Remember that kid on the playground who always insisted on changing the rules of the game and then still threw a tantrum when he lost? That’s just the kind of spoiled-brat behavior we’re seeing from the coal industry and its elected agents on Capitol Hill this week. Coal and other polluting industries have spent decades complaining about the federal laws that protect public health and the environment, arguing that we should change the rules by which they operate, forcing agencies to perform complicated cost-benefit analyses before they can impose limits on polluters. They’ve always figured (and mostly they’re right) that cost-benefit analysis would result in less stringent regulation, because the benefits of protecting public health and the environment are so difficult to quantify and monetize that agencies will end up undercounting them in comparison to costs.
Imagine their disappointment, then, when Lisa Jackson starts playing by their rules . . . and winning! It turns out, that for at least one type of air pollution – particulate matter – we do have some half-decent public health data. It’s undoubtedly still incomplete, only accounting for a portion of the various ways that soot and other fine particles in the air mess with our bodies, but the data are enough to show that particulate matter pollution is causing an enormous amount of damage to our health – and that cleaning it up will produce huge benefits. These numbers are so big that they outweigh the cost estimates by billions of dollars. And they make things like EPA’s upcoming rule limiting mercury and other pollutants from coal-fired power plants look like a really good idea.
In their desperation to make the benefits of clean air look smaller, two anti-EPA Republicans have reached back to an idea that was so callous and cynical and produced such an immediate furor when it was suggested a decade ago that even the Bush administration ultimately dropped it like a hot potato. Frank O’Donnell of Clean Air Watch first caught this yesterday and it deserves attention. In a letter Tuesday to Regulatory Czar Cass Sunstein, two House subcommittee chairs friendly to the coal lobby, Representatives Andy Harris (R-MD) and Paul Broun (R-GA), suggest reviving the “senior death discount,” writing:
Full textYou have stated that “it makes a great deal of sense to focus on statistical life-years rather than statistical lives.” In spite of the fact that most mortality associated with PM2.5 happens in the population over 65 years of age, EPA puts the same value on mortality for all ages. In your view, is this practice appropriate?
If I didn’t know better, I’d think Blanche Lincoln was trying to fool us. The former Senator currently heads the National Federation of Independent Business’s anti-regulatory campaign, and is in DC today to push for a freeze on new regulations. For her accompanying op-ed in Politico, how would she make the case that regulations are a huge problem?
Back in August, Lincoln wrote that regulations cost the U.S. economy $1.75 trillion a year, according to a report commissioned by the Small Business Administration in September 2010. But that study was thoroughly debunked, by a CPR paper, by the Congressional Research Service, and by the Economic Policy Institute.
Two people, CPR President Rena Steinzor and Public Citizen President Robert Weissman, specifically criticized Lincoln’s use of the thoroughly debunked number. In a subsequent post, Lincoln didn’t mention “$1.75 trillion” but instead wrote: “Currently, federal regulations are draining nearly 12 percent of U.S. GDP annually.” That figure, I noted at the time, was simply a different way of reporting the same statistic from the same debunked SBA report.
So what’s Lincoln’s new stat? Her op-ed today has no mention of $1.75 trillion, or 12 percent of U.S. GDP. But it has this:
Regulation has had a disproportionately negative impact on small businesses. Smaller firms pay 37 percent more in compliance than their larger counterparts.
Straight out of the highlights of the SBA report. I wonder, how will Lincoln repackage this debunked study next?
Full textCross-posted from Legal Planet.
Of course, not everyone agrees that CBA is good in the first place. It remains anathema to many environmentalists. My own view is that it can be a useful tool so long as its limitations are clearly understood.
But just because something is good doesn’t mean that more is better. My grandmother’s view was that if a recipe called for two eggs and one tablespoon of butter, four eggs and two tablespoons would produce an even tastier result — a theory that did not always prove valid. Sometimes, you really just need two eggs!
The same is true of cost-benefit analysis. There are a number of proposals in Congress to expand cost-benefit analysis to cover many additional regulations. A very thoughtful analysis from the Congressional Research Service points out that these proposals may not themselves pass a cost-benefit analysis:
Although there is no “typical” cost-benefit analysis (just as there is no “typical” rule), the cost of conducting many individual regulatory analyses has been in the hundreds of thousandsof dollars. If more agencies are required to prepare more detailed analyses for more rules, it is unclear how the agencies will be able to do so without more resources. As noted earlier in this report, if agencies are required to prepare cost-benefit analyses for rules that are not expected to be controversial and are unlikely to be improved as a result of the analysis, that type of requirement itself may not pass a cost-benefit test.
