Why the GOP Is Going After the EPA

When Richard Nixon founded the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) by executive order, politicians of all stripes agreed the US needed reforms, even if it cost a small amount of economic growth. Yet, after four decades of the EPA's helping to improve our land, air and water quality, ask whether we need federal regulation and the answer depends on whom you question.

Ask ordinary people in the US and, according to a 2011 Pew survey (pdf), 71% respond, across the political spectrum, that they agree with the statement,"This country should do whatever it takes to protect the environment."

Ask most Republican politicians, some Democrats and the polluting industries that provide them substantial funding, and you'll get a very different answer. And this divergence may be ramping up in the wake ofthe Citizens United supreme court decision, which equated free speech and political contributions.

Republicans returning to Congress after the Labor Day recess have a legislative shopping list running gamut from rolling back "job-killing" regulation to outright abolition of the agency. Republican presidential candidates would similarly strip the EPA of its authority or shut it down. As far as abolishing the EPA goes, Mark Schapiro, author of Exposed: The Toxic Chemistry of Everyday Products and What's at Stake for American Power, tells me, "It's an economic catastrophe to remove incentives and oversight."

Jonathan H Adler, director of the centre for business law and regulationat Case Western Reserve University, has received an award from the conservative Federalist Society for Law and Policy Studies – and yet he writes of the GOP efforts, "opposing the Environmental Protection Agency, by itself, is not a serious environmental policy."

Meanwhile, Democrats co-sponsoring legislation to curtail the EPA include Senators Jay Rockerfeller (West Virginia), Joe Manchin (West Virginia), Claire McCaskill (Missouri) Kent Conrad (North Dakota), Tim Johnson (South Dakota), Ben Nelson (Nebraska) and Jim Webb (Virginia); as well as Congressmen Mark Critz (Pennsylvania), Gene Green (Texas) and Nick Rahall (West Virginia).

And, on 2 September, President Obama, as is his wont, sought to assure critics of his reasonableness by arguing that the EPA unnecessarily burdens US industry. The president said that, while his commitment to public health and the environment is "unwavering", he has ordered the EPA to withdraw its draft ozone national ambient air quality standards in order to "underscore the importance of reducing regulatory burdens and regulatory uncertainty, particularly as our economy continues to recover".

Ground-level ozone is the primary constituent of smog, which leads tolung and heart disease. In June, EPA administrator Lisa Jackson testified before a Senate environment and public works committee (EPW) hearing on the clean air act and public health. In July, she responded in a letter (pdf) to EPW member Tom Carper (Democrat, Delaware) that she had opted to review the 2008 ozone standards, rather than keep them in place until the next mandated review in 2013. The Bush administration standards, which the outgoing president had weakened at the last minute in 2008 and are under court challenge. In Jackson's estimation, those standards are "not legally defensible given the scientific evidence".

Juliet Eilperin, who reports on on science, policy and politics for the Washington Post, called Obama's statement a "win for business". And, according to Eilperin, the forestalled ozone regulation may be joined by delayed "limits on mercury and air toxins, greenhouse gases from power plants, and a range of emissions from industrial boilers, oil refineries, cement plants and other sources".