On the recordOctober 5, 2011
The last time that the Clean Air Act was amended in any significant way was 1990, over 21 years ago. And Congress certainly has the responsibility, from time to time, to look at the Clean Air Act to make changes when we believe changes should be made. And with the current situation in our economy, and the high unemployment and the number of concerns expressed by industries around the country, as well as individuals about the lack of jobs, we made a decision that we would start questioning some of the regulations coming out of the EPA. The gentlelady from Maryland, who is a very effective Member of this body, is suggesting that, in our legislation, that we adopt as a finding the health benefits and costs as computed by EPA. Now, we have difficulty just adopting their health benefits and costs and putting it in our legislation as a finding for a number of reasons. Number one, we don't really know the assumptions that they're using. Number two, many universities and others have questioned the models being used by EPA in computing costs and benefits. And many people have found that there is a lack of transparency in the methodology used at EPA in making many of these calculations. I might also say that, because of that, for example, EPA determined that the cost of these rules would be between $926 million to $950 million; and yet other independent analyses have indicated that the cost would be anywhere up to $3.4 billion.…
