There is much to love about the energy plan Texas Gov. Rick Perry released last week. He proposes an immediate moratorium on new regulation, expanded energy exploration on federal lands, and the creation of 1.2 million jobs in the process.
A fact sheet distributed by the Perry campaign said he plans to: “Dismantle the Environmental Protection Agency in its existing state, and rebuild an organization that addresses issues requiring national or regional solutions rather than state-specific issues.”
And according to National Review, he plans to do most of this “without going through Congress.”
There is just one problem: That is not possible. You can cut EPA’s budget and redraw the organizational chart all you want, but unless you repeal, or rewrite, the underlying laws that give the EPA its power, Perry will not be able to accomplish much.
Take expanded energy exploration, for example. President George W. Bush’s Interior Department first moved to lease parcels in Alaska’s Chukchi Sea, for exploration, back in September 2005.
Oil companies paid $2.7 billion just to explore these waters in February 2008. The Interior Department approved Shell Oil’s plan to drill exploratory wells in December 2009.
But the next month, environmental groups sued to stop the drilling, claiming Interior’s environmental impact statement, or EIS, required by the National Environmental Policy Act, was inadequate.
In March 2010, President Obama announced, as part of his plan to increase domestic oil exploration, that he was cancelling all future oil leases in the Chukchi Sea, but would continue with the 2005 lease.
But the court case was still pending and in July 2010, a federal judge ruled for the environmentalists. The court found that though Interior’s EIS properly planned for the oil exploration, it did not take in to account drilling for natural gas.
Interior then conducted a new EIS that was released this August. Environmental groups say this EIS is also inadequate, and the case is still pending in federal court.
To recap, the Bush administration first gave the green light for oil exploration in the Chukchi Sea six years ago, but thanks to endless NEPA litigation, not a single drill bit has been dropped into the ocean yet.
A President Perry could not just bypass a federal court order. In order to truly free American resources for development, he would have to work with Congress to repeal or reform NEPA.
The same goes for the Endangered Species Act, the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, and the slew of other laws passed by Congress and signed by previous presidents that are the heart of the EPA’s power.
Reforming these laws would not just be a boon to the energy sector of our economy. The failure of Obama’s stimulus to find shovel-ready projects has also opened many liberals’ eyes to the job-killing nature of existing environmental policy.
As Harold Meyerson, editor at large of the American Prospect, wrote last December:
“Much of the money devoted to boosting private-sector hiring, above all in construction, remains stubbornly unspent, nearly two years after President Obama signed the stimulus into law. … So what happened? … Part of the answer is that big government (the stimulus) was slowed by good-government requirements (environmental impact reports, competitive bidding and the like) that didn’t exist in the ’30s.”
Like Perry wants to do with the EPA, President Reagan tried to devolve much of the federal government’s revenue to the states. But he was unable to convince Congress to give up oversight of its favorite programs.
If Republicans are to succeed where Reagan failed, they must make a strong case for repealing or reforming the specific environmental laws that are slowing our economic recovery. On this regard, Perry’s economic plan falls short.
Conn Carroll is a senior editorial writer for The Washington Examiner. He can be reached at [email protected].
