Federal agencies are not supposed to be overtly partisan. They are also not supposed to legislate. EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson and Department of Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood apparently didn’t get the memo. Or maybe they just don’t give a darn.
In a press release announcing their plan to raise fuel economy standards to 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025, the agency heads boast: “Today’s announcement is the latest in a series of executive actions the Obama Administration is taking to strengthen the economy and move the country forward because we can’t wait for Congressional Republicans to act” [emphasis added]. Jackson and LaHood even title their press release, “We Can’t Wait.”
‘What do we want? Energy independence! When do we want it? Now!’ Even if that means trashing the separation of powers, the essential constitutional foundation for accountable government.
[click to continue…]
Earlier this week, House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) sent letters to three Obama administration officials regarding the veracity of their testimonies at an October 12 subcommittee hearing on the administration’s fuel economy policies.*
Issa’s letters — to National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) Administrator David Strickland, EPA Assistant Administrator for Air and Radiation Gina McCarthy, and EPA Director of Transportation and Air Quality Margo Oge — are identical in content.
The gist of the letters is that each administration witness denied under oath that EPA and California’s greenhouse gas emission standards are “related to” fuel economy standards, whereas in fact, according to Issa, “regulating greenhouse gases and regulating fuel economy is a distinction without a difference.”
This matters for three inter-related reasons: (1) EPA is currently regulating fuel economy by setting motor vehicle greenhouse gas emission standards even though the Clean Air Act provides no authority for fuel economy regulation; (2) EPA in June 2009 granted California a waiver to establish motor vehicle greenhouse gas emission standards despite the Energy Policy Conservation Act’s (EPCA’s) express prohibition (U.S.C. 49 § 32919) of state laws or regulations “related to” fuel economy; and (3) the California waiver, by threatening to create a market-balkanizing “regulatory patchwork,” enabled the Obama administration to extort the auto industry’s support for EPA’s new career as greenhouse gas/fuel economy regulator in return for California and other states’ agreement to deem compliance with EPA’s greenhouse gas/fuel economy standards as compliance with their own.
As I will demonstrate below, greenhouse gas emission standards are highly “related to” fuel economy standards, and the administration witnesses cannot possibly be ignorant of the relationship. Do their denials of plain fact rise to the level of perjury? [click to continue…]
On Monday, I noted that Team Obama plans to set new-car fuel-economy standards for model years (MYs) 2017-2025, a nine-year period, despite the fact that the authorizing statute, the Energy Policy Conservation Act, 49 U.S.C. 32902(b)(3)(B), restricts the setting of fuel-economy standards to “not more than 5 model years.” No matter how hard or long government lawyers squint at the text, 5 does not mean 9. In the words of House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), the standards proposed for MYs 2022-2025, which reach 54.5 mpg in 2025, are “outside the scope of law.”
Since writing that post, I have learned that Team Obama will try to finesse the legal problem by basing the MYs 2022-2025 fuel economy standards solely on EPA’s authority to set emission standards under CAA Sec. 202. This is Bizarro World jurisprudence.
EPA will be setting de-facto fuel-economy standards, pretending that GHG standards are not fuel-economy standards, but specifying CO2 reduction percentages that the agency avows, and everybody knows, convert directly into percentage increases in fuel economy.
Nobody but the judicial activists who gave us Massachusetts v. EPA can say with a straight face that when Congress enacted CAA Sec. 202, it meant to transfer the power of setting fuel-economy standards from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) to EPA. Nor would any non-Bizarro lawyer contend that CAA Sec. 202 authorizes EPA to set fuel economy standards as many years into the future as the agency sees fit, despite EPCA’s explicit limit of “not more than 5 model years.”
This post updates my June 14 post on the mantra intoned by EPA, the California Air Resources Board (CARB), and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) that EPA/CARB’s greenhouse gas (GHG) motor vehicle emission standards are “harmonized and consistent” with NHTSA’s fuel economy standards.
EPA Associate Administrator David McIntosh recently sent written responses to questions from House Energy and Commerce Committee members following up on a May 5, 2011 hearing entitled “The American Energy Initiative.”
In a nutshell, EPA defines “harmonized and consistent” as “whatever we say it is.” [click to continue…]
RSS Updates 
RSS E-Mail Updates 
CEI.org