Johanns Moves to Halt Backdoor Cap-and-Trade

March 9, 2011 WASHINGTON – Sen. Mike Johanns (R-Neb.) today spoke on the Senate floor in support of a bill to prevent the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from a back-door cap-and-trade regime that would drive energy cost increases. The Energy Tax Prevention Act would amend the Clean Air Act to explicitly prevent EPA from regulating greenhouse gases, thereby re-establishing Congressional control over the writing of environmental law. The bipartisan bill currently has 43 cosponsors. "Families, farms and businesses are still pulling our country out of a recession, and EPA is bent on implementing a regulatory regime to smother them with a crippling energy tax," Johanns said. "The tack EPA is taking has already been roundly rejected by Congress and far surpasses the agency's legal authority. Unless Congress reasserts its own authority, EPA will impose regulations leading to skyrocketing costs for Americans and ship jobs to our foreign competitors, all for no discernible environmental gain." Background: • The Energy Tax Prevention Act was introduced by Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.). • The budget proposed by the Obama Administration last month declares that it "continues to support greenhouse gas emissions reductions in the United States in the range of 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020, and 83 percent by 2050." Such reductions are similar to those outlined in the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill, yet cap-and-trade was rejected by the Senate in 2009. • The Energy Tax Prevention Act would do nothing to prevent EPA from exercising its established role of ensuring a healthy environment as outlined in the Clean Air Act.