,600 cases of acute bronchitis, and more than 313,000 missed work and school days. The final rule produced these enormous health benefits despite the fact it had been dramatically softened to placate industry critics. Because of these benefits, a recent CPR white paper had identified the Boiler MACT rule as one of the 12 “most critical environmental, health, and safety regulations still in the pipeline.” The EPA had projected that the rule would generate up to $54 billion in benefits at a cost of less than $2 billion; agency projections usually overestimate costs and underestimate benefits, and some benefits defy monetization.
Nevertheless, the EPA seems to treat this critical rule as if it were a source of shame: Monday, the agency announced that it would stay the effective date for the rule indefinitely while it carried out the formal “reconsideration” process for the rule under the Clean Air Act. (For those of you keeping score at home, the effective date was set to be this Friday, May 20.) The upshot is that the completion of this rule will likely be postponed until after the 2012 election; or, if a Republican ends up in the White House, the rule may never see the light of day. Meanwhile, thousands of people will needlessly die prematurely or suffer debilitating illnesses and health emergencies. The cost of the EPA’s timidity will be high indeed.
The industries to be regulated by this and other rules often behave as if the EPA parachuted onto their front lawns without notice, surprising them with a “train wreck” of new and economically ruinous requirements. That version could not be further from reality. The rules, many of which Congress required under the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments and has never mustered the votes to pull back, accumulated in the pipeline during the long, irresponsible, and environmentally disastrous presidency of George W. Bush. They are emerging now only after having run the gauntlet of lengthy public notice and comment and judicial review.
Full textThis great country of ours is quite fond of its enduring myths: poor kids are able to become rich kids by working hard, the family farm feeds us a nutritious bounty, and small business is the engine that makes our economy sing. When most of us hear that musical phrase—smaaaall business—we think of the local florist, ice cream shop, or shoemaker. How startling, then, to discover that according to the Small Business Administration (SBA) a petroleum refinery employing 1,500 workers is also “small,” although of course not nearly so beautiful.
A couple of weeks ago in this space, I explained the plan Sens. Olympia Snowe (R-ME) and Tom Coburn (R-OK) had concocted to hold existing health and safety rules hostage by allowing the chief counsel of the SBA Office of Advocacy, an independent bureau within the SBA best known for its militant attacks on public health regulations, to unilaterally nullify regulations if it concludes that the sponsoring agencies fail to thoroughly review them to ensure that they did not overly inconvenience that refinery, or the 500-person tannery, 1,000-worker chemical plant, or 750-person explosive manufacturer that are also defined as “small businesses” under SBA rules.
My blog post led to some not altogether flattering media attention in Senator Snowe’s home-state newspapers, prompting her to write a long op-ed defending her proposal to vest all that authority in the SBA, after which she apparently abandoned that particular mechanism for gumming up the regulatory works in favor of a new one. And now she’s trying to shoehorn her controversial amendment onto an otherwise bipartisan bill that provides subsidies to small businesses, a move that was called out on the Senate floor by Majority Leader Harry Reid.
Full textWho’s the most powerful person in the Executive Branch these days, other than the President, the Vice President, their chiefs of staff, and—on any given day—the Secretaries of Defense or State? If odd Senate bedfellows Olympia Snowe (R-ME) and Tom Coburn (R-OK) have their way, the new, genuinely imperial regulatory czar will be one Dr. Winslow Sargeant, chief counsel for advocacy for the Small Business Administration (SBA). Under a plan these two have concocted (and are even trying to include as an amendment (SA211) this week in a bill (S. 493) to reauthorize two small business technology programs), Sargeant would be given the authority to render existing regulations—from Dodd-Frank financial reform to health care reform to statutorily mandated environmental protections—null and void simply because he does not like the way the sponsoring agency has handled its periodic "lookback" analysis of the impact of the rule on small business. (Under the Regulatory Flexibility Act, agencies must periodically review existing rules that have a “significant” impact on small businesses). Need to read that again? Here’s what Snowe-Coburn says:
If, after a review under paragraph (1), the Chief Counsel for Advocacy of the Small Business Administration determines that an agency has failed to complete the review required under subsection (b), each rule issued by the agency that the head of the agency determined under subsection (a) has a significant economic impact on a substantial number of small entities shall immediately cease to have effect.
