At EPA overregulation is the name of the game.

The latest is EPA’s proposal to drastically tighten its standard for atmospheric ozone which would raise energy prices, kill jobs and provide Students EPA Ozone 5 closelittle or no benefit to the environment.

CFACT senior policy analyst Bonner Cohen, Ph.D. and CFACT Collegians members Hunter Derensis and Wesley Long of our George Mason chapter testified yesterday in Washington D.C. at EPA’s hearing on its proposed ozone rule.

CFACT Collegians to EPA I:

Drastically tightening the ozone standard as EPA proposes would make work for bureaucrats, but cost many private sector jobs while providing no meaningful benefit to the environment. Certainly no benefit sufficient to justify the tremendous cost.

Currently much of the nation does not meet the 75 parts per billion standard, yet our air quality continues to improve. EPA should work to make the 75 PPB standard work.

EPA’s proposal to tighten the ozone standard to 65 or even 60 PPB will cost jobs in the in the counties that have already met the current standard as well as the many counties whose hard work has them about to meet the standard.

The US labor participation rate remains mired at its lowest level in 35 years. Teen-aged and minority unemployment is stuck at horrific levels. This is a terrible time to destroy jobs across the country.

EPA does not even consider the cost of providing public services to the many people who will lose their jobs under its harsh new ozone standards.

People of my generation hope to find good jobs so we can repay our student loans, build meaningful careers and reach for the American dream. Destructive regulations like this will place that dream out of reach for far too many of us.

I urge EPA to reconsider this rule. The current standard allows for clean air and prosperity both. Our air will breathe much sweeter with a job.

CFACT Collegians to EPA II:

EPA’s proposal to tighten the ozone standard to 65, or potentially even 60 parts per billion is unnecessary regulation that will do little if anything to improve air quality in the United States. It will, however, do irreparable harm to both American business and labor.

The National Association of Manufacturers recently released an economic analysis which suggests that this proposed tightening of our nation’s ozone standard will cost an estimated $270 billion annually.  Taken together with other unneeded, expensive, and all too often punitive regulations that EPA has proposed or has in its pipeline, and we are talking about a crushing, unacceptable negative impact on the U.S. economy.

Bonner Cohen EPA OzoneEPA has failed to weight the tremendous costs against the negligible benefits these standards will produce. The Clean Air Act requires the EPA’s Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee to produce an evaluation of the adverse effects, including economic impact, of attaining and maintaining a tighter standard. Despite repeated requests from Congress, EPA has failed to produce this evaluation.

Senator David Vitter and Representative Lamar Smith, both of whom hold leadership positions in the new Congress, stated last July that, “EPA and CASAC do not get to pick and choose which parts of the Clean Air Act they choose to follow. Their continued disregard for this critical statutory mandate highlights a systemic bias at the Agency.  It is careless and unacceptable to move forward with this rule making, defying both Congressional requests and statutory language. Transparent advice on any and all adverse effects of the proposed ozone standard is essential to the credibility of a new standard and the ability of our states to develop implementation plans to carry out these regulations.”

My fellow college students and I hope to someday find jobs in a nation that is clean and prosperous, both. We also hope for an America in which our government officials respect the rule of law. EPA should cooperate with and cease expanding its power beyond the intentions of the Congress that passed the laws your swore to faithfully administer.

Students EPA ozone 2