Earlier this week, in a Washington Post article, it was made quite clear that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has decided that carbon dioxide endangers human health, setting in motion a scheme to launch a program of federal regulation of carbon dioxide emissions that will kill American jobs:
For my home state of Michigan, which unfortunately holds the national record for loss of jobs and unemployment, this is just another kick in the gut. This time the blow comes directly from Obama Administration bureaucrats in the EPA where they are preparing to do an end-run around Congress and adopt “cap and trade” rules to regulate carbon dioxide as a pollutant. The problem is that this regulation will kill more American jobs, raise energy prices and deal another devastating blow to our state and national economy.
The last thing the working families of Michigan and America need are more job-killer regulations from Washington bureaucrats who sit behind their desks and run taxpayer-funded calculators with no real sense of how they impact the daily lives of those working families.
Washington couldn’t give China or India a better Christmas present than this heavy-handed regulatory structure on American job providers. China and India both have said they won’t cripple their own economy this way, and they are coming hard and fast after America’s manufacturing jobs – those very jobs that are the foundation of the economy for our middle-class working families.
Cap and trade was a bad idea when Congress tried to ram it through earlier this year and it is an even worse idea from an Administration regulatory agency.
Jobs are the lifeblood of our American economy, and we ought not be holding our own heads underwater until our economic future drowns in a regulatory flood.
Representative Mike Rogers of Michigan serves on the House Energy and Commerce Committee and represents a district where manufacturing is a major job source for the people of Michigan.
