EPA chief slams bills to block climate rules, affirms Obama's veto threat

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson on Wednesday attacked bills piling up in Congress that would block the agency’s ability to regulate greenhouse gas emissions and reiterated the White House veto threat.

Jackson, speaking to reporters, initially declined to address whether President Obama would veto bills that stop climate rules, but later said that past threats still stand.

“What has been stated from the White House is that the president’s advisers would advise him to veto any legislation that passed that would take away the EPA’s greenhouse gas authority,” Jackson told reporters. “Nothing has changed.”

Jackson defended the agency’s initiatives to regulate emissions from power plants and other facilities.

“Those [bills] would halt EPA’s common-sense steps under the Clean Air Act to protect Americans from harmful air pollution that until now has not been regulated at all from any sources in this country,” Jackson told reporters after testifying at a Senate hearing on drinking-water safety.

She reiterated her view that EPA’s Clean Air Act rules are not a drag on the economy. 

“I want to point out that we already regulate carbon from automobiles, we already regulate it from the really large sources, those that burn the equivalent of a railroad car of carbon a day, and the economy is fine,” Jackson said, adding that regulations help steer investment into the “clean energy economy.”

Several top GOP senators floated a sweeping bill this week that would prevent the federal government from regulating greenhouse gases or addressing climate change through environmental statutes.

Later on Wednesday, House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.) and Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) are expected to float a measure that would specifically block Clean Air Act rules, a House GOP aide said Tuesday evening.

Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.), meanwhile, is pushing legislation that doesn’t remove EPA’s authority for good but would block regulation of greenhouse gases from stationary facilities for two years.

EPA and the Department of Transportation currently administer joint vehicle mileage and greenhouse gas requirements. 

More controversially, EPA has begun phasing in rules that require large new and modified industrial plants to minimize emissions and is crafting broader national emissions standards for power plants and refineries, among other efforts.

Critics of EPA rules say they will hinder the economy.

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