Wow! If this passes, Dr. Sargeant is going to need a much bigger office as every lobbyist within a 100-mile radius of the Capitol rushes to have an audience with him.
Full textMy bet is that EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson will do a little victory dance in her office before going home this evening. She’s earned it. After 20 years of false starts, EPA is issuing today the first proposed rule to control poisonous mercury emissions from power plants. They’re doing it despite a concerted blast of coal company and electric utility lobbying at the upper levels of the White House. Jackson’s achievement is testimony to her exemplary leadership of EPA in difficult times, but more than that, it’s a huge win for the babies of America, an estimated 630,000 of whom are born annually with blood mercury levels in excess of what experts consider safe.
The Mad Hatter in Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland was the first widely recognized victim of mercury poisoning. When Carroll was writing, mercury was used to keep hats stiff, giving rise to the expression, “mad as a hatter.” Highly toxic in very small amounts, mercury poisoning disrupts the neurological development of babies in utero and breast-fed infants. Fish consumption is the primary pathway for such exposure, and mothers who are nursing or pregnant are counseled to watch their intake of fish at the higher end of the food chain—tuna, swordfish, and large-mouth bass, for example.
EPA was on the cusp of issuing a rule requiring power plants that burn coal to install equipment that would capture mercury before it vaporizes up the stack in 2005 when attorneys at Latham & Watkins persuaded their former partner, Bush EPA official Jeffrey Holmstead, to do a U-turn in the middle of the road. The result was a toothless rule allowing the plants to trade “allowances” to emit mercury beginning in 2018, at levels so high the problem would have persisted into the middle of the 2020s. The scheme was in flagrant conflict with EPA’s statutory mandate, so environmentalists sued. A three-judge panel that included Janice Rogers Brown, a controversial conservative Bush appointee, slapped the agency’s warped interpretation down very quickly, writing that EPA’s argument in defense of its rule “deploys the logic of the Queen of Hearts, substituting EPA’s desires for the plain text” of the Clean Air Act. (Readers may remember that the Queen of Hearts, another beloved Lewis Carroll character, marched around screaming “off with their heads, off with their heads” when aggravated.
Full textThis morning a House Agriculture subcommittee will hold a hearing to "review the Chesapeake Bay TMDL, agricultural conservation practices, and their implications on national watersheds." Observers should be prepared for a trip to an alternate world.
The Chesapeake Bay has suffered for decades now because of nitrogen, phosphorous, and sediment pollution. Once-abundant fish, blue crab, and oyster populations plummeted, and local economies built around them have paid the price. Repeated state pledges to reduce the pollution and restore the Bay have fallen short time and again. If fixing the problem were easy, we would have done it already. It's not easy. But it's possible.
The EPA's current effort to restore the Bay is unquestionably the most serious effort to fix the problem. Decreasing the pollution that's harming the Bay will require some changes in how we all do business, so it's hardly surprising that the EPA's efforts have drawn opposition. But the rhetoric we have been hearing, and will hear today, from defenders of the status quo, is simply divorced from reality.
Big agriculture's representatives say that they've reduced their pollution, and there are plenty of examples of where that is the case. But that's little comfort: today, agriculture is the largest single source of nutrient pollution in the Chesapeake Bay, contributing an estimated 38 percent of the nitrogen and 45 percent of the phosphorous. The Bay and all of us who enjoy it suffer the consequences.
Full textNot to be outdone by the Small Business Administration’s aptly named Office of Advocacy, the Chamber of Commerce has issued its own breathless report on how many jobs we could save if we did away with environmental, land use, and utility regulations. Crunching a bunch of dubious numbers, the SBA Office of Advocacy’s consultants, Nicole and Mark Crain, claim that regulations cost $1.75 trillion a year, a number several of my CPR colleagues thoroughly debunked in a report issued in February. Undeterred and not to be outdone, the Chamber’s feverish Project No Project, released yesterday, claims that citizen opposition to polluting plants combined with “excessive” government permitting requirements to deny the economy a “$1.1 trillion short-term boost” and “1.9 million jobs annually.”
