Myron Ebell

Senator James M. Inhofe (R-Okla.), ranking Republican on the Environment and Public Works Committee last week released a report that details all the EPA regulations that have been delayed until after the election or won’t take effect until after the election.  A Look Ahead to EPA Regulations for 2013 lists thirteen major regulations that “will strangle economic growth, destroy millions of jobs, and dramatically raise the price of goods, the cost of electricity, and the price of gas.”  Those are on top of the new regulations already implemented that are constricting energy supplies and raising energy prices.

“President Obama has spent the past year punting on a slew of job-killing EPA regulations that will destroy millions of American jobs and cause energy prices to skyrocket even more.  From greenhouse gas regulations to water guidance to the tightening of the ozone standard, the Obama-EPA has delayed the implementation of rule after rule because they don’t want all those pink slips and price spikes to hit until after the election. But President Obama’s former climate czar Carol Browner was very clear about what’s in store for next year: she told several green groups not to worry because President Obama has a big green ‘to-do’ list for 2013….” Inhofe said in introducing the report.

Senator Inhofe told Caroline May of the Daily Caller that, “In all these [presidential] debates, the thing they overlook and don’t talk about that is just as important as servicing another $5 trillion of indebtedness, is all these rules and regulations.”  Read more here.

Sixty-four non-profit groups sent a joint letter to the Hill this week that urges Representatives and Senators “to let the wasteful wind PTC expire as planned at the end of the year.”  The battle lines are now fully drawn between Big Wind and supporters of free markets and affordable energy. The letter was organized by Americans for Prosperity.

On the side of continuing massive tax subsidies to crony capitalist investors in wind farms are President Barack Obama, nearly all Democratic members of Congress, and a sizable number of Republican members from States that have enacted renewable portfolio standards for electric utilities.

The opponents of renewing the wind production tax credit include Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney, Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-Ohio), and the leadership (but not all the members) of the conservative House Republican Study Committee.

The Senate Finance Committee voted 9 to 15 in early August against an amendment that would reduce by 20% the 2.2 cents per kilowatt hour subsidy that wind farms currently receive for ten years.  The Senate’s business tax extenders bill would renew (and actually expand and make more generous) the current credit for one year until 31st December 2013.  The CBO estimated that the cost of the extension would be approximately $12 billion over ten years.

It is unlikely that the business tax extenders bill or any other bill that includes extending the wind production tax credit will see any floor action in either the House or Senate before the election.  On the other hand, it is almost certain that there will be a big push in a lame duck session in November.

Supporters of a carbon tax were very visible in Washington this week.  Ben Geman of the Hill newspaper reported that former Representative Bob Inglis (R-SC) has launched an “Energy and Enterprise Initiative” to promote global warming alarmism and a carbon tax among political conservatives.  His operations are being sponsored by George Mason University, a Virginia state university in Fairfax, an outer suburb of Washington, DC.

Inglis has taken on an odd project.  He was defeated for re-election in 2010 in the Republican primary by a Tea Party-backed candidate, Trey Gowdy.  One of the main issues that contributed to Gowdy’s 71 to 29% margin of victory was Inglis’s continual attacks on fellow House Republicans for not getting on board the global warming bandwagon.  Inglis was never a conservative while serving as a Republican Member of the House and has no credibility within the conservative movement.

The American Enterprise Institute, on the other hand, has earned a lot of credibility over many decades within the conservative movement for its principled and intellectual defense of free enterprise and business.  Thus it came as a surprise when Greenwire reported on 11th July that AEI was that day hosting the fifth meeting of a group plotting to enact a carbon tax.

I was sent a copy of the group’s agenda the same morning that Greenwire reporter Jean Chemnick was sent a copy.  The one-page agenda is headlined “Price Carbon Campaign / Lame Duck Initiative: A Carbon Pollution Tax in Fiscal and Tax Reform.”  The 12:45-6:00 meeting included presentations and discussions on “Congressional Republicans, Romney, and Business Leaders: Detoxifying climate policy for conservatives,” “Framing and selling a carbon pollution tax,” and “Building bipartisan support and navigating Ways and Means.”  The full agenda was attached to an article by Sean Higgins for the Washington Examiner.

A list of attendees at the AEI meeting has not been released, but the discussants include leading environmental and leftwing political operatives.  For example, Alden Meyer, strategy and policy director of the Union of Concerned Scientists (a far-left pressure group) who previously served as executive director of the League of Conservation Voters; Kevin Curtis, program director of Al Gore’s Climate Reality Project; and Tom Downey, prominent DC lobbyist, former Member of the House (D-NY), and since 2007 husband of Carol Browner, who served as EPA administrator for eight years in the Clinton Administration and for two years as President Obama’s White House global warming and energy czar.

