Senators Can Protect American Consumers with a Vote for the Murkowski Resolution

Washington, DC- This Thursday, members of the Senate will have the opportunity to protect American consumers from a back door cap-and-trade scheme allowing unelected bureaucrats to regulate carbon emissions. Late last year, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued an “endangerment finding” stating that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases were a threat to “both the public health and the public welfare of current and future generations.” As a result, the EPA now has the authority to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act, which was originally designed to regulate specific pollutants rather than something as ubiquitous as carbon dioxide. 

Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) has introduced a bipartisan resolution of disapproval, Senate Joint Resolution 26, to keep the EPA from implementing regulations before Congress has completed its own deliberations on climate change. Given the current state of the economy and the ongoing climate change debate, FreedomWorks recognizes the Murkowski Resolution as an action necessary to prevent the micromanagement of the energy market at the cost of consumers, small businesses, and the economy as a whole.

The EPA’s effort to regulate greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act would be an unprecedented expansion in regulation, while having virtually no impact on global temperatures. Because carbon dioxide is omnipresent, virtually any economic activity could trigger tough new regulations. Rather than promoting a much-needed economic recovery, these new mandates would hinder economic growth, raise everyday living costs for American families, and push more jobs overseas to countries such as China and India, which have refused to implement costly new regulations on their economies. 

Even more troubling is the EPA’s proposed “tailoring rule,” which would allow the agency to arbitrarily exclude some sectors of the economy from burdensome new mandates, leaving the entire cap-and-trade system vulnerable to corruption and misuse. 

“With a lagging economy and record unemployment rates, America cannot afford the added costs of bureaucratic red tape and arbitrary carbon regulation.” reasoned FreedomWorks President Matt Kibbe. “Tragically, the bulk of the regulatory burden will fall on energy-producing agricultural states and the poor, who struggle to afford the high costs of energy as it is.”

FreedomWorks has worked hard to garner support for the Murkowski Resolution, and will include it as a Key Vote when calculating the FreedomWorks Economic Freedom Scorecard for 2010.

For questions regarding FreedomWorks and the upcoming Murkowski vote, please contact Campaigns Director Brendan Steinhauser at (202)942-7612 or bsteinhauser@freedomworks.org.