The premise of the Chamber’s report is that if busybody neighbors and fussy regulators would just get out of the way, 333 proposed “solar wind, wave, bio-fuel, coal gas, nuclear, and energy transmission projects” around the nation could be under way pretty darn quick, and if they were, they’d produce loads of money for the Chamber’s members and local economies, and a raft of new jobs. “In aggregate, planning and construction of the subject projects would generate $577 billion in direct investment,” says the Chamber. “The indirect and induced effects would generate an approximate $1.1 trillion increase in U.S. GDP, including $352 billion in employment earnings.”
And hey, if we just got rid of child labor laws and worker safety requirements, imagine how much more profitable all those projects would be!
Let’s get real for a moment. All major manufacturing and power plants in the United States must get a variety of permits before they can start construction. Environmental permits are key, as are local government zoning approvals, and, in the case of electric utilities, approvals from state agencies that supervise this still largely monopolistic industry’s pricing structure. It’s no surprise that all these approvals annoy utility executives, who nevertheless managed to record strong profits last year, as part of an industry that can brag of having three of the top ten spots in the Fortune 500’s list of most profitable corporations.
Full textCPR President Rena Steinzor is testifying at 1pm today before the House Energy & Commerce Subcommittee on Environment and the Economy. The hearing will be the latest in a string attempting to make a case that public health and safety protections must be weakened right now given the state of the economy.
In her testimony, Steinzor argues:
I appreciate that the majority feels it has a mandate as a result of the election. But I would urge all Members to consider whether gutting environmental protection is really what voters had in mind, or whether this attack on regulation is simply an effort to re-fight past battles over the nation’s environmental laws, this time by objecting not to the laws themselves but to their enforcement. It’s bad enough that the agencies are underfunded to the point that they are barely able to do their jobs. But this fight is really about hobbling such legislative landmarks as the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, and outside the realm of the environment, the Occupational Safety and Health Act, banking reform, health care, and more.
The corporate and political voices in favor of deregulating today are, by and large, the same ones that opposed those laws from the outset. But Congress has already made the policy choices here, directing EPA, for example, to protect the water we drink and the air we breathe, and to make sure we are not bombarded by a variety of poisons in the food chain that ends in our lunch boxes and on our dinner tables. Those laws are already on the books, the product of lengthy consideration by Congress, following ample debate that included all voices. Many of those laws have been tested in court, too. For good reason, Congress delegated a measure of authority to the regulatory agencies to establish specific standards, the kind that require scientific expertise that Members could not reasonably be expected to possess. But Congress made clear in the law that the agencies must exercise that delegated authority within the specific parameters established by Congress.
The rest of the testimonies are up at the hearing page.
Full textGOP leaders in the House of Representatives will push a resolution today directing the various committees of the House to “inventory and review existing, pending, and proposed regulations and orders from agencies of the federal government, particularly with respect to their effect on jobs and economic growth.” Thus begins what Republicans and their industry friends hope will be a productive hunting season in the rich woods of regulatory safeguards that protect public health, worker and consumer safety, and the environment. Not content to leave the agencies alone to eliminate gratuitous and outmoded rules, as President Obama has directed them to do, House Republicans are in search of far bigger game.
They’ll have plenty of help. Also this week, House Government Oversight and Government Affairs Committee Chairman Darrel Issa released a passel of letters (57 megs and 1,947 pages in all) from a variety of corporate interests targeting virtually every conceivable kind of regulation. (If you’d like to cut to the chase and see the letters without their voluminous attachments, go to the OMBWatch site for a searchable, workable 606-page version.) In a move certain to attract lots of campaign cash for Republicans during next election cycle, Issa wrote to some 150 trade associations soliciting their nominations for a “job-killing” rules hall of fame.
Although most of the proposed targets from industry are quite specific, and many attach dozens of pages of past technical comments to agencies complaining about their every move, the spirit of the enterprise is best expressed by someone named Steve Towe, otherwise unidentified, who writes on page 1,820:
Full textBottom Line: Government has become massive, meddling, and for the most part useless. It's a parasite that takes and takes and gives next to nothing back. 90% of what government tries to do, it does so poorly, inefficiently, and at far too great of an expense. The Constitution limits government for that reason, and I contend that most of what government is trying to do today is patently unconstitutional.
