Political Quotes

“For decades, regulated industry has claimed that EPA rules are not worth the cost. For decades, they've pushed laws and executive orders to require more and more detailed cost-benefit analyses. So now, that's what EPA does for every major rule. EPA conducts a regulatory impact analysis that quantifies and monetizes, to the extent possible, the costs and benefit of each rule. These analyses are based on peer-reviewed science. They're reviewed by the Office of Management and Budget. The analyses are usually a couple hundred pages long. EPA prepares a draft analysis for the proposed rule, which is available for public comment before it is finalized with the final rule. The information about the costs and benefits of the rules helps EPA make a sensible decision about how stringent the standards should be. For example, as a consequence, EPA almost never adopts rules where monetized costs outweigh the benefits. Last year, EPA finalized long overdue standards to cut emissions of mercury and other toxic air pollutants from cement kilns. As it does for every rule, EPA conducted a thorough regulatory impact analysis of cement kiln rules following the process I just described. This analysis found that the benefits of these rules for public health far outweigh the costs to the polluters. That means that, as a Nation, we're far better off with these rules than without them. But now the Republicans aren't interested in the cost-benefit analysis.…”