GOP to focus on EPA after election

Expecting to emerge from tomorrow’s election with control of the U.S. House of Representatives and possibly the Senate as well, the Republicans are planning to use their newfound power to attack the Obama administration’s environmental policies, particularly the EPA’s attempts to regulate greenhouse gases as a pollutant. The Lansing State Journal reports:

If the GOP wins control of the House this week, senior congressional Republicans plan to launch a blistering attack on the Obama administration’s environmental policies, as well as on scientists who link air pollution to climate change.

The GOP’s fire will be concentrated especially on the administration’s efforts to use the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority over air pollution to tighten emissions controls on coal, oil and other carbon fuels that scientists say contribute to global warming.

The attack, according to senior Republicans, will seek to portray the EPA as abusing its authority and damaging the economy with needless government regulations…

In a recent op-ed article, Rep. Fred Upton of St. Joseph, the ranking Republican on the powerful House Energy and Commerce Committee, declared that the GOP is preparing to “declare war on the regulatory state.”

In 2007 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Clean Air Act does give the EPA the authority to regulate greenhouse gases as they do other air pollutants. The Bush administration did little to use that authority, but the Obama administration has begun moving in that direction.