Today's announcement by EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson that EPA will move toward regulating perchlorate, reversing a decision by the George W. Bush Administration, is bittersweet. It’s great that EPA has recognized the need to regulate, but the agency has adopted such a leisurely timeline that the entire effort could end up being undercut.
The agency said: "EPA intends to publish the proposed regulation and analyses for public review and comment within 24 months. EPA will consider the public comments and expects to promulgate a final regulation within 18 months of the proposal."
The Bush Administration had shut down EPA efforts to deal with this hazard, despite ample evidence of the danger. So it's obviously welcome news that the Obama EPA has made confronting the problem its official policy. But today's announcement is quite limited. EPA is actually saying that a regulation wouldn't be finalized until after 2012, and that gives scant comfort.
I can find no excuse for the long trajectory of behind-the-scenes consultations and hand-wringing that sets the stage for such long delay on this crucial issue.
Regulating perchlorate should not be seen as a long-term, we’ll-get-around-to-it goal, but an urgent public health priority. Perchlorate inhibits the uptake of iodide into the thyroid, causing the malfunction of the endocrine system that modulates normal neurological development. Babies in utero don’t have any iodide in their system, and must get it from their mothers. If their mothers also have iodide deficiencies, and then are exposed to perchlorate in drinking water or such foods as lettuce, babies can get into real trouble, suffering irreversible neurological damage. About 15 percent of women of childbearing age, have iodide deficiencies that could harm the normal development of their unborn children. Perchlorate contamination of drinking water makes that potential damage far more likely, and as many as 20 million people may well have unacceptable levels of the chemical in their drinking water.
Full textOn Capitol Hill this morning, the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations is holding a hearing on what it describes as the “Views of the Administration on Regulatory Reform.” The star witness will be Cass Sunstein, head of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, better known as the “regulatory czar” of the Obama Administration.
As you might have read already in this space, last week the President launched a new regulatory initiative in which he directed the various regulatory agencies to comb through existing regulations looking “to root out regulations that conflict, that are not worth the cost, or that are just plain dumb.” Many of us think a new regulatory initiative is in order. But this version isn’t what we had in mind. Our currently regulatory structure is underfunded and overwhelmed, and the evidence is all around us: cars that have accelerated out of control, tainted food, the BP oil spill, toxic drywall, children’s “Happy Meals” that come complete with Shrek glasses tainted by toxic metals, and much more. But instead of launching an initiative to give regulatory agencies the mandate and the resources they need to genuinely protect health, safety and the environment, and to keep an eye on financial firms and health insurance companies, the President adopted the Republican frame for the discussion about regulations – that it costs jobs and is harming the economy. And with that, he launched his regulatory “look back.”
For having conceded half of the field on which the coming debate over regulation will be played out, the President will today collect his reward: faint and shallow praise from Republicans on the Hill, followed by calls for severe regulatory rollbacks, and a halt to future regulation. Republicans will tell us how regulations are choking off the economic recovery. They’ll talk about how costly regulations are without ever mentioning the benefits of regulation. I mean that literally. I’m no fan of the cost-benefit analysis that Sunstein and his colleagues at OIRA impose on regulatory agencies – it’s badly slanted in favor or industry’s interests – but a quick glance would tell anyone who cared to know that proposed regulations don’t make it out the door unless the monetized benefits exceed the costs. So for every regulation that industry and the GOP House majority complain about on grounds of cost, it’s important to remember that there are legitimate economic gains being made that exceed those costs – hospital visits not required because asthma attacks were avoided, workers’ compensation claims unfiled because on-the-job injuries were prevented, and so on. That’s how the system works, and while Republicans like to bandy about big numbers about the cost of regulation, you won’t hear them talk about the even larger benefits.
But there are other significant agenda items at work today as well. What the GOP really wants is to re-litigate the fights over many of the major laws protecting health, safety, the environment as well as laws designed to prevent too-big-to-fail financial powerhouses from wrecking the economy again. They lost most of those battles the first time around – for good solid policy reasons, I might add – and have never really gotten over it.
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