[Congressional Record Volume 155, Number 81 (Tuesday, June 2, 2009)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5913-S5914]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                             REGINA McCARTHY

  Mr. BARRASSO. Mr. President, I rise today to offer my concerns 
regarding the nomination of Regina McCarthy to be the Administrator for 
the Office of Air and Radiation in the Environmental Protection Agency.
  For the past few weeks, I have been seeking responses from the 
nominee and the administration on their efforts to use the Clean Air 
Act to regulate climate change.
  I have put a hold on her because I have serious concerns about the 
EPA using the Clean Air Act to regulate climate change.
  I want to know the plan that the nominee will implement. I want to 
know how she will protect businesses, farms, hospitals, and nursing 
homes from the effects of the EPA's endangerment finding.
  As you know, the endangerment finding designates CO2 as a 
harmful pollutant to public health under the Clean Air Act.
  The finding's effects on the Clean Air Act will require EPA to 
regulate any building, structure, facility or installation that emits 
more than 250 tons of a CO2 in a year.
  The result would be thousands of lost jobs, with no environmental 
benefit to show for it.
  Hospitals, schools, farms, commercial building and nursing homes will 
be required to obtain preconstruction permits for their activities. EPA 
says this will not occur, that they will use discretion and good 
judgment.
  According to legal scholars, the statutory language in the Clean Air 
Act is mandatory and does not leave any room for EPA to exercise 
discretion or create exceptions.
  The only jobs that will be created are in law firms as the litigation 
bonanza begins. EPA will be sued by environmental groups wanting to 
eliminate exempted sectors. The EPA will also be sued by industries not 
exempted.
  It will, as Democrat Congressman John Dingell stated, be a glorious 
mess.
  I have nothing personal against Mrs. McCarthy. I simply wanted an 
answer to a question, the same question Americans all across our 
country want answered: How are you going to protect them?
  I still do not have a credible answer to this question. I am tired of 
the stonewalling.
  Mrs. McCarthy believes that she can not answer the question until she 
is confirmed by the Senate. That answer, I believe, is not good enough.
  She has also stated that she wanted to be informed of any potential 
lawsuit. She stated she wanted to discuss the issue with the litigants 
in the hopes of convincing them not to sue.
  Government officials can't go around the country trying to convince 
every litigant, whether it be a national environmental group or a local 
group, not to sue.
  I have also posed this same question to the EPA Administrator in the 
hopes that she could provide EPA's plan on behalf of Ms. McCarthy.
  EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson says that she can target what she 
regulates. She claims she will only target cars and trucks.
  That is setting the precedent of picking winners and losers. We do 
not know what standards will be applied to make those decisions. We do 
not know what role politics will play in these decisions.
  Administrator Jackson's statement also ignores the regulatory cascade 
that the endangerment finding and the motor vehicle emission standards 
will certainly trigger.
  Litigators and courts will drive much of this job-killing regulation.
  We have a nominee to head up the EPA's Air Office, Ms. Regina 
McCarthy. We have an Administrator of the EPA and we have a climate and 
energy czar who is supposed to coordinate climate change policy for the 
administration.
  Carol Browner, the climate and energy czar has not been confirmed by 
Congress. We do not know who is developing a roadmap for how to use the 
Clean Air Act to regulate climate change.
  What jobs in what industries will be kept? Which industries will be 
penalized? Who will be held accountable for making these decisions?
  The economic consequences of the ticking timebomb will be 
devastating.
  By the EPA's own estimate, the typical preconstruction permit in 2007 
cost each applicant $125,000 and 866 hours to obtain.
  Ranchers or private nursing homes have no background in this area. 
They will need to hire lawyers. They will need to hire experts. They 
will be taking time out of their day to figure out all this redtape.
  This will create such a fog of uncertainty with investors and small 
businesses. This makes small businesses even riskier to lend money to; 
nobody will know how much this will cost their business.
  With lending having already ground to a halt, this is hardly the 
right move to help our economy.
  According to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, there are 1.2 million 
schools, hospitals, nursing homes, farms, small businesses, and other 
commercial entities that would be vulnerable to new controls, 
monitoring, paperwork, and litigation.
  If even 1 percent of the 1.2 million have to get preconstruction 
permits, that would mean 12,000 new preconstruction permits a year.
  By the EPA's own analysis, if permitting is increased by just two to 
three thousand, this would impose ``significant new costs and an 
administrative burden on permitting authorities.''
  According to the EPA, this ``could overwhelm permitting 
authorities.''
  The net result of all of this will be thousands of jobs lost.
  As I have stated previously on the floor, if the administration can 
not tell us by what legal authority they can pick winners and losers, 
if the administration can not provide economic certainty to lenders and 
businesses, if the administration does not know how they will deal with 
all the thousands of new preconstruction permits, they should take this 
job killing option off the table.
  There appears to be such a frenzy of political pressure from special 
interests to pass something on climate change.
  The pressure has reached the point where enacting any climate change 
policy before Copenhagen is more important than addressing its 
aftermath.
  The thinking is, just get something done on climate change. We will 
deal with the impacts later.
  That's not how you make good policy.
  But that is exactly what is going on here.
  The President's own attorneys, from a host of Federal agencies, have 
expressed concerns with this approach.
  Their concerns were contained in a memo.
  This memo is a well thought out, scientific and legal critique of 
using the Clean Air Act to regulate climate change by the Obama 
administration.

