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Why West Virginia Vs. EPA Could Be A Much Bigger Decision Than Roe

by Liz Peek
June 29, 2022, 3:02 PM
in News and Opinion
Reading Time: 5 mins read
A A
8

w virginia coal industryBelieve it or not, overturning Roe v. Wade may not be the Supreme Court’s most dramatic decision this year.

Instead, its ruling on West Virginia vs. the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) could prove far more consequential. It could literally upend how our government works.

For the better.

West Virginia vs. the EPA asks whether important policies that impact the lives of all Americans should be made by unelected D.C. bureaucrats or by Congress. [bold, links added]

This SCOTUS could well decide that ruling by executive agency fiat is no longer acceptable.

The case involves the Clean Power Plan, which was adopted under President Barack Obama to fight climate change; the program was estimated to cost as much as $33 billion per year and would have completely reordered our nation’s power grid.

The state of West Virginia, joined by two coal companies and others, sued the EPA, arguing the plan was an abuse of power.

By deciding in favor of West Virginia, the court could begin to rein in the vast powers of the alphabet agencies in D.C. that run our lives and return it to legislators whom we elect to create…legislation.

Just as the Supreme Court ruled in Roe v. Wade that abortion laws are more appropriately left up to the people’s elected representatives, it may decide in West Virginia vs. EPA that Congress, and not federal agencies, should write our laws.

A decision that puts Congress in charge would stall environmental rules intended to replace fossil fuels with renewable energy.

Legislators, back in the driver’s seat, would have to debate and go public with the consequences – and costs — of regulations that are now adopted with little buy-in from the public. 

To further their climate agenda, Democrats have been able to hide the full-in price tag of abandoned oil and gas as our main energy sources by creating tax subsidies for renewables.

If consumers had to pay the real cost of wind and solar power, they might not be so enthusiastic about what President Joe Biden calls the great “transition.”

But the case goes beyond environmental regulations.

A ruling in favor of West Virginia would reverse a decades-long trend in which Congress has handed off to federal agencies decisions our legislators refuse or are unable to make.

The usurping of authority by D.C. bureaucracies began with the New Deal in the 1930s when an ambitious President Franklin D. Roosevelt led the way by creating the TVA, the WPA, and a total of 69 other offices and executive branch agencies to do his bidding.

The process occasioned Democrat Al Smith to complain that he was “submerged in a bowl of alphabet soup.”

Restricting the power of the alphabet soup authorities might require that our representatives and senators actually do their jobs, allowing less time for posturing and passing pointless dead-on-arrival bills.

They might have to show up more than half the days in the year, for instance, which is the current norm.

It could, for sure, derail the ambitions of Joe Biden, who won no significant majority in Congress and appears incapable of “working across the aisle,” though as Candidate Biden, he argued that ability was one of his strongest credentials.

In addition to broad environmental rules that might come under new scrutiny, subsequent suits might challenge labor laws written by the NLRB, consumer protection edicts from the CFPB, and regulations put in place by the FDA, the CDC, and the entire host of agencies that have immense – many would say excess – power over our lives.

But initially, the ruling would deep-six the Biden administration’s ambition to kill off the coal industry, which is why West Virginia, our nation’s second-biggest coal-mining state after Wyoming, brought the suit, along with Westmoreland Mining Holdings, North American Coal Corporation, and others.

Like Obama, Biden wants to effectively shut down our fossil fuel industries that provide cheap, plentiful, and reliable energy and that are the envy of the world.

His “Build Back Better” plan incorporated $550 billion in programs aimed at curtailing emissions, including significant portions of Bernie Sanders’ Green New Deal.

Obama’s approach was to reinterpret the 1970 Clean Air Act to allow a nationwide cap-and-trade regimen, requiring power plants to offset emissions by investing in other low-carbon facilities.

Congress did not alter the Clean Air Act language to permit the Clean Power Plan; the Obama White House simply grabbed it as a way to further their climate ambitions.

