The House GOP on Friday took a step forward in reining in the Obama administration’s method of assessing the cost of carbon dioxide pollution when developing regulations.
The House voted 212-201, along party lines, to include a rider blocking the use of the climate change cost metric to an energy and water spending bill.
The amendment offered by Texas Republican Rep. Louie Gohmert bars any and all funds from being used under the bill to “prepare, propose, or promulgate any regulation that relies on the Social Carbon analysis” devised under the Obama administration on how to value the cost of carbon.
The rider was added to the spending bill less than 24 hours after Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt proposed new rules to dial back the use of the carbon cost metric in EPA regulations.
“Many have complained that the previous administration inflated the benefits and underestimated the costs of its regulations through questionable cost-benefit analysis,” Pruitt said. “This action is the next step toward providing clarity and real-world accuracy with respect to the impact of the agency’s decisions on the economy and the regulated community.”
Critics of Pruitt say his agency purposely downplayed the benefits of reducing carbon emissions to justify his repeal of the Clean Power Plan, the centerpiece of former President Barack Obama’s climate change agenda.
Repealing the Clean Power Plan, and other parts of Obama’s climate action plan, is central to President Trump’s deregulatory strategy to cut costs and expand the economy.
Critics of the administration’s anti-climate change positions pointed out that 22 Republicans on the Climate Solutions Caucus voted in favor of the Gohmert amendment, calling the Republicans out as “climate peacocks,” according to the group Climate Hawks Vote.
“This vote shows, once again, that the only endangered species congressional Republicans care about is themselves,” said R.L. Miller, founder of Climate Hawks Vote. “A majority of the Republicans in the so-called Climate Solutions Caucus have voted to forbid EPA from taking into account the financial benefit to America of reducing carbon emissions and thus lessening the impact of climate change.”
Miller called on the Climate Solutions Caucus to disband after Friday’s vote.