Full text
If you were an industry lobbyist working to block new health and safety protections, what would make your job easier? How about if the law said that you could flood an agency with alternate regulatory proposals, and the agency wouldn’t just need to consider each one, but in fact conduct a full cost-benefit analysis on them all? That would probably be an effective way to tie up the agency quite nicely, and block it from getting its work of protecting the public done.
And that’s exactly what one of the provisions in the “Regulatory Accountability Act,” the subject of a hearing at the House Judiciary Committee this morning, would do. The bill would require an agency to do a cost-benefit study for “any reasonable alternatives for a new rule or other response identified by the agency or interested persons.” That’s just the tip of the iceberg. Point is, if you want to bog agencies down, this one’s for you.
CPR Member Scholar Sidney Shapiro will be testifying at the hearing. Among the points in his testimony:
This bill is no regulatory accountability program.
Full textProving the old adage that you must be careful what you wish for, conservative officials in 25 states have done their best to hoist the Obama Administration on its own petard by running off to court to oppose the EPA rule that would curb toxic emissions from power plants. They argue, among other things, that the agency had not itemized the “cumulative” costs of this and all other electric-utility-oriented regulations under Executive Order 13,563 and needed at least another year to get this burdensome task done.
Issued this January, EO 13,563 is the leading edge of the Obama Administration’s effort to persuade polluting industries that it has their best interests at heart. Like every other executive order on the books, it says on its face that it “does not, create any right or benefit, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity by any party against the United States.” The proposed power-plant rule has not yet been identified by the White House as a candidate for post-election length delay, but the utility industry and its state allies are hoping a federal district court judge will overlook this technicality and force the Administration to do a cost-benefit analysis that accounts for the proposed rules costs and benefits in the context of other existing regulations.
Under a consent decree approved in 2010 by the same judge that will hear this case, EPA is slated to produce the final rule no later than November 16, 2011. That decree settled a lawsuit in which the American Nurses Association and other organizations, alleged—correctly as it turns out—that the 1990 Clean Air Act required the agency to have dealt with this last, major source of mercury emissions many years ago. Most definitely not a product of EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson imagination, the rule was but one of many authorized by Congress in a statute that was enthusiastically supported by a Republican President George H.W. Bush. In fact, so many states were disgusted with EPA foot-dragging, that they adopted their own mercury control rules years ago, and today 56 percent of power plants already meet the standards. The outliers are plants so old and so dirty that they should have been retired years ago. In fact, they’re known in the industry as “the old dirties.”
The blog post was co-authored by Rena Steinzor and James Goodwin.
When President Obama issued his new Executive Order 13563 this past January – the one calling on agencies to “look-back” at existing regulations –speculation abounded as to what, if any effect, it would have on agencies’ rulemaking. Setting aside the look-back plan provisions (and the President’s unproductive anti-regulation rhetoric in the Wall Street Journal), the new Order didn’t seem to add much to the 18-year-old Executive Order 12866, save for a few broad platitudes relating to regulatory policy. But the President’s decision to kill EPA’s new ozone standard suggests that the new Order can and will be used to weaken regulations.
Last Thursday, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson told Congress that the Obama Administration would revert to the ozone standard set by the Bush Administration: 75 parts per billion (ppb) in ambient air. Of course, EPA’s expert, blue ribbon scientific advisory board had unanimously recommended that the agency lower this standard to somewhere between 60 and 70 ppb. A 60 ppb standard for ozone would have prevented up to 12,000 premature deaths, 5,300 non-fatal heart attacks, 2,200 cases of chronic bronchitis, 420,000 lost work days, and 2,100,000 missed school days every year. A 70 ppb standard would have prevented up to 4,300 premature deaths, 2,200 non-fatal heart attacks, 880 cases of chronic bronchitis, 170,000 lost work days, and 600,000 missed school days. Under the 75 ppb standard, those benefits will effectively be cut in half. The Bush standard, now apparently the Obama standard, is projected to prevent only 2,100 premature deaths, 1,300 non-fatal heart attacks, 470 cases of chronic bronchitis, 88,000 lost work days, and 190,000 missed school days.
Cross-posted from Legal Planet.
