From MasterResource
By Robert Bradley Jr.
“It is time to stop the EPA from acting like an economic planning agency and instead get it focused on its mission of environmental protection.” (Coalition letter, below)
Executive Orders reflect the party in power. Congress sets the rules for administrative agencies. To this end, a group of 40 free market groups led by the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) sent a coalition letter in support of legislation to reign in the overly politicized, climate-activist U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
The proposed legislation, End of EPA Abuse Act of 2026 ( S. 4931 and H.R. 9453), was introduced by Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) and Rep. Andrew Clyde (R-GA) respectively, with support from twenty state attorneys general.
The letter follows:
Dear Member of Congress:
The undersigned organizations urge you to support the End EPA Abuse Act of 2026 (H.R. 9453 and S. 4931)….
Lawmakers often rightfully criticize federal agency overreach, but rarely are laws passed to stop this overreach. This new bill takes important action and, specifically, it establishes guardrails on the EPA’s use of the Clean Air Act. In recent years, the EPA has sought to expand its CAA authority to levels that defy common sense and the will of Congress. The agency has tried to use the CAA to help kill off gas-powered cars. This includes the Biden administration’s de facto electric vehicle mandate, with an agency estimated compliance cost of a staggering $760 billion. Beyond the cost of the rule is the incredible attack on individual freedom and the harm imposed on the mobility of Americans.
The agency has repeatedly tried to act like the nation’s grid manager through rules that would change how we produce electricity. Threats to the grid and increases in electricity prices have received little to no consideration in the development of the rules.
While President Trump and his appointees at the EPA have done an admirable job using executive authority to try and stop or reverse some of the agency’s most egregious abuses, there is still plenty of litigation to follow and the fact remains that these important reforms could be undone by a future administration with different views of the law.
Unless Congress does something, the EPA will continue to push well beyond the boundaries of its CAA authority and take its chances in court. The Supreme Court did strike down the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan, but expecting the judicial branch to stop all the abuses is unwise and ignores the lawmaking role that Congress has under the U.S. Constitution.
The End EPA Abuse Act expressly prohibits regulations that would lead to the very abuses that we have already seen, such as rules that would help kill off gas-powered cars or require power plants to change how they produce electricity. Since every future abuse is not foreseeable, the bill has a catch-all provision that prohibits the EPA from issuing rules that would significantly expand its authority beyond the intent of Congress.
The bill does not limit the agency from fulfilling its mission of protecting the environment. However, it does limit the agency from using that mission as a pretext for usurping legislative power by developing, on its own, new public policy of vast economic and societal consequence.
Our organizations commend Sen. Lee, Rep. Clyde, and the current co-sponsors and urge you to join them in making passage of this bill a high priority, by co-sponsoring and moving it quickly through the legislative process.
It is time to stop the EPA from acting like an economic planning agency and instead get it focused on its mission of environmental protection.
Sincerely,
Daren Bakst, Director, Center for Energy & Environment, Competitive Enterprise Institute
James L. Martin, Founder/Chairman, 60 Plus Association
Kevin Dayaratna, Vice President, Institute for Statistical Policy Analysis, Advancing American Freedom
Lisa B. Nelson, CEO, ALEC Action
John Droz, Jr., Founder, AWED (Alliance for Wise Energy Decisions)
Amy Cooke, President, Always On Energy Research
Saulius “Saul” Anuzis, President, American Association of Senior Citizens
Dick Patten, President, American Business Defense Council
Phil Kerpen, President, American Commitment
Kristen Walker, Senior Policy Analyst and Manager for Energy and Transportation, The American Consumer Institute
Thomas Pyle, President, American Energy Alliance
Hon. Jason Isaac, President, American Energy Association
Myron Ebell, Chairman-elect, American Lands Council
Margaret Byfield, Executive Director, American Stewards of Liberty
Grover Norquist, President, Americans for Tax Reform
Ryan Ellis, President, Center for a Free Economy
Daniel J. Mitchell, President, Center for Freedom and Prosperity
Jeffrey Mazzella, President, Center for Individual Freedom
John Hinderaker, President, Center of the American Experiment
Elizabeth Stelle, Vice President of Policy, Commonwealth Foundation for Public Policy Alternatives
Matthew Kandrach, President, Consumer Action for a Strong Economy
E. Calvin Beisner, Ph.D., President, Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation
Kristen A. Ullman, President, Eagle Forum
Craig Richardson, President, Energy & Environment Legal Institute (E&E Legal)
George Landrith, President, Frontiers of Freedom
Cameron Sholty, Executive Director, Heartland Impact
Steve Chartan, Executive Vice President, Heritage Action
James Taylor, President, The Heartland Institute
Mario H. Lopez, President, Hispanic Leadership Fund
Gabriella Hoffman, Director, Center for Energy and Conservation, Independent Women’s Voice
Andrew Langer, President, Institute for Liberty
Jon Sanders, Director of the Center for Food, Power, and Life, The John Locke Foundation
Seton Motley, President, Less Government Brandon Arnold, Executive Vice President, National Taxpayers Union
Jeff Reynolds, Senior Investigative Researcher, Restoration of America Foundation
Paul Gessing, President, Rio Grande Foundation
Bette Grande, CEO, President, Roughrider Institute
Kenneth Haapala, President, The Science and Environmental Policy Project (SEPP)
James E. Enstrom, PhD, MPH, President, Scientific Integrity Institute
Patrick M. Brenner, President and CEO, Southwest Public Policy Institute
David Williams, President, Taxpayers Protection Alliance
Jenny Beth Martin, Honorary Chairman, Tea Party Patriots Action
Benjamin Zycher, Ph.D., Senior Fellow, American Enterprise Institute (affiliation listed for identification purposes only)
Hey guest blogger, hate to Cliffie Clavin you, but it’s “reining in”. Headline spello’s tend to cast doubt on the due diligence given to the meat of the article. RU really Laura Loomer?
