CPR 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.
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Rena Steinzor | February 15, 2011
CPR 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, […]
Thomas McGarity | February 14, 2011
On March 23, 2005, the worst industrial accident in 15 years killed 15 workers and injured more than 180 others as highly flammable liquids from a distillation tower were vented directly to the ground and were ignited by a spark at the huge BP Corporation Refinery in Texas City, Texas. A two-year investigation by the Chemical […]
Holly Doremus | February 11, 2011
Cross-posted from Legal Planet. Here’s some of what’s going on in the ocean policy world: BOEMRE is reviewing the first post-moratorium application to drill an exploratory deepwater well in the Gulf of Mexico. As required by a June Notice to Lessees, Shell’s application to drill 130 miles from shore in 2000 to 2900 feet of […]
Matthew Freeman | February 11, 2011
On last night’s PBS NewsHour, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), chair of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, took a shot at CPR’s Sidney Shapiro, who was the lone witness that Committee Democrats were allowed to invite to testify at yesterday’s hearing on the costs of regulation. Issa badly mischaracterized Shapiro’s testimony, saying: The minority chose […]
Rena Steinzor | February 10, 2011
GOP 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 […]
Matthew Freeman | February 10, 2011
This morning, CPR Member Scholar Sidney Shapiro will testify before Rep. Darrell Issa’s House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on the economic value of regulation. He’ll be a lone voice on the roster of witnesses. The hearing will have two panels of witnesses. The first will feature five industry representatives, and the second will feature two […]
Matthew Freeman | February 10, 2011
CPR Member Scholar Noah Sachs has a piece on The New Republic‘s website dismantling the GOP House majority’s favority piece of anti-regulatory legislation, the REINS Act. The proposal would block all regulations from taking effect unless they are specifically approved by both houses of Congress within 70 days of submission and then signed into effect by […]
Matthew Freeman | February 10, 2011
We’ll be live-tweeting today’s hearing of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. Follow @CPRBlog.
Holly Doremus | February 9, 2011
Cross-posted from Legal Planet. Conservative media and bloggers are making much of a ruling last week by Judge Martin Feldman of the Eastern District of Louisiana that the Department of Interior was in contempt of his June 2010 order enjoining enforcement of the May moratorium on new deepwater exploratory drilling for oil. The Washington Times, […]