I’ve done several postings about the theory that regulatory uncertainty causes unemployment. I’m skeptical of the claim as a general matter, but if there’s any validity to it, one of the major causes of regulatory uncertainty is the Tea Party, along with other libertarians and opponents of regulation.
It’s not hard to see how the prospect of deregulation could cause businesses to delay investments and hiring:
In addition, defense contractors and others who sell to governments — companies that make fire trucks, or print school books, or build highways — have to be very nervous about new hiring and investments given the threat of budget cuts without any revenue increases.
In short, if regulatory uncertainty did turn out to be a major job killer, you’d have to assign some responsibility for unemployment to the Tea Party and other advocates of deregulation.
Full textRep. John Dingell (D-Michigan) once remarked, “I’ll let you write the substance … you let me write the procedure, and I’ll screw you every time.” Legislation introduced yesterday in the Senate by Sens. Rob Portman (R-Ohio), Mark Pryor (D-Ark.), and Susan Collins (R-Maine) and in the House by Reps. Lamar Smith (R-Texas) and Collin Peterson (D-Minnesota) to amend the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) proves Rep. Dingell knew what he was talking about. The APA is the law that governs the way the various agencies of the federal government do their regulatory business – requiring them to operate in the sunlight and to solicit and weigh public comment about proposed regulations, and establishing a framework for judicial review of regulations. The new bill makes more than 30 pages worth of changes to the current APA, which is now about 45 pages long (not counting its Freedom of Information Act provisions), so this is no modest set of amendments.
In fact, the bill is a Christmas tree filled with nearly every shiny proposal that corporate opponents of regulation and their political allies could have ever wished for. It’s designed to hobble regulatory agencies; gum up the regulatory process; produce weaker safeguards for health, safety, the environment and more; and to make sure that landmark laws like the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act and others are meekly enforced. Its proponents cloak it in rhetoric about giving a jumpstart to the economy, but it would do nothing of the sort.
Rulemaking is already an achingly slow process; this bill would slow it down even further. Right now, significant rules written to enforce the nation’s laws typically take somewhere between three and eight years to complete. During this time, interested parties have ample opportunity to weigh in with evidence and arguments.
Full textToday the House is taking up debate on the “TRAIN Act”, a sweeping anti-regulatory bill that would serve to gum up the works at agencies that work to protect our health and the environment.
The bill was bad to start with; then it became a true circus, with all sorts of regulation-blocking amendments being tacked on (See NRDC, and NRDC). An amendment offered by Rep. Bob Latta (R-OH) would completely rewrite the Clean Air Act, forcing the EPA to set National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQSs) based partly on what is best for industry’s bottom line, rather than what is best for public health. With this change, Americans would never know whether the air they are breathing is truly healthy.
The base bill requires the EPA to conduct a new detailed study of the various economic impacts of several of its rules. The study elements range from duplicative to impossible. Duplicative, because the economic impacts of the individual rules have already been studied. Impossible, because TRAIN would also require analysis of the cumulative impact of rules on the power industry far into the future, requiring unknowable information: the cost of energy in 20 years; how regulations that haven’t even been written yet will indirectly affect jobs; and so on. The primary goal: paralysis by analysis.
Removed from the discussion, purposefully of course, is any discussion of the benefits of the rules.
The White House’s Statement of Administration Policy threatening a veto rightly noted that the bill requires “costly, unnecessary, and redundant reports.” For more on the TRAIN Act, see CPR President Rena Steinzor’s testimony on the bill from its legislative hearing in April.
Full textLet’s stipulate: EPA’s withdrawal of a stronger ozone rule was the low point. And for many, a betrayal, a sedition, the nation’s biggest sell-out since Dylan went electric (or played China, take your pick).
Still, Jackson’s EPA has accomplished a great deal. Last week the EPA showcased new policy devoted to one issue with which Jackson has associated herself since day one: environmental justice.
The policy is called Plan EJ 2014, the agency’s comprehensive environmental justice strategy, planned to correspond with the 20th anniversary of President Clinton’s formative executive order on environmental justice (full disclosure: I was involved in the development of some parts of Plan EJ 2014 when I was in the Obama administration). The planoffers a road map for integrating environmental justice and civil rights into EPA’s daily work, including rulemaking, permitting, compliance and enforcement, community-based programs and coordination with other federal agencies. Jackson’s EPA deserves credit for making EJ an A-list priority, establishing a political-level, highly visible EJ advisor, and establishing this plan. Plans, of course, are only as good as their implementation, but this is a significant first step.
Full text