Committee on Environment and Public Work

Implications of the Supreme Court Stay of the Clean Power Plan Committee on Environment and Public Work

The stakes are high when it comes to the Clean Power Plan. The EPA, an agency which is charged with protecting human health and environment, is attempting to restructure the entire energy system on imagined legal authority in a manner that will cost billions of dollars, is based on unreasonable assumptions, will increase energy bills, puts grid reliability at risk, and has no impact on the environment. If the EPA can convince the courts to uphold their approach to regulating the utility industry through the means Congress never authorized, then they will take these same arguments and use them to restructure every industrial sector in this country in a manner that appeases the political obligations of President Obama. Neither the Clean Air Act nor the regulatory system was meant to operate this way, and the President knows that. That is why he first attempted to advance his climate agenda through legislation, and when that didn't work, through regulation. Without the requisite support of Congress, the President has tasked unelected bureaucrats who are insulated from the consequences. President Obama's own law professor testified before the House that what the President and his EPA are doing is akin to "burning the Constitution."