Boxer: EPA climate delay bill could pass, but would be rejected by Obama

By Andrew Restuccia - 01/05/11 04:38 PM ET

One of the Senate’s most liberal lawmakers signaled Wednesday that there may be enough support there to pass legislation delaying the Environmental Protection Agency’s efforts to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.

But Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), one of the strongest advocates in the upper chamber for reducing the country’s greenhouse gas emissions, warned that such legislation, if passed, would likely be rejected by President Obama. She also said attempts to delay EPA’s climate change authority would be met with legal challenges.

“I don’t think they’ll vote to repeal the endangerment finding — I think what they’ll probably do is say let’s delay the rule,” Boxer said. “And that would probably become a court case.”

The endangerment finding, which says that greenhouse gas emissions endanger human health and welfare, compels the EPA to regulate the emissions. Overturning the finding would take away the agency’s climate change regulatory authority. Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) has called for a delay in EPA’s climate authority, while Republicans have said they want to outright block the agency from regulating greenhouse gas emissions.

“If they pass something like that I don’t think it would pass eventually because I don’t think the president would sign it,” Boxer said, adding that the bill likely won’t be able to gain the 67 votes necessary to overcome a veto. “I don’t see 67 votes in the Senate to take away the protections of the people from dirty air or water.”

Rockefeller has said that he will reintroduce legislation that would delay by two years EPA’s ability to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. A last-ditch attempt to have a vote on the bill at the end of the last Congress failed, after Republicans pulled their support for the measure.

Republicans, led by incoming House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.), are hoping to pass legislation that would either outright block EPA’s authority or delay it until the relevant legal challenges snake their way through the courts.

The EPA has already begun to phase in limits on carbon pollution from new facilities, and plans to impose greenhouse gas standards on power plants and refineries in 2012.