Providing for Congressional Disapproval of the Rule Submitted By the Environmental Protection Agency Relating to ``National Emission Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants: Rubber Tire Manufacturing''
Floor Speech
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Mr. GRIFFITH. Madam Speaker, pursuant to House Resolution 177, I call up the joint resolution (H.J. Res. 61) providing for congressional disapproval under chapter 8 of title 5, United States Code, of the rule submitted by the Environmental Protection Agency relating to ``National Emission Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants: Rubber Tire Manufacturing'', and ask for its immediate consideration.
The Clerk read the title of the joint resolution.
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Mr. GRIFFITH. Res. 61.
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Mr. GRIFFITH. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Madam Speaker, I rise today in strong support of my bill, H.J. Res. 61, a resolution providing for congressional disapproval under chapter 8 of title 5, United States Code, of the rule submitted by the Environmental Protection Agency relating to ``National Emission Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants: Rubber Tire Manufacturing.''
My resolution will repeal this suspect rule that the Biden administration pushed out after the election but before President Trump's inauguration.
This rule was flawed to begin with. It was published on November 29, 2024, after the election of Mr. Trump but before his administration could take office.
Further, as required by the Clean Air Act, EPA performed a risk and technology review specifically on rubber tire plant emissions as recently as 2020. After the risk and technology review, the EPA concluded that the pollutant thresholds and emission regulations already in place were sufficient and protected public health with an ``ample margin of safety.''
Madam Speaker, under the Clean Air Act, this should have been the end of it, as the EPA is only required to review and revise the standards on emissions every 8 years. To make matters worse, the EPA basically said the only way to comply with the new regulation is to buy regenerative thermal oxidizers, which are essentially flares that burn off the smokestack exhaust at the specific tire plants.
These devices are expensive and likely will not be able to be installed within the 3-year Clean Air Act deadline. It is my understanding that the tire industry estimates that it will cost about $100 million to get the regenerative thermal oxidizers ordered, fabricated, and installed and then about $20 million more per year to operate the devices.
While this cost is across several affected plants, these figures are certainly much higher than the EPA's estimates.
I also note that this rule does not affect most of my constituents. I am sure some of my constituents drive from eastern Henry County to work at the Danville Goodyear plant located in the district of my neighbor, Congressman John McGuire, and that facility would be affected.
In the Rules Committee, I was erroneously under the assumption that this might affect my Yokohama Tire plant today. I still submit, Madam Speaker, that it could affect them because what happens at the EPA, if they do it now on the larger producers of tires, et cetera, at some point, they are going to look at doing it at the medium-sized producers.
The Yokohama plant that employs a lot of people in my district, in my hometown of Salem, Virginia, could be affected long term, but currently it affects Danville. Now, that is about 16 miles from the edge of my district. In my area, because it is a rural area, lots of people drive more than 16 or 17 or 18 miles, whatever the number is, to get to a good-paying job like these facilities have that make tires for the American market.
This rule wouldn't be the first time my constituents have seen an environmental rule from the government inflicting economic pain on our rural part of Virginia. Several years ago, an EPA rule ended up closing down a plant in a small town.
In the end, the Supreme Court struck down the rule just a few weeks after the coal-fired plant closed. It was in Glen Lyn, Virginia. A few weeks after the plant was closed by Appalachian Power, the Supreme Court ruled that the EPA hadn't done it right. The rule was improper and it was invalidated by the Supreme Court, but they are not going to come back in and reopen the plant.
Those jobs are lost. The jobs of the people who worked there, who then ate lunch at the local lunch facilities, or who might have bought a car, or might have bought something else there in the very small town of Glen Lyn, no longer did so. As a result, the people there lost their livelihood, their economic resilience because of an erroneous EPA regulation.
The EPA's callous disregard for my peoples' jobs is not forgotten. What happened in Glen Lyn took about a decade. The population dropped, and last year, they turned in their charter to be a town. They are now an unincorporated census area inside of Giles County, and it all started with an EPA regulation that was misguided and improperly done.
I submit, Madam Speaker, that this regulation is probably not properly done, but that is for the courts to decide. We can fix it, though, here in Congress with this Congressional Review Act.
Some on the other side may say, if we repeal this regulation, we are letting tire manufacturers get away with unchecked pollution.
Madam Speaker, I say not so. That is not so. The EPA's National Emission Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants would still exist. All major sources would still have to abide by their Clean Air Act Title V permits and various other Federal and local controls and regulations.
Regardless, if Congress were to pass this joint resolution, rubber tire manufacturers will still be subjected to pollution regulations. The EPA can always come back with an updated hazardous air pollutant standard if they can ever get actual data indicating specific and significant pollution. They don't have that now.
Madam Speaker, I urge all Members to join me in voting in favor of H.J. Res. 61 because it is important for peoples' jobs and for the principle of not doing willy-nilly regulations at the end of an administration in order to pursue something that does not have verifiable data indicating specific and significant pollution.
Mr. Speaker, further, as alluded to in this New York Post article, titled, ``Jen Psaki mocks reporter when asked about Keystone pipeline job losses,'' so-called ``green jobs'' are not plentiful enough to make up for jobs lost because of EPA regulations. [From the New York Post, Feb. 8, 2021]
Washington--White House press secretary Jen Psaki on Monday mocked a reporter who asked when workers on the canceled Keystone XL pipeline would get ``green jobs'' promised by President Biden.
It's expected that up to 11,000 jobs will be lost following Biden's day-one decision to immediately shut down construction of the pipeline that was supposed to carry oil from Canada to Texas--leaving South Dakotans reeling and 1,000 people immediately out of work.
``Where is it that they can go for their green job?'' Fox News reporter Peter Doocy asked Psaki at her Monday afternoon press briefing, referring to Biden's promise to create good- paying union jobs in the green energy sector as his administration attempts to end the nation's reliance on fossil fuels.
``That is something the administration has promised and there is now a gap so I'm just curious when that happens, when those people can count on that?'' Doocy added.
``Well, I'd certainly welcome you to present your data of all the thousands and thousands of people who won't be getting a green job,'' Psaki snarked. ``Maybe next time you're here you can present that.''
``But you said they will be getting green jobs. I'm just asking when that happens?'' Doocy responded, noting a report by the Laborers' International Union of North America that found 1,000 union jobs on the Keystone project would ``immediately vanish.''
Another 10,000 construction jobs expected to be created by the project have also been nixed by Biden's decision.
A prominent union leader and Biden ally, AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka, lashed the decision in Axios on HBO interview Sunday, saying Biden should have also announced where he would replace those lost jobs.
``I wish he hadn't done that on the first day, because the Laborers International was right. It did and will cost us jobs in the process,'' Trumka told Jonathan Swan.
``I wish he had paired that more carefully with the thing that he did second by saying, `Here's where we're creating jobs,' '' he went on, saying he believed Biden knows his announcement was a ``mistake.''
Trumka, a former coal miner, also signaled his skepticism at Biden's plan to transition coal, gas and oil workers to clean energy jobs, saying he was subject to a similar failed policy.
``You know, when they laid off at the mines back in Pennsylvania, they told us they were going to train us to be computer programmers,'' Trumka said.
``And I said, `Where are the computer programmer job at?' `Uh, they're in, Oklahoma and they're in Vegas and they're here.' And I said, `So, in other words, what we're going to be is unemployed miners and unemployed computer programmers as well' '' he recounted.
But Psaki swatted away the criticism and made a vague promise that Biden would put a jobs plan forward in the coming weeks.
``He has every plan to share more details on that plan in the weeks ahead,'' she said when asked how Biden would support workers left jobless by the decision.
Biden's climate czar John Kerry was also condemned by Republicans last month as ``out of touch'' when he suggested that energy and coal workers impacted by climate change efforts could ``go to work to make the solar panels.''
Last month, the Biden administration unveiled its $2 trillion Green New Deal-fueled environmental plan, which includes eliminating coal, oil and natural gas as electricity sources by 2035.
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Mr. GRIFFITH. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Madam Speaker, let me assure you that those of us on this side of the aisle have no desire to make people sick.
The number one test in a community as to whether or not there is a likelihood of being sick or healthy is whether or not the people have a good, strong economy and have a job. What this regulation would do is to take that away.
