New EPA chief: Can everybody please “stop talking about environmental regulations killing jobs?”

What’s more, they’re increasingly getting in the way of state sovereignty, because they know better, of course:

The ALEC report showed that in President Obama’s first term, the number of times the agency has rejected state proposals or taken over state programs has skyrocketed.

“The agency has expanded its own prerogatives, at the expense of the states’ rightful authority,” the report said.

The report looked first at the EPA’s efforts to ensure states comply with the Clean Water Act and Clean Air Act. During the second term of the George W. Bush administration, the EPA rejected state proposals a total of just 12 times. During the last four years, the Obama EPA rejected those proposals 95 times.

The EPA also initiated a total of 19 state-level takeovers in that time, something the EPA rarely did in the years preceding the Obama administration. …

“Sue and settle allows the EPA to replace input from the states with that from professional environmentalists,” the report said. It found the number of sue-and-settle cases has risen from 15 during the second term of the Clinton administration to 48 in Obama’s first term, producing $13 billion in annual regulatory costs.