President Postpones Trillion-Dollar Ozone Rule Until After 2012 Presidential Election

Washington, D.C., September 2, 2011 — President Barack Obama on Friday announced that he had ordered EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson to stop work on new national ozone standards until 2013.  This delays until after the 2012 presidential election one of the most economically-destructive new regulations in the Obama Administration’s large arsenal of new job-killing regulations.

“Even President Obama recognizes that his administration’s environmental agenda, with all its new rules and regulations, is a massive job killer that is destroying the economy,” said Myron Ebell, Director of CEI’s Center for Energy and Environment.

“What is shameful about the President’s decision to delay the new ozone rule is that it’s all about improving his chances of being re-elected and has nothing to do with the economic damage that the rule would do,” Ebell continued.  “The fact that the President still wants to go ahead after he gets re-elected with a regulation that has been estimated to cost $1 trillion a year shows that he could care less about the U. S. economy and the millions of people who have lost their jobs.”

The Bush Administration proposed new National Ambient Air Quality Standards for ozone in 2008.  Environmental pressure groups filed suit in federal court on the grounds that the new standards were not low enough.  The Obama Administration’s EPA announced in 2010 that they would propose new lower standards that met the environmentalists’ demands.  The EPA had told the court that the new rule would be published by July 29, but after missing that deadline said that it would be a matter of days or a few weeks before the new rule was finished.