-By Scott Portman
With a failure to hit the Environmental Protection Agency’s budget anywhere near expectation in the resolution last week, the GOP will likely have to switch its plan of attack on the EPA regulations that are threatening to cost businesses jobs and money in the near future.
The GOP had been pressuring in Capitol Hill on the EPA’s greenhouse gas regulations through multiple attempts and proposals to cut their budget. While republican reps were looking for a 30 percent cut to the budget, the resolution came back with only a mere 16 percent cut to the EPA. Despite the failure to have the budget cut to their liking, the GOP has managed to take part in fights over legislation throughout the early months of 2011 as well.
Senator James Inhofe was one of those responsible for the Energy Tax Prevention Act, which is geared to attack the EPA’s cap and trade tax that allow them to lay costly regulations on businesses over greenhouse gas emissions. Inhofe saw the act as a major positive, saying that “The Energy Tax Prevention Act leaves all of the essential provisions of the Clean Air Act intact, ensuring that Americans will be protected from pollution that has direct public health impacts. It also prevents EPA from twisting the Clean Air Act into a bureaucratic obstacle to growth and expansion.”
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Expect the GOP to continue criticism, fight against EPA”