The Regulatory Difference
There’s been a lot of attention paid, naturally, to what kind of laws a new administration and a new congress might pass — full of thoughts of what can and what can’t get sixty votes in the senate. But of course the president has regulatory authority as well. And some of this is extremely consequential. From yesterday’s Washington Post account of efforts to track and reverse pernicious Bush-era regulatory decisions:
The president-elect has said, for example, that he intends to quickly reverse the Bush administration’s decision last December to deny California the authority to regulate carbon dioxide emissions from automobiles. “Effectively tackling global warming demands bold and innovative solutions, and given the failure of this administration to act, California should be allowed to pioneer,” Obama said in January.
California had sought permission from the Environmental Protection Agency to require that greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles be cut by 30 percent between 2009 and 2016, effectively mandating that cars achieve a fuel economy standard of at least 36 miles per gallon within eight years. Seventeen other states had promised to adopt California’s rules, representing in total 45 percent of the nation’s automobile market. Environmentalists cheered the California initiative because it would stoke innovation that would potentially benefit the entire country.
“An early move by the Obama administration to sign the California waiver would signal the seriousness of intent to reduce the nation’s dependence on foreign oil and build a future for the domestic auto market,” said Kevin Knobloch, president of the Union of Concerned Scientists.
Before the election, Obama told others that he favors declaring that carbon dioxide emissions are endangering human welfare, following an EPA task force recommendation last December that Bush and his aides shunned in order to protect the utility and auto industries.
On this front, simply declaring that the EPA is going to start following existing law rather than all the key appointments being filled by people who see their job as preventing scientists from stiflign the work of agency scientists could make a huge difference. One assumes that in the course of things it really would take major congressional legislation to get the carbon issue squared away, but the EPA’s existing authority to regulate harmful pollution could both accomplish much good in its own right and also serve as a spur and a call to action in congress.
25 Responses to “The Regulatory Difference”
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November 10th, 2008 at 9:09 am
Proofread, proofread PROOFREAD!
The wisdom here is compromised by a badly mangled sentence.
November 10th, 2008 at 9:14 am
Republicans believe in states’ rights — unless that state is California or Massachusetts.
November 10th, 2008 at 9:16 am
“simply declaring that the EPA is going to start following existing law”
yes; an executive that takes as its leading task “to see that the laws be faithfully executed” would be a revolutionary change from the bush years.
in addition to people at epa who want to protect the environment, we might get people at fda who want to make sure our foods and drugs are safe.
maybe even people at justice whose main goal is not to subvert justice?
November 10th, 2008 at 9:18 am
#3–
or oregon, tony. they’ve been hassled both over marijuana and over right-to-die stuff.
there never has been an honest federalist in this country, since the constitution was ratified, nor has there ever been a states’ rights advocate whose primary motivation was not the creation of a smaller feudal state in which they could oppress their state’s citizens without accountability to the nation at large.
November 10th, 2008 at 9:19 am
Perhaps the Obama campaign should give you a low-interest loan to hire an editor as part of the economic stimulus package.
November 10th, 2008 at 9:25 am
First sentence after the quote makes no sense. Maybe it says the opposite of what you meant it to say, or maybe I don’t know what you meant it to say. It’s the sentence where “stifling” is spelled wrong.
November 10th, 2008 at 9:35 am
I’m a big stifligner myself.
November 10th, 2008 at 9:59 am
Compliance by other federal agencies (read Pentagon and Energy) with “existing law” would be an enormous step forward that President O could accomplish with the stroke of a pen, as they say. Add it to the ‘massive infrastructure spending’ agenda being floated rather than continuing to have each Agency and Department decide what to allocate to compliance each budget cycle. This would reverse the push in the Bush years to exempt the Pentagon from compliance with several laws in the name of the GWOT and, errr, clean things up.
November 10th, 2008 at 2:51 pm
That Stifligner Weekly News Letter is pretty interesting, if a little too Gordon Gecko for some tastes.
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