Timothy Cama
The Hill
3/19/2015
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is doubling down on his advice that states ignore the Obama administration’s climate rule for power plants.
McConnell sought to reassure governors in a letter Thursday that they would be on firm legal ground and not violating the law if they decline to formulate plans to implement the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) carbon limits.
“The fact is, it is the EPA that is failing to comply with the law here,” McConnell wrote to the National Governors Association, adding that the EPA is going “far beyond its legal authority.”
The proposed rule would require states to use various measures, like improving the efficiency of power plants and reducing power demand, to meet individual emissions targets that the EPA calculated for each state.
But McConnell said the EPA is “overreaching” because it doesn’t have the authority under the Clean Air Act to force states to take most of those actions…
The article continues at The Hill.
Related: EPA is on a ‘constitutionally reckless mission,’ Obama’s law professor testifies
The law professor, who taught President Obama says the Environmental Protection Agency lacks the statutory and constitutional authority to force states to implement plans to cut carbon emissions at existing power plants.
“In my considered view, EPA is off on a constitutionally reckless mission,” Laurence Tribe, a professor at Harvard Law School, said in prepared remarks at a House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Energy and Power hearing on Tuesday…
