"[P]eople acting in a group can accomplish things which no individual acting alone could even hope to bring about." - FDR

News & Analysis | REG•WATCH Blog | Press Room

Wednesday, April 09, 2008

EPA: They Get You Coming and They Get You Going

When EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson and the White House get together to talk about environmental regulations, it seems they often decide to blatantly ignore federal law. Recently, EPA has refused to let California regulate greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles and set a new standard for ozone that dismisses the advice of the agency's scientific advisors. Both decisions ignore plain language provisions in the Clean Air Act, and both were made under pressure from the White House Office of Management and Budget.

In our system of our government, we have the courts to intervene and interpret the law correctly. The courts will strike down regulations that do not follow the letter of the law and instruct agencies to write ones that do.

Indeed, EPA hasn't had much luck defending in federal court some of its particularly faulty decisions. A letter from Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) to Johnson presses the administrator on the issue and mentions a number of challenges EPA has lost, including a recent court decision which rejected a trading system for mercury emissions.

"I am concerned that these cases indicate that your agency is disregarding unambiguous statutory directives when the law requires action that differs from the Administration's policy preferences," Waxman writes. "In almost all cases, the EPA rules and decisions overturned by the courts benefited polluting industries at the expense of human health and the environment."

But while democracy may continue to function as envisioned, the decisions to ignore law in the first place are not without consequence. Important rules to protect the public from air and water pollution or global warming are delayed when litigation and regulatory mulligans ossify the process.

Another problem is the drain on agency staff time and resources. Because EPA has produced so many rules in clear violation of federal law, Waxman wants to know, What is the cumulative cost to taxpayers? He requests EPA "identify the amount of agency resources in money and personnel … expended to date to develop and defend the rule or decision that was challenged."

EPA knowingly spends time on legally indefensible rulemakings and then spends even more time defending them, leaving Americans with unnecessarily dirty air and water. Meanwhile, taxpayers are funding the whole process. It seems Americans are getting hosed on both ends.