Dismantle The EPA - Keep The Best; Dump The Rest

Dismantle The EPA - Keep The Best; Dump The Rest



By Dell Hill via Alan Caruba @ Canada Free Press

After 42 years of existence, it’s time for the Congress of the United States to totally dismantle the Environmental Protection Agency (the EPA).  This federal government behemoth, created by President Richard M. Nixon, with the blessing of Congress in 1970, has long since overstayed it’s welcome and regularly functions at the whim of the White House, rather than by Congressional legislation and edict, which was its original duty.

If the President calls the head of the EPA and says “shut down coal fired electric generating plants”, that’s exactly what the agency head does.  There’s no consultation or approval by Congress necessary, which makes the EPA a totally political body of wasted taxpayer money.

The EPA directly employs over 17,000 federal agents and is responsible for paying many thousands more who act as contractors for the agency.  The FY 2012 budget proposal of $8.973 billion represents about a 13 percent decrease from the FY 2010 budget of $10.3 billion and it’s high time this power hungry band of scare mongers goes away.

Alan Caruba, writing at Canada Free Press, has an excellent post up on this very topic.

“To understand how the Environmental Protection Agency operates, one must first understand that it lies all the time.  Its “estimates” are bogus.  Its claims of lives saved are bogus.

It thrives on scare-mongering to a public that is science-challenged, but the science remains and the EPA must be challenged to save the nation from the loss of the energy it needs to function.  It must be challenged to unleash the huge economic benefits of energy resources—coal, oil, and natural gas—that can reverse our present economic decline.

The latest outrage is the MACT rule—an acronym for “maximum achievable control technology” intended to reduce mercury emissions and other trace gases.  The rule is 1,117 pages long.  Its purpose is to shut down coal-fired power plants that generate over fifty percent of all the electricity used daily in the United States of America.

The value of the total benefits asserted by the EPA is alleged to be $6 million.  Not billion, but million.  The MACT rule would force 14.7 gigawatts—enough power for more than eleven million households—to be “retired” from the power grid in the 2014-15 period when the rules take effect.

Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK), the ranking member of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works says, “The economic analysis of the Obama EPA’s MACT paints a bleak picture for economic recovery as it will cost $11 billion to implement, increase electricity rates for every American, and, along with the Cross-State rule, destroy nearly 1.4 million jobs.”

Read Alan’s excellent piece by clicking here.

There’s no doubt that some of the work done by the EPA is beneficial to our health and safety.  However, there’s ample proof that the EPA is a huge waste of taxpayer money and it’s time to face that fact that’s it’s little more than a powerful wing of the White House.

Rather than weakening our national defense by eliminating thousands of military personnel, why not get rid of thousands of unnecessary Environmental Protection Agency employees?

It’s time.