A high-ranking Republican senator said Thursday that he fears that the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) climate rule could give it power to regulate the entire industrial sector.
Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) said that the arguments the EPA makes for why its Clean Power Plan is legal are so far-reaching that they could give the agency unprecedented power if upheld by the courts.
“If 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 the president,” Inhofe said at a hearing of the Environment and Public Works Committee, which he chairs.
“Neither the Clean Air Act nor the regulatory system was meant to operate this way and the president knows that,” he added.
The Supreme Court put the rule on hold in February while it works its way through the court system. The Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit is currently considering the regulation’s legality, but it is nearly certain that its decision will be appealed to the Supreme Court.
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We can't trust the Supreme Court to limit the power of the regulatory leviathan in D.C. An Article V Convention of States is the only way to truly curb the power of non-elected bureaucrats. A Convention of States can propose constitutional amendments that limit the jurisdiction of the EPA and ensure the industrial sector is free to make decisions that are advantageous to the American worker.