[[Page S5914]]

  It confirms the fears of every small business owner, every farmer, 
school and hospital administrator, both large and small, that the Obama 
administration knows that using the Clean Air Act to regulate climate 
change is bad for America.
  They know it, but for political reasons, they have ignored the 
science, the consequences to our economy and the impact to the American 
people.
  The memo states, ``Making the decision to regulate CO2 
under the Clean Air Act for the first time is likely to have serious 
economic consequences for regulated entities throughout the U.S. 
economy, including small businesses and small communities. Should EPA 
later extend this finding to stationary sources, small businesses and 
institutions would be subject to costly regulatory programs.''
  The document also highlights that EPA undertook no ``systemic risk 
analysis or cost-benefit analysis'' in making their endangerment 
finding.
  The White House legal brief questions the link between the EPA's 
scientific technical endangerment proposal and the EPA's political 
summary.
  EPA Administrator Jackson said in the endangerment summary that 
``scientific findings in totality point to compelling evidence of 
human-induced climate change, and that serious risks and potential 
impacts to public health and welfare have been clearly identified . . 
.''
  But the Obama administration's memo states that this is not accurate.
  The memo actually questions the science behind designating 
CO2 as a health threat stating the scientific data on which 
the agency relies are ``almost exclusively from non-EPA sources.''
  The memo goes on to say the essential behaviors of greenhouse gases 
are ``not well determined'' and ``not well understood.''
  This memo confirms that the administration has so far ignored its own 
advice.
  What is somewhat surprising is that those who express these concerns 
are ridiculed or, even worse, attacked by administration officials.
  In one instance, attempts were made by administration personnel to 
smear the reputation of a career employee at the Small Business 
Administration.
  This was a person who offered a reasonable and thoughtful critique of 
the impact the endangerment finding has on small business.
  This is unacceptable behavior by the administration.
  Strangely enough, not just the authors of the Obama administration 
legal brief, but also environmental groups, disagree with EPA 
Administrator Jackson's position that a targeted approach under the 
Clean Air Act is legal and appropriate.
  The Sierra Club's chief climate counsel stated last year that ``the 
Clean Air Act has language in there that is kind of all or nothing if 
CO2 gets regulated and it could be unbelievably complicated 
and administratively nightmarish.''
  I have warned the administration that groups such as these will sue 
the EPA if the EPA does not capture both large and small emitters. She 
has dismissed such threats. This is despite the Wall Street Journal 
report last month that a representative of the Center of Biological 
Diversity stated her group is prepared to sue for regulation of smaller 
emitters, such as farms, schools, hospitals, and nursing homes, if the 
EPA stops at simply the large emitters.
  I have asked for a plan from the administration on how she will 
address losing court cases if the agency is sued for picking winners 
and losers. Her response in a committee hearing 3 weeks ago is she 
could not share with me any such plans in that forum.
  I have posed the question to the administration: If you can't share 
information with the elected representatives of the 50 States, then in 
what forum, if not a Senate hearing, can you share the information?
  I am confident the majority believes they have a strong chance at 
passing something along the lines of the Waxman-Markey bill this 
Congress regarding climate change. They are hopeful they can get 
something to the President for him to sign. If hope alone could pass 
legislation, we could all adjourn early. But hope is not certainty. The 
negative effects of the endangerment finding on the American economy is 
certain.
  The bottom line is that the nominee, as well as Lisa Jackson and the 
administration, appears to have no credible plan to use the Clean Air 
Act in a way to regulate climate change.
  There is only one responsible choice for us to make. Let us take this 
regulatory ticking timebomb off the table. This is why I plan to 
introduce a bill very soon that will take the Clean Air Act out of the 
business of regulating climate change.
  I wish to give every Member an opportunity to join me in giving the 
Senate and the American people the time we need to forge a sound energy 
and climate strategy, a strategy that makes energy as clean as we can--
and I am talking about American energy--as clean as we can, as fast as 
we can, without raising energy prices for American families.
  Let's develop all of our energy resources--our wind, our solar, our 
geothermal, hydro, clean coal, nuclear, and natural gas. We need an 
``all of the above'' strategy to address our Nation's needs. As Lisa 
Jackson, the EPA Director, stated on a recent trip to my home State of 
Wyoming, ``As a home of wind, coal, and natural gas, Wyoming is at the 
heart of America's energy future.'' That is because Wyoming has it 
all--coal, wind, natural gas, oil, and uranium for nuclear power. We 
have it all, and we need it all. I look forward to working with my 
colleagues, as well as Ms. Jackson, to make that happen.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Iowa.

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