The Letter: Incoming Republican House Begins Deregulation Attack – Polluters Target EPA and Global Warming

Tea Party Drunk House Republicans Take a Page out of Christie’s Policy Book

Today Propublica reports that incoming House Republicans are working with corporations and polluters to rollback regulatory protections.

Taking a page out of Governor Christie’s playbook, powerful new House Oversight Committee Chair Darrell Issa wrote a letter to 150 corporations seeking regulatory rollback recommendations. As in NJ, the focus is on environmental regulations, and global warming in particular.

Readers here will recall that the Christie Transition Team also sought corporate rollback recommendations, with the help of the NJ Chamber of Commerce, and the Christie Red Tape Review process did the same thing.

Congressman Issa is doing the same thing that Christie did. We wrote about that back on Nov. 14, 2009:

“According to NJBIZ,

Assembly Republican Executive Director Rick Wright said the transition team is interested in hearing from businesses about how regulations affect them. He encouraged the audience at a New Jersey Chamber of Commerce breakfast Friday morning to show the transition team “the horrors that they need to hear about” regarding regulations’ effect on businesses.

The Republican House attack is based on the same sham allegations of alleged huge negative economic impacts and destruction of jobs used here in NJ by Christie.

The republican/corporate strategy is to manufacture uncertainty and reject science.

Propublica reports:

Rep. Darrell Issa, has sent letters to more than 150 businesses, trade groups and think tanks calling for their input on which regulations are burdening them and hurting jobs [2], Politico reports. From the text of the letter [3], which NBC has posted:

The Committee on Oversight and Government Reform is examining existing and proposed regulations that negatively impact the economy and jobs.

In fiscal year 2010, federal agencies promulgated 43 major new regulations. These regulations ranged from new limits on effluent discharges to new rules for Nationally Recognized Statistical Rating Organizations. The new limits on effluent discharges from construction sites will cost $810.8 million annually resulting in the closure of 147 construction firms and the loss of 7,257 jobs. …

The National Association of Manufacturers and the National Petrochemicals and Refiners Association, two groups that received letters, told Politico that in their responses to Issa they pointed to new EPA greenhouse gas rules as an example of burdensome regulation.

Yet the facts are just the opposite: regulations provide net economic benefits and create jobs:

According to the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) thirteenth annual Report to Congress on the benefits and costs of federal regulations:

The estimated annual benefits of major Federal regulations reviewed by OMB from October 1, 1999, to September 30, 2009, for which agencies estimated and monetized both benefits and costs, are in the aggregate between $128 billion and $616 billion, while the estimated annual costs are in the aggregate between $43 billion and $55 billion.

Just like House Republicans, Christie Executive Order #2 explicitly calls for “regulatory relief”.

The Governor has dodged accountability thus far for that policy – from press (who have never even mentioned the phrase “regulatory relief“) and most Democrats in the Democratic controlled Legislature.

Will House Republicans get away with this in Washington too?