Government Relations Associate :: Michael Sebring

House Energy and Commerce Committee :: Subcommittee on Energy and Power
HR910 The Energy Tax Prevention Act of 2011

The Republicans in the House are working on overdrive this week marking up bills reversing the governmental intrusions of the Pelosi era. The Energy and Power Subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee marked up HR 910 The Energy Tax Prevention Act of 2011 Thursday. Let’s provide some background on the proposed bill:

1. Henry Waxman and House Democrats passed the Cap and Trade Bill (HR 2454 – The American Clean Air and Security Act) on June 26, 2009 by a slim 219-212 margin, with 44 Democrats voting against
2. The Senate Bill (S. 1733 The Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act) fails to get any support and sits in Committee. Cap and Trade legislation is dead.
3. EPA Administrator under President Obama, Lisa Jackson, filed an ‘Endangerment Finding’ that claims Greenhouse Gases (GHG) negatively affect public health and are therefore able to be regulated by the EPA under the Clean Air Act of 1970.
4. The EPA will require power plants and manufacturing plants to purchase ‘New Source Review Permits’ when they add to GHG totals in the atmosphere beginning as soon as July of this year. This amounts to a tax on GHG emissions.

Chairman Fred Upton’s (R-MI) bill is a simple one. It would define Greenhouse Gases and prohibit the regulation of the emissions of these gases for reasons of ‘climate change.’  The EPA has created out of thin air (no pun intended) a path for regulation of GHG’s where no legislation exists. Unless legislation is passed over the objections (and potential veto) of President Obama, the costs of these regulations will prove to be astronomical in terms of energy prices and domestic jobs and manufacturing.

Republicans are attacking this EPA overstep in two ways. They are seeking passage of the Energy Tax Prevention Act, as described. But they have also inserted ‘riders’ into the HR 1, the Continuing Resolution, which passed decisively through the House a month ago, that would prohibit the EPA from using any funds to regulate GHG’s. ACU supports both of these efforts, in addition to the Roadmap for America’s Energy Future, to forestall EPA’s costly prestidigitation.

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