GOP raises stakes in Clean Air Act fight

A senior House Energy and Commerce Committee Republican is raising the stakes in the GOP’s looming floor battle against new Environmental Protection Agency air-pollution rules for power plants.

Rep. Ed Whitfield (R-Ky.) is floating an amendment to pending legislation that would mandate longer delays in two rules than the underlying bill already requires.

Whitfield's amendment addresses standards for mercury and interstate emissions that worsen smog and particulate pollution.

It is one of several amendments that various lawmakers want attached to the “TRAIN Act,” or the Transparency in Regulatory Analysis of Impacts on the Nation Act of 2011. The bill would mandate new interagency economic analyses of many EPA rules, and delay the upcoming mercury rule and the recently finalized Cross-State Air Pollution Rule.

It is slated for a vote late this week, and the House Rules Committee will meet Tuesday evening to set the groundrules for debate and decide which amendments will be considered. The White House is already threatening to veto the bill.

Whitfield’s amendment would delay the Cross-State rule for at least three years after the interagency group reports to Congress in August of 2012, and give states at least three years after that for implementation.

His plan would also scuttle the upcoming standards for power plant mercury and other air toxics, and require replacement rules no earlier than a year after the interagency report. Those rules would also have a compliance schedule of at least five years.

Frank O’Donnell, head of the group Clean Air Watch, said the underlying bill and amendment are dangerous in part because they lack any firm deadlines for EPA to issue the rules. He called it a “hair-raising prospect” given the “massive” pollution from coal-fired power plants.

Whitfield chairs the Energy and Power subcommittee. Illinois Rep. Bobby Rush, the top Democrat on that panel, filed an amendment that would add the Council on Environmental Quality, the secretary of Health and Human Services and other health officials to the interagency panel reviewing EPA rules.

It would mandate that the scope of the study include the public health effects of EPA rules and their effect on “clean energy jobs.”