Are you sure? Who is reigning in U.S.?
Sarc? If so, then over my comb over. We have beauty queens who “reign”, and some forms of defacto royalty, whether we admit it or not. But this is just sloppy.
Who is raining on your parade?
For once B O B is correct. “To reign” means to rule over something. “To rein in” means to restrain or restrict something. Think of a horse’s reins.
I see the sheep are pretty easy in ignoring reality and continue to do what the herd leaders want them to do as the 3 comments on spelling show in glaring detail. If one googles both this bill and the orginal act the entire agency was infected with DEI and WOKE when it was put in place. All this proposed bill does is redefine the administrator duties a bit. It does not get down to requiring actual science and facts to do anything nor that competence is the goal for every hire and contract.
Disband the EPA. The EPA was created in the 1970s with the goals of cleaning the smog in air and acid-rain. It has long achieved those goals. It has become nothing but another government bureaucracy that is only intent on its own survival.
“And the Lord said unto Gideon, ‘The people that are with ye are yet too many.”
Due to the inexorable working of Parkinson’s laws:
We now have a government ridiculously top heavy with administrators. I think it would be far better both for them and everyone else if many administrators left the government and took up productive work. We could start small, say 90%, and work up from there.
EPA is a powerful agency with many tools at its disposal. Why abandon those tools even though they are not really needed? Once the major emissions of SO2, NOx, and large particulate were controlled, they continue to drill down to the 20% of emissions that take 80% of the effort.
One peeve of mine is “best-available technology,” for water effluents that is used to tighten the screws due to improvements in analytical techniques. They do not have to prove actual harm, just that it can be done better. They had to wait 20 years to manufacture a technical reason to regulate wastewater effluents.
And PM 2.5? EPA will STILL not release the studies that are the supposed scientific basis for those regulations because they are “proprietary.” What a crock.
Jimmy Carter was president when the act was passed by a Democratic congress. They even allowed the administrator 13 years to develop the rules for the agency to act. It gave contracts to “disadvantaged contractors” defined as blacks, women and indians, No competent person not so defined need bid on a contract. Jimmy gave us 12% inflation and Iran run by terrorists as well.
The Clean Air Act which most refer too was passed in 1970. Nixon was President.
There is this thing called mission creep that makes the origins rather innocent. Meanwhile the enablers of that 40 year mission creep got away with it. It works because voters don’t connect the dots and a biased press is sure not going to help inform.
This will be interesting to watch. As we’ve found out in Canada there are some VERY deep pockets in the US that fund environmentalism to control economic activity, just search out Vivian Kraus’ research. We’ll watch to see how much that money can buy in US lawmaking. But good luck, we’re counting on you to make Mark Carnage look as silly as possible with his ‘climate change’ globalist mantra that he stubbornly peddles up here as the reason for anything bad that happens.
EPA had a greater impact for China exports and market share gains for the CCP than the addition of WTO membership for them. But dear leaders in DC and especially the DNC are too stupid to understand that. The wholesale slaughter of goods producing sectors in the US ties back directly to these double impacts.
“In recent years, the EPA has sought to expand its CAA authority to levels that defy common sense and the will of Congress”
The will of almost half of Congress is that the EPA isn’t nearly draconian enough. Be careful what you wish for.
There are many government agencies doing overlapping things which should all be rolled into a singular agency. US Forestry Service, Department of Agriculture, Fish and Wildlife, Department of the Interior, Bureau of Land Management, National Park Service, Environmental Protection Agency, US Geological Survey, Bureau of Reclamation, State Lands Commission, Water Resources Division, Tennessee Valley Authority and any other federal agency overseeing, administering, or managing anything within USA territory that deals with dirt, rocks, air, water, plants, and animals.
ONE overriding agency with the least number of specialized divisions possible. All of them required to coordinate and abide by decisions done by the other divisions. For example, a farmer gets a permit to construct a fish pond from the water division, then nobody else can say “Oh no you can’t!”. There would be no decade long fights like Mike and Chantell Sackett VS EPA.
The EPA insisted the Sackett’s property was “wetland” because a small drainage ditch that is dry most of the time created a connection to a lake, despite the fact there’s a road and all the houses on the lakeshore side of that road between their lot and the lake. That non-existent connection was deemed to be Waters of the United States (WOTUS) and therefore under the purview of the EPA. Nevermind that the intent of that jurisdiction was originally meant to be waters that are permanent and navigable, or permanent and directly connected to navigable waters or wetlands adjacent to navigable waters.
Google wotus epa navigable to see how SCOTUS unanimously ruled in favor of the Sacketts and how they firmly altered the meaning of WOTUS and what surface waters the EPA has jurisdiction over.
That ruling didn’t stop the EPA from continuing to try stopping the Sacketts from building on their land. It is however a powerful hammer to whip out should the EPA try to claim you can’t use your property by claiming a low spot that holds water briefly when it rains is “wetlands”.
I don’t recall if it was the Sackett case or another person in Idaho the EPA went after for unclogging a culvert to stop flooding – calling it “destruction of wetlands”.
I once prepared a timber sale. Then I had to file a “cut plan” with the state of Wokeachusetts. The project was very complex because the property had many small streams and wetlands. To facilