GOP cheers WH decision to kill ozone rule but wants more

Senior Capitol Hill Republicans are applauding the White House decision to shelve planned smog regulations while reviving their attacks on the White House regulatory agenda.

Their responses — a week before President Obama is slated to give a major speech before Congress on jobs — signal that the ozone decision will not sap GOP attacks on the administration’s agenda.

“This action alone will prevent more job losses than any speech the President has given, and I hope he will listen to the bipartisan calls from across the country to address his administration’s negative impact on job creation,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said in a statement.

But he also noted that “there are hundreds of regulations that even the administration acknowledges will cost America’s job creators billions of dollars.”

House Republican leaders plan to bring a suite of bills to the floor this fall that will delay or soften an array of rules from the Environmental Protection Agency and other departments.

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) applauded the ozone decision and called it “a step in the right direction,” while signaling that the push to kill other rules will continue.

“The House is moving forward with an aggressive pro-growth agenda to remove onerous regulations that make it harder for businesses in this country to grow and create jobs,” he said in a statement.

The White House decision not to toughen a Bush-era smog standard drew cheers from a range of industry groups that say it would have burdened the economy. Environmental groups reacted with bitter disappointment, calling it a gift to big polluters.

“The Clean Air Act clearly requires the Environmental Protection Agency to set protective standards against smog — based on science and the law. The White House now has polluted that process with politics,” said Natural Resources Defense Council President Frances Beinecke in a statement.

EPA plans to revisit the ozone standards in 2013 under the regular five-year review that began in 2008. But it is not clear when a new standard would be finalized.