JONATHAN CHAIT FEBRUARY 17, 2011
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House Republicans have voted to slash 80% of the budget from the E.P.A. department collecting emissions data from corporations:
House lawmakers voted Wednesday evening to drastically reduce the budget of an Environmental Protection Agency program that collects data on greenhouse-gas emissions from U.S. companies, as part of Republicans' continuing push to reduce the regulatory reach of the agency.
Lawmakers successfully reduced funding for the program to $3.2 million from its current funding levels of $16 million.
It's better not to know, apparently.
Of course, this is a piece of the party's attack on the Environmental Protection Agency's authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.The thing that nobody is picking up on yet is that this authority is highly popular:
A new bipartisan national survey of likely 2012 voters finds American voters at odds with those in Congress pushing to strip the Environmental Protection Agency of its authority to update air pollution standards, including Carbon Dioxide.
An overwhelming bipartisan majority wants the EPA to set stricter limits on air pollution, with about three-quarters of voters backing tougher standards on Mercury, smog and Carbon Dioxide as well as higher fuel efficiency standards for heavy duty trucks.
More important, voters explicitly reject Congressional efforts to stop the EPA from updating these standards both as a whole and in a debate specific to Carbon Dioxide standards. After a balanced debate on the issue, with language based on that recently used by supporters of Congressional action, a two-to-one majority opposes Congressional action to stop the EPA. This includes a vast majority of independents who, on this issue, look much more like Democrats than Republicans.
I'm not sure why this gained more attention as a policy matter or as a potential political issue. Here's my guess. Cap and trade couldn't get over the hump in the Senate, and its public support was shaky. Policy elites understand that EPA regulation is a second-best method to limit carbon emissions. Therefore, they assume EPA regulation is less popular than cap and trade.
But it isn't. The public likes the EPA and hates Congress. People also have a poor understanding of costs and trade-offs, and will often approve of measures with hidden rather than explicit costs. In any case, the Republican assault on the EPA is highly unpopular, and I don't understand why Democrats aren't raising the profile of this issue.
6 comments
Ostriches. By the way, the reason cap and trade was rejected was because members of the T Party did not want to pay tax every time they exhaled carbon dioxide.
- Nusholtz
February 17, 2011 at 3:27pm
I think EPA regulation of the CO2 is a lot better than cap-and-trade. Putting a price on carbon just seems very portentous, like air for sale. Soon there may indeed be a price on O2, and hell H2O is getting there as well. I much prefer a strong regulatory regime on this gas that is wreaking havoc from the Himalayas and Russian forests to the Gulf of Mexico. Will we act once all our coral reefs are erased and it is impossible to replenish our fisheries? Or until all the mountains of Appalachia are toppled and Alberta, Canada become an oil sand wasteland? Regulation won't kill the polluting industries, they'er too powerful and impervious to economic downturns to be hurt in any substantial way, but it can ignite an innovation spree in clean technology. Once pollution can be accounted for in some way, and regulation is the only way because it will be backed by lots of evidence and obviously has the approval of the public, then I say regulate, regulate, regulate. However, the EPA keeps delaying their findings. Prob after the debt-ceiling cools down a little. ....
- RedState
February 17, 2011 at 4:43pm
Can we get the Democratic leadership to call for a retreat somewhere and try to get our Congresspeople on the same page? There will be those who resist such coordination, who are more to the starboard than are most Democratic senators and representatives, but this still seems like it might be a useful undertaking.
- liberalref
February 17, 2011 at 6:04pm
Let the Republicans shut down the government. Stop paying soldiers, stop flying aircraft. Stop the remittances to the states. Obama should just print money in defiance of the law so that we don't have to empty Federal prisons and declare that he has inherent authority, defying the Supreme Court to stop him. Let's have an emergency already so that these idiots who think that the Federal government is nothing but waste can rediscover just what it is that the government does. What we need is Obama and the Democrats to get their act together and display some balls. Big balls. Really big balls. The country will back them. And if it does not, then they should simply step aside, declare that they abhor the Republican cuts, but that in a democracy the people are entitled to the government they demand. The WORST possible thing to do is to share political responsibility with the Republicans. Bipartisanship is exactly what we DO NOT NEED HERE. The idiot right campaigned on this shit. If the Democrats do their utmost and cannot gain public support, then the Republicans should have to take sole political responsibility for this crap, just as the Dems had to accept sole political responsibility for ACA. Can the Democrats not for once learn how to play the game of politics?
- roidubouloi
February 17, 2011 at 7:24pm
In other words, if the Democrats cannot force the Republicans to cry uncle, which I believe they can with a display of sufficient will, then the Democrats should let the Republicans cut whatever they want while excoriating them for it relentlessly. Campaign on nothing but for the next two years and see if the public really wants these cuts. Every single thing that goes wrong in the country should be attributed to the Republican insanity. Then you either crush them at the polls and bring sanity back to government or you don't. That is what democracy is about. The Democrats simply refuse to accept that they must win the political battle, the battle for public opinion, in order to govern. They think their good policies are sufficient. Well, their good policies are worthless unless they are prepared to fight for them politically and win. Let's get on with it. Fight the political battle, the battle for public opinion, as hard as you can and then live with the outcome. But for god's sake, FIGHT!
- roidubouloi
February 17, 2011 at 7:31pm
You have to hammer this message day and night. I was shocked when I tuned into some right-wing hack on talk radio talking to some moron TP Freshman Congressman who said he wanted to "take an ax to the EPA." I was shocked at how brazen and well idiotic this man was to be in our National Legistlature. You have to have a narrative about these people and keep hitting them. Stay on message!!! These neandrathals like Steve King are getting away with things like redefining rape. The Democratic Party needs a bull-dog out there hitting them. Perhaps the President needs to be Presidential, but isn't there someone who does not suffer from being too darn nice.
- MikeB.
February 17, 2011 at 7:58pm