| The policy summit included a session led by Peter Glaser of Troutman Sanders LLP law firm and Harry Alford of the National Black Chamber of Commerce in which Glaser, an attorney who represents electric utility, mining and other energy industry companies and associations on environmental regulation, specifically in the area of air quality and global climate change, told the crowd that "EPA's regulatory trainwreck" is "a term that's now in common use around town. I think everybody should become familiar with it." (See the video here.) Along with the presentations, ALEC published a report called "EPA's Regulatory Trainwreck: Strategies for State Legislators" and provided "Legislation to Consider" on its site, RegulatoryTrainwreck.com. For the public, they created the website StopTheTrainwreck.com.
At the December 2010 summit, Nebraska Senator and former Secretary of Agriculture Mike Johanns presented a talk called "Opening Agricultural Markets by Restraining the EPA and Expanding Trade." His presentation is not online, but it's not difficult to guess what he might have said. Less than one week later, he appeared on the radio show AgriTalk to comment on the very same subject. He said, "The EPA has been on a rant...This is the untold story of this administration... If you think they've been proactive with legislation you should see what they are doing in their departments... They are pushing to the extent of their authority and beyond." And he made it clear to farmers and agribusiness that this was not good for them, saying: "They make the Clinton administration look like shrinking violets on this. I mean, it's just incredible how active this Lisa Jackson and her team has been and it's not positive for agriculture at all, or for the economy."
With the hysteria over the deficit and the need for budget cuts, top Republicans in agriculture like Johanns told the agribusiness community that they hoped to offset any budget cuts with reductions in environmental regulation and increased markets overseas. Johanns hoped to use the Congressional Review Act to rein in the EPA. Simultaneously, Congress and the Obama administration were moving forward on three free trade agreements - S. Korea, Colombia, and Panama.
One week after Johanns went on AgriTalk, the incoming chair of the House Agriculture Committee, Rep. Frank Lucas (R-OK) appeared on the same show, accusing the EPA of going over Congress' head by trying to create laws on its own. When Democrat Rep. Collin Peterson (D-MN), the former chair of the ag committee and not a liberal or environmentalist by any stretch, appeared on the show, he clearly had not gotten ALEC's memo: he defended the actions of the EPA. AgriTalk's host, Mike Adams, continued to make a point of following action against the EPA, ultimately interviewing EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson on the show and expressing distrust of her answers on air afterward.
The anti-EPA rhetoric did not just occur on rural agriculture radio shows - it made it to the floor of the House of Representatives, when Rep. Lucas made a floor speech, critiquing the EPA on February 11. Meanwhile, Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif. asked heads of industry about regulatory burdens they wished to see lifted and received 1,900 pages of responses, many of them about the EPA.
If there is a train analogy to be made, it's not the EPA's regulatory trainwreck, but the non-stop train of government action against the EPA from across the U.S. As noted in ALEC's report that targeted state legislators, action took place on the state level as well as at the federal level. In January 2011, Indiana became the first state to pass a resolution urging Congress to prohibit the EPA from regulating greenhouse gas emissions (by defunding the EPA if necessary), to impose a two year moratorium on any new air quality regulations, and urging the federal government to complete a study identifying all planned regulatory activity by the EPA and its impact on the economy, jobs, and American economic competitiveness.
In February, Michigan, Virginia, and Wyoming followed Indiana's example. (It should be noted that Wyoming state Rep. Thomas A. Lockhart introduced the anti-EPA session at ALEC's December 2010 policy summit.) In March, Texas, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan (again), North Dakota, and Utah all passed resolutions. April and May brought more resolutions from Alabama, Indiana (again), Montana, Iowa, Missouri, and Pennsylvania. Altogether, 14 states passed anti-EPA resolutions, and another 6 introduced resolutions that have not yet passed (Alaska, Florida, Illinois, Minnesota, Ohio, and Oklahoma). |
