New Study: How Obama’s EPA Is Undermining State Participation in Clean Air Act Policy Making

New Study: How Obama’s EPA Is Undermining State Participation in Clean Air Act Policy Making

Report Proposes Congressional Fixes

WASHINGTON, Sept. 2 — A report published today by the Competitive Enterprise Institute demonstrates that when it comes to the expansion of federal power in environmental policy making, the Obama administration stands in a class all its own.

“President Obama’s EPA has imposed 51 takeovers of state Clean Air Act programs, while the previous three administrations accounted for a grand total of only five,” said CEI senior fellow William Yeatman, author of the report, How the Obama Administration Is Undermining Cooperative Federalism under the Clean Air Act.”

The paper explains how 98 percent of Obama-era Clean Air Act federal implementation plans (“FIPs”) are of dubious legitimacy, and further shows how under the Obama administration the EPA has effectively replaced state participation with that of environmental special interests, like the Sierra Club and the Natural Resources Defense Council, in the implementation of the Clean Air Act. Finally, the paper proposes a number of legislative solutions to reestablish Clean Air Act cooperative federalism as the Congress intended it.

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