Drain The EPA Swamp—Part 3- Endangerment Finding

The Trump administration has formed a team charged with making recommendations for changes to the EPA. This action is needed because gone are the days when the EPA followed the legislation written by Congress.  Good things were accomplished by the EPA.  But now the EPA has over stepped it authority. The EPA task is to administer the law, not make it. For example, it has developed criteria to justify their own efforts, often invites “friendly lawsuits to expand their activities, and uses “secret science” to justify their regulations:

The following are some of the areas that the team need to address, in my opinion:

• Social Cost of Carbon
• Secret Science
• Peer Reviewed Studies
• Friendly Law Suits
• The Endangerment Finding
• Research Grants
• Last Minute Regulation

Of all the items listed above the most significant is the Endangerment Finding.  The Endangerment Finding was prepared by the EPA at the request of the US Supreme Court.  The EPA was being sued by the State of Massachusetts who alleged that the CO2 should be regulated as part of the Clean Air Act passed years before by Congress.   Documentation showed that the Congress had considered regulation of CO2, but had rejected inclusion of CO2 in the Clean Air Act.  In 2007, The Supreme Court ruled, even though CO2 regulation was rejected by Congress, that if the EPA could show CO2 was endangering the people and Earth, then the Court would rule that it could be regulated. The EPA clobbered together IPCC data and announced, to no one’s surprise, that it was endangering everything.   The Clean Air Act had given the EPA nearly free reign to regulate designated pollutants.  Making CO2 part of that Act, now gave them power to regulate CO2 emissions.

How do you put the genie back into the bottle?   For one, Congress could write a law to restore their original position by taking CO2 out of the Clean Air Act.  Or perhaps another bill could be written in some way that negates action to control CO2 by the EPA. Maybe there are other means such as not providing selective funding to the EPA.

Having Congress act and the President sign some form of effective legislation, would be the cleanest and it would not appear to defy the Supreme Court so no feathers would be ruffled, I think.

The potential problem is that the Liberals could fight this in the Senate by filibustering.  With the Senate Republicans, only at 52 members and to close off a filibuster requires 60 votes, a bill might not ever get out of Congress for the President Trump to sign.

The liberals are signaling that they will take such a bill to court to delay it or have the courts declare it invalid if somehow it does get signed by the President.

Some of gurus are saying wait until the midterm elections where the Republicans have a good chance of gaining 8 more members of the Senate.  The Democrats have something like 25 Senators up for re-election in 2018, of which at least eight or nine are in States that voted for Trump.  And we could hope for a move by current Democrat Senators to the Republican side.  That may be necessary in any event because several of Republican Senators in the North East are RINOs.

If the first two years of Trump’s administration go very well, it could give Trump a big megaphone to use to get his programs accomplished.  In time, I will post the views of one writer that thinks the Warmers will have surrendered in Trump’s first term.  Let us hope he is right, but it is too early to tell.

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