The courts decided the CPP constituted executive overreach and put the plan on hold. Subsequently, the Trump White House rescinded the program.

This back-and-forth highlights an obvious problem with government-by-alphabet soup. Successive administrations can easily change the rules by which such agencies operate.

Policymaking, therefore, is erratic and inconsistent. Especially in the power arena, where new facilities can take years to build and the impact on the general population can be profound, this is a costly and inefficient way to govern.

Political parties rise and fall, to be sure, and can also change the nation’s direction.

But matters of consequence should be argued in the public forum and not buried under the almost 100,000 pages of new rules and regulations published during Obama’s last year in office, for instance.

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia once wrote in a decision, “We expect Congress to speak clearly if it wishes to assign to an agency decisions of vast ‘economic and political significance.”

That limiting guidance appears to have support from the conservative justices on the court today.

If the court launches a widespread curtailment of governing by an executive agency, as it should, we will see more protests and renewed cries to “Pack the Court,” including from members of Congress.

After all, they’ll have to get to work.

Read more at Fox News

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Comments 8

  1. Dave O says:
    3 years ago

    “Especially in the power arena, where new facilities can take years to build”
    Not just power, but all industries. In oil refining, a major project has a 5-year cycle from conception to on-line. Keep that in mind when you hear Biden say to Oil Executive that we need more refining capacity because government regulations have caused the closure of so many refineries.

  2. Spurwing Plover says:
    3 years ago

    The EPA just found out there is a Limit to the use of power as we have the U.S. Constitution who Liberal Democrats want replaced with UN Treaties

  3. Pig ZIZ Pigs says:
    3 years ago

    And maybe it should UPEND everything.

    Who are bureaucratic jerks to question or rule on anything?

    They are NOTHING !

    At best , they are subterfuge jerks who make and enforce decisions
    that the elected officials who have the obligation to make such
    are too cowardly to do so

    This is what’s wrong with the concept of
    ” ADMINISTRATIVE GOVERNMENT”

    It is only a way of imposing dictatorial fiat
    without recourse to legislative approval
    without recourse to popular approval.

    So begins “socialism”

    So begins COMMUNISM
    or any other form of

    AUTOCRACY

  4. Randy Verret says:
    3 years ago

    Good article. I could not agree more with the author. As a long time regulatory practitioner, it’s time to “reign in” the administrative agencies and return the act of legislating back to Congress. Many of these issues, like the Clean Power Plan, are way too consequential for the public to not have a full understanding of the risks & rewards associated with the program. When you can’t hide within the agencies or rely on the courts, you have to defend your ideas & your policies and can be held accountable by the voters. Anyone who is fair minded & well informed has NO FEAR of the democratic process…

    • Russell Johnson says:
      3 years ago

      The problem with regulations is they are made by unaccountable bureaucrats and have the same weight as laws. Brandon has weaponized all cabinet agencies to de-facto push the green agenda. What you say about legislation is true in theory but not in reality. Bills are too large and over-reaching to actually know what they cover–this makes all federal laws intellectually dishonest–“we have to pass the bill to see what’s in it”!!!!! It’s time to stop hidden agenda legislation……..

      • Randy Verret says:
        3 years ago

        Well, I certainly agree with your point about “oversized” legislation. Critical part of getting that aspect back under control, as well.

  5. Barry Bateman says:
    3 years ago

    Perhaps politicians will be made to stop lying about one hundred years of the biology of CO2 and how it makes coal, oil, and gas THE ONLY GREEN ENERGY. Because only fossil fuels recycle dangerously low levels of CO2 to make the environment greener, stronger, more drought tolerant, and more abundant. Perhaps they’ll be forced to quit lying about climate and recognize CO2’s role in life on our planet!

    • Dave O says:
      3 years ago

      To your point, burn fossil fuels and what do you get? CO2 and water. What do plants need to grow? CO2 and water.

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