Frank Pallone: “The sponsor of the legislation mentioned the President's coming to visit, but I think if you look at the Statement of…”

“The sponsor of the legislation mentioned the President's coming to visit, but I think if you look at the Statement of Administration Policy, it is quite clear that what the President is essentially saying is that he doesn't want the Congress to pick the winners and the losers. He wants the States--in this case, Pennsylvania--to have the flexibility to make their own decisions. It is not a question of what the President decides. It is clear that he is vetoing this legislation or would veto this legislation because he thinks that the flexibility is already there under the law and that the States should make those decisions rather than having Congress pick the winners and losers. I am not going to read the whole thing, Mr. Chairman, but I did want to just read the section that relates to that, if I could, from the Statement of Administration Policy. It reads: ``H.R. 3797 would create an uneven playing field by picking winners and losers in CSAPR compliance. The bill establishes a special market of CSAPR allowances for EGUs that burn coal refuse and prohibits the trading of allowances allocated to coal refuse EGUs, which would interfere with and manipulate market conditions. By doing so, H.R. 3797 would: (1) economically advantage coal refuse EGUs over other EGUs by giving them allowances that would otherwise have been allocated to others; (2) reduce compliance choices for other State units; and (3) distort the economic incentives of coal refuse EGUs to reduce emissions.…”