As I talked about with Glen Lyn, if you start shutting down factories, you shut down towns, and people don't have jobs. Then you will have people who are clearly going to have more issues with their health than they currently have.
Further, in regard to the various things that my colleague said, I have seen it before where the EPA goes out and they create a maximum achievable control technology and they claim, oh, it is out there or it will be soon, and industry tells me it doesn't exist.
Now, in this case, it does exist. It is just very expensive and it would take longer than the Clean Air Act gives them in order to install it. This is where I think we should take care of it instead of letting the executive branch do all of our work for us. They used proxy data and used total hydrocarbons instead of looking at what the EPA is charged with doing, which is the actual hazardous air pollutant. They don't have that data, and when they last checked for that data, they said there was an ample margin of safety.
November 29, they suddenly throw this regulation on the books as a final rule without referencing how the ample margin of safety that was found in 2020 somehow disappeared in a 4-year time period, how it went away. They don't have any data to show actual hazardous air pollutants. They used proxy data. That is not good enough for regulations that could cause the curtailment of tire manufacturing in the United States.
Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Rouzer), my colleague.
Obviously, when, in 2020, the EPA found there was an ample margin of safety, there was no reason for the Energy and Commerce Oversight Committee, which at the time I chaired, to do an oversight hearing on something that appeared to be a matter which on its face would not require new regulation.
The EPA, of course, does things that sometimes are perplexing to many of us. I would submit as well that one would have anticipated they would have used, as they are supposed to, an actual hazardous air pollutant study or standard. Instead, they used a proxy study of total hydrocarbons.
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Mr. GRIFFITH. Reclaiming my time, I would like to enter into a colloquy with the gentleman from Mississippi (Mr. Kelly).
Is the gentleman trying to tell the American people that it is only a minor rule, as one of our colleagues said, it is only a minor rule if it doesn't apply to you?
I yield to the gentleman from Mississippi (Mr. Kelly) for a response.
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Mr. GRIFFITH. Also, if it doesn't take your job?
Mr. Speaker, I recognize none of us wants the world polluted. The gentlewoman indicated that somehow this was going to affect arsenic and lead. I suppose, in a theoretical world, perhaps it could, but there are other regulations on tire manufacturing that may deal with that.
That is not what this Congressional Review Act is about. It is about a regulation that was put into effect because, instead of looking for things like arsenic and lead or actual hazardous air pollutants, the EPA used a proxy measurement and measured carbon dioxide. They didn't use a test to come up with this rule based on arsenic or lead. It was a proxy using carbon.
Further, somebody said earlier, Mr. Speaker, that we were stripping away critical regulations. I would say, Mr. Speaker, if it was so critical, why did the Biden administration wait until November 29 with less than 2 months left in their term? If it was so critical, why did the EPA in 2020 find that there was an ample margin of safety in the regulations that already existed?
Mr. Speaker, this is not about stripping away all regulations on tire manufacturing. It is one specific ill-advised, ill-timed, expensive regulation.
Mr. Speaker, the EPA was under no obligation to do this regulation. They may have been under an obligation to look at unregulated hazardous air pollutants, but nowhere in the statute does it allow for proxy carbon studies.
Hydrocarbons are not listed as a hazardous air pollutant. The plain language, I repeat, does not authorize proxy or surrogate studies to say: Well, we looked at it, and there is a lot of carbon. Therefore, we are going to make specific regulations that cost hundreds of millions of dollars and may or may not cost jobs.
That is not their job. That is the purpose of the Congressional Review Act. It is to rein in unreasonable, improper, or irrational regulations done at the last minute by an outgoing administration or by an incoming team.
This is not something that needs to be on the books to protect health. They did a proxy study. They don't have actual data that shows that this would do any good at all. It will perhaps cause significant curtailment in production at certain facilities of tires made in the United States. It is our job as Members of Congress to prevent this travesty.
Mr. Speaker, I think that the arguments that we have made have now worn out. We have used up the mileage on these arguments. Now, we get to vote ``yes,'' and voting ``yes'' is where the rubber meets the road and gives us a more sound regulatory scheme related to tire manufacturing.
Mr. Speaker, I ask everyone to vote ``yes,'' and I yield back the balance of my time.
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