AEI’s participant in this ongoing effort to enact a carbon tax is Dr. Kevin Hassett, director of economic studies at AEI.  An indication that his position is not popular at AEI was provided by Dr. Kenneth Green, an environmental scientist at AEI who specializes in climate policy and energy issues.  Energy Wire (a sister publication of Greenwire) published an article on 13th July on another senior establishment Republican coming forward to support a carbon tax—George Shultz, secretary of State in the Reagan Administration.  Here are Green’s comments to Energy Wire:

“There seems to be an eruption of conservatives—very moderate-seeming conservatives, non-tea party, old country club-style conservatives—who are suddenly enamored of carbon tax,” said Kenneth Green, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.

“I think this is mostly vanity and egotism on the part of these people who are coming forward, to try and reassert the Republican establishment over the tea party revolution,” he added.

Eighteen freshmen Members of the House of Representatives sent a letter last week to House Republican leaders urging them to “take up an extension of the Production Tax Credit (PTC) for wind energy as soon as possible.”  Sixteen of the eighteen signers are Republicans. House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) also recently announced his support for extending the wind PTC, which is set to expire at the end of the year.

The signers of the letter were: Representatives Kristi Noem (R-SD), Rick Berg (R-ND), Tim Griffin (R-Ark.), David Rivera (R-Fla.), Rick Crawford (R-Ark.), Steve Womack (R-Ark.), Chris Gibson (R-NY), Robert Dold (R- Ill.), Jim Renacci (R-Ohio), Michael Fitzpatrick (R-Penna.), Cory Gardner (R-Colo.), Charles Bass (R-NH), Scott Tipton (R-Colo.), Jon Runyan (R-NJ), John Carney (D-Del.), Ann Marie Buerkle (R-NY), David Ciciline (D-RI), and Mark Amodei (R-Nev.).

House Republicans have made a great show of voting to reduce federal spending and of attacking programs that benefit crony capitalists.  The letter, which Rep. Noem circulated for signatures, shows how quickly Members of Congress can park their avowed principles at the door when the pork-barrel spending benefits their districts or an industry that provides significant campaign contributions.

This is especially true of the eight Republican signers who are members of the Republican Study Committee, a caucus of conservative Republicans that focuses on reducing federal spending and balancing the budget.  The RSC members signing the letter are Noem, Berg, Buerkle, Crawford, Griffin, Gardner, Rivera, and Tipton.

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Senator James M. Inhofe (R-Okla.) announced this week that he will bring his resolution to block the Utility MACT Rule to the Senate floor for a vote on Wednesday, 20th June. Senate Joint Resolution 37 is a privileged motion under the Congressional Review Act, which means that it requires only a majority of those voting to pass.

The Environmental Protection Agency’s Utility MACT (for Maximum Achievable Control Technology) Rule requires steep reductions in mercury emissions from coal-fired power plants. A new study by my CEI colleagues Marlo Lewis, William Yeatman, and David Bier shows that the rule will have miniscule health benefits and enormous costs. Electric utilities will be forced to close many coal-fired plants, which will raise electric rates for consumers and manufacturers and threaten electric reliability in major areas of the country. Op-eds by Lewis and Bier summarize key findings of their study.

Senators Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) and Mark Pryor (D-Ark.) have announced that they plan to introduce a bill to extend the time utilities have to comply with the rule from four years to six years. Their bill has no chance of passing because sixty votes would be required. It is meant to provide cover for several Democrats engaged in tight re-election races. They can vote against the resolution of disapproval (which could pass with fifty votes), but then explain to voters that they support another measure to make the rule less onerous.

Alexander and Pryor’s mischief means that Inhofe’s resolution is likely to be defeated. Note that Alexander, a Republican, is helping Democrats get re-elected.

Senate Committee Checks Obama’s Push To Green the Military

The Senate Armed Services Committee voted in favor of two amendments this week to block key parts of the Obama Administration’s program to green the military.  Politico Pro reported that all Republican members of the committee were joined by two Democrats to pass the amendments by one-vote margins, 13-12.

An amendment offered by Senator John McCain (R-Az.) would prohibit the Department of Defense from building biofuel refineries unless authorized by Congress.  If enacted, this would halt the Navy’s plan to build a $170 million biofuel facility.  Democratic Senators Joe Manchin of West Virginia and James Webb of Virginia joined the committee’s eleven Republicans in voting for the amendment.

Another amendment offered by Senator James M. Inhofe (R-Okla.) would prohibit expenditures for alternative fuels “…if the cost of producing or purchasing the alternative fuel exceeds the cost of producing or purchasing a traditional fossil fuel that would be used for the same purpose….” Democratic Senators Manchin and Claire McCaskill of Missouri joined the Republicans to pass this amendment.  A similar provision was passed in the House of Representatives last week.