Newt Gingrich made an interesting point in The Washington Examiner (edited for clarity):
The Obama administration has been explicit about how its decision to have the Environmental Protection Agency regulate carbon dioxide as a dangerous pollutant was meant as a threat to Congress.
Its message was clear: Pass job-killing cap-and-trade legislation or accept more onerous (and more job-killing!) “command and control” regulation of the economy by bureaucrats at the EPA.
On “Fox News Sunday” this past weekend, Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass., co-author of the cap-and-trade bill in the House of Representatives, said, “It’s no longer a question … of legislation or no legislation. It is now a question of legislation or regulation” by the EPA.
And last August, Rep. Alan Mollohan, D-W.Va., wrote in a West Virginia newspaper, “It takes more than a simple majority vote of Congress to amend the Clean Air Act.”
When Rep. Todd Tiahrt, R-Kan., attached an amendment to an EPA appropriations bill last summer. The Tiahrt amendment stated:
“… None of the funds made available in this Act or any other Act may be used to promulgate or implement any regulation requiring the issuance of permits under Title V of the Clean Air Act … for carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide, water vapor, or methane emissions resulting from biological processes associated with livestock production.”
In other words, it prohibited the EPA from using the Clean Air Act to regulate the “dangerous” gases routinely emitted from cows.
The amendment was so uncontroversial it was added to the appropriations bill by a voice vote. And when the appropriations bill was voted on, Markey and Mollohan voted “Aye.”
You can read the whole piece HERE.
Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2009 Tags: politicians
