Transparency in Regulatory Analysis of Impacts on the Nation Act of 2011

Floor Speech

The House in Committee of the Whole House on the state of the Union had under consideration the bill (H.R. 2401) to require analyses of the cumulative and incremental impacts of certain rules and actions of the Environmental Protection Agency, and for other purposes:

* Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. Chair, today's legislation continues the majority's relentless assault on the Clean Air Act and our nation's public health.

* Let's be clear: clean air is not--and has never been--the enemy of economic growth. If history has taught us anything, it is that a healthy environment and a healthy economy go hand in hand. Since 1970, the Clean Air Act has reduced air pollutants by 60 percent while the economy has grown by over 200 percent, with economic benefits expected to reach $2 trillion by 2010--exceeding costs by more than 30 to 1.

* Rather than building on this bipartisan record of cost-effective environmental achievement, today's legislation proposes to block two of the most important Clean Air Act rules in decades: the mercury and air toxics rule and the cross-state air pollution rule.

* The proposed mercury and air toxics standards would prevent more than 90% of the mercury from coal-fired power plants to be emitted into the air by 2015--and it would reduce fine particle emissions by 29 percent. More than half of the nation's coal-fired power plants already deploy the technology necessary to meet these standards, whose adoption will prevent 17,000 premature deaths and 120,000 cases of asthma a year.

* The long overdue cross-state air pollution rule would require 27 upwind states to reduce their sulfur dioxide emissions by 75 percent and their nitrogen oxide emissions by 54 percent. These reductions will prevent an additional 34,000 premature deaths and 400,000 cases of asthma each year and the ``good neighbor'' principle it represents is especially important to downwind states like my home state of Maryland, which currently must bear the brunt of air pollution that blows in from other states.

* The economic and public health benefits from both of these rules far outstrip the cost of the pollution control technology necessary to achieve them--a fact the one-sided ``study'' in this legislation is deliberately designed to obscure. And the pollution control technology itself will drive investment and job creation for professionals like engineers, electricians, pipefitters and boilermakers whose expertise and labor will be needed to install it. It's a clear win for our economy and a clear win for our public health.

* I urge a no vote.

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