Disapproval of EPA Emission Standards Rule--Motion to Proceed
Floor Speech
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Mr. BARRASSO. Madam President, if the Chair would please give me a warning when 1 minute remains, I would appreciate that.
Today I rise in support of the Inhofe Utility MACT resolution. This resolution protects communities and jobs in the West, the Midwest, and Appalachia, and specifically jobs that depend on coal. These communities depend on coal to heat and cool their homes at an affordable price, to power the factories where they work, and to generate revenue that creates additional jobs.
We are talking about affordable domestic coal that also pays for the mortgages on the family home, the clothes and food for children, and the medical care for grandparents. If the Utility MACT rule is allowed to proceed, it would mandate that virtually no new coal-fired powerplants could be built anymore in the United States, and many still in existence would have to shut down. It is painful to think about all of the folks who will be out of work, their bills mounting, their families losing their homes, and their future looking bleak.
Amazingly, the EPA does not dispute these outcomes. It does not dispute what I am saying. They know exactly what they are doing. Their ideology is more important to them than the living and breathing people of our coal communities.
Just ask the EPA Region 1 Administrator Curtis Spaulding, who was visiting with a group of students in Connecticut. What he went on to talk about was the fact that basically gas plants are the performance standards, which means if you want to build a coal plant, you have a big problem. He said this was a huge decision, when he was talking about these regulations that have come out from Lisa Jackson, the head of the EPA.
He went on to tell this group of students that in West Virginia, Pennsylvania, and all those places, you have coal communities that depend on coal. And to say we think those communities should go away? That is what he said. He said we have to do what the law and policy suggested. He said it was painful--it was painful every step of the way--but they did it anyway.
President Obama's heavy-handed EPA admits these communities in West Virginia, Pennsylvania, and many other States in the West, Midwest, and Appalachia ``will just go away.''
These are chilling words. The EPA is supposed to be about protecting people, protecting their communities, protecting their environment, and protecting their health. With the Utility MACT rule, the EPA is doing the opposite. They are making communities go away. They are hurting communities--communities of families, children, seniors, gone as a result of these regulations. How could one justify these actions?
Well, we are told there are enormous health benefits. They claim enormous health benefits to the public by the issuance of this rule. First of all, how do you protect something if the community is gone? So obviously these folks in West Virginia and Pennsylvania are not the beneficiaries of EPA protection.
Second, the medical benefits of the rule come from reductions in particulate matter in areas of the country that are currently well within healthy thresholds set by the EPA. I will tell you, the EPA is cooking the books.
No, this rule does very little to protect the public health. In fact, it creates a health crisis in this country because of the additional unemployment--the unemployment this rule is going to cause in the West, the Midwest, and in Appalachia.
To highlight the point, on Monday of this week a number of us in the Senate who are physicians, who are doctors, sent a letter to President Obama.
I ask unanimous consent to have a copy of this letter printed in the Record.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in the RECORD,
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Mr. BARRASSO. In this letter, we expressed our concerns about the impending health crisis the unemployment caused by the EPA's policies is having on families, children, pregnant mothers, and on the elderly. The letter reads in part:
We are writing to express our concern that the barrage of regulations coming out of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) designed to end coal in American electricity generation will have a devastating effect on the health of American families. Just before you made the decision to withdraw EPA's plan to revise its ozone standard--a plan which would have destroyed hundreds of thousands of jobs--your former White House Chief of Staff Bill Daley asked the question ``What are the health impacts of unemployment?'' Today, we are requesting that you consider your former aide's question carefully: instead of putting forth rules that create great economic pain which will have a terrible effect on public health, we hope that going forward, you will work with Republicans to craft policies that achieve both environmental protection and economic growth.
And that is the key--``and economic growth''--not economic destruction.
The letter goes on:
As you know, proponents of your EPA's aggressive agenda claim that regulations that kill jobs and cause electricity prices to skyrocket will somehow be good for the American people. We come to this issue as medical doctors and would like to offer our ``second opinion'': EPA's regulatory regime will devastate communities that rely on affordable energy, children whose parents will lose their jobs, and the poor and elderly on fixed incomes that do not have the funds to pay for higher energy costs. The result for public health will be disastrous in ways not seen since the Great Depression.
Later on in the letter we talk about the latest research on the health impacts of unemployment. A doctor from Johns Hopkins who testified last year before the Senate Environment and Public Health Committee explained that unemployment is a risk factor--a risk factor--for elevated illness and mortality rates. In addition, the National Center for Health Statistics has found that children in poor families are four times as likely to be in bad health as other families.
Economists have also studied this issue. On May 13, 2012, in the New York Times, is ``The Human Disaster Of Unemployment.'' That is what this EPA regulation is going to do today, cause additional human disaster for people out of work.
We included for the President a copy of a report I have written called ``Red Tape Making Americans Sick--A New Report on the Health Impacts of High Unemployment.'' Studies show EPA rules cost Americans their jobs and their health. This report contains the latest research from medical professionals from Johns Hopkins, from Yale, and others that show that unemployment causes serious health impacts.
Unemployment has been rampant in this country under this administration, and it has been due in many ways to the mountains of job-crushing redtape from the EPA and other agencies. The EPA's Utility MACT rule will only make things worse for hard-hit areas in the West, Midwest, and Appalachia.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, since 2008 Montana has lost 3,200 manufacturing jobs, Missouri 41,000, Ohio 100,000, Michigan 67,000 jobs lost, Pennsylvania 80,000, and West Virginia 7,000. Each one of these people who lost their job will be subjected to greater risks of cancer, heart attack, stroke, depression. There is a higher incidence, as we know, of spousal abuse, substance abuse in these families. As demonstrated by the latest research, their children will suffer, too, as medical costs pile up, as electricity bills to heat and cool their homes skyrocket, and the cost of everyday living continues to go up. The Utility MACT will only expose thousands more to these risks.
The EPA should immediately stop pushing expensive regulations that put Americans out of work and into their doctor's office. Instead of exacerbating unemployment and harming public health, this administration and this EPA need to work with Republicans--work together in our efforts to implement policies that achieve true health benefits without destroying jobs and, indeed, American affordable energy in the process.
We need to keep American energy and make American energy as clean as we can, as fast as we can, while still keeping good-paying jobs and keeping energy prices affordable. This is a recipe for a healthier, economically stronger country.
I urge a ``yes'' vote for the Inhofe Utility MACT amendment.
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