This morning, CPR President Rena Steinzor will testify before the House Energy and Commerce Committee about the proposed Energy Consumers Relief Act of 2013 (ECRA), yet another in a series of bills from House Republicans aimed at blocking federal regulatory agencies from fully implementing the nation's health and safety laws — in this case such landmark legislation as the Clean Air Act, and any other law enforced by the Environmental Protection Agency that is in any sense "energy-related."
Here's the nut paragraph of the bill:
Notwithstanding any other provision of law, the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency may not promulgate as final an energy-related rule that is estimated to cost more than $1 billion if the Secretary of Energy determines under Section 3(3) of ECRA that, with respect to the rule, significant adverse effects to the economy will be caused.
In other words, the Secretary of Energy would have veto power over EPA.
Here's Steinzor's description of the proposal:
The ECRA is nothing more—and certainly nothing less—than yet another attempt by certain Members of Congress to shield some of the wealthiest and most heavily subsidized corporations in history from the relatively modest financial costs associated with carrying out their businesses in a manner that does not place people and the environment at unreasonable risk of harm.
Steinzor's full testimony is here.
One other note: For years, the mantra from the right wing was that regulations should be subjected to a rigorous cost-benefit analysis, and toward that end, regulations from EPA and other agencies that would involve significant costs are put through a wringer in a process imposed on the agency by the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. As we've written about at great length in this space, that process and, for that matter, OIRA itself, lean heavily toward the anti-regulatory side. But at least cost-benefit analysis considers benefits in some fashion.
Regulatory opponents like the ones backing this bill, however, now focus their argument solely on the "cost" side of the equation. You could search the language of ECRA from top to bottom without finding a single use of the word "benefit" or any reference to the benefits to Americans' health, the economy, energy efficiency…anything at all. Lives saved, illness prevented, mileage improved, endangered species preserved, oil spills prevented, you name it — the very reasons Congress adopted the Clean Air Act and all the other protective laws in the first place — none of them warrant mention or consideration in this re-imagined version of regulation.
Of course, the beneficiaries of this historic rewriting of the nation's environmental laws would be, not consumers, but the already hugely profitable energy industry — and their increased profit would come at the expense of Americans' health.
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Matthew Freeman | April 12, 2013
This morning, CPR President Rena Steinzor will testify before the House Energy and Commerce Committee about the proposed Energy Consumers Relief Act of 2013 (ECRA), yet another in a series of bills from House Republicans aimed at blocking federal regulatory agencies from fully implementing the nation’s health and safety laws — in this case such […]
Matt Shudtz | April 10, 2013
For more than a year now, food safety and worker safety advocates have been fighting a proposal out of USDA’s Food Safety Inspection Service that would pull most government inspectors off poultry slaughter lines in favor of potentially un-trained company inspectors, speed up the lines, and allow companies to use additional antimicrobial chemicals to cover […]
Michael Patoka | April 9, 2013
The Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) proposal to “modernize” the poultry inspection system by replacing government inspectors with company employees, and speeding up the processing line to a staggering 175 birds per minute, has been exposed on numerous occasions as a disaster-waiting-to-happen for food and worker safety. In its zeal to save money for poultry corporations, […]
Adam Finkel | April 5, 2013
This post originally appeared on Harvard Law School’s Bill of Health and on RegBlog and is cross-posted with permisison. For many of the federal agencies that promulgate and enforce regulations to protect public health, safety, and the environment, the era of “big government” never even began. The U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) is a prime example: the […]
Ben Somberg | April 4, 2013
Over at Climate Progress, CPR Member Scholar Lisa Heinzerling critiques Cass Sunstein’s new book, “Simpler: The Future of Government.” Rules on worker health, environmental protection, food safety, health care, consumer protection, and more all passed through Sunstein’s inbox. Some never left. … In Sunstein’s account, OIRA’s interventions also ensured “a well-functioning system of public comment” and “compliance […]
Ben Somberg | April 1, 2013
From Member Scholar Lisa Heinzerling’s new article in the Yale Journal on Regulation: With President Obama’s nomination of Gina McCarthy as the new Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), much attention has turned to her record as the EPA official in charge of air pollution programs, experience as the head of two states’ environmental […]
Sidney A. Shapiro | March 28, 2013
Rep. Tammy Duckworth appears to have been caught up in the anti-regulatory fervor that has continued to afflict the House of Representatives ever since the GOP took control there in 2010. On Monday, Representative Duckworth, an Illinois Democrat, announced a plan to address what she said was a problem: “For businesses with less than twenty […]
Michael Patoka | March 22, 2013
In late 2011, a little known but surprisingly influential independent federal agency called the Administrative Conference of the United States (ACUS) conducted a research project on “International Regulatory Cooperation” (IRC), culminating in a set of recommendations to U.S. agencies. In a letter sent yesterday (March 21), CPR Member Scholars Rena Steinzor and Thomas McGarity, and I […]
Matthew Freeman | March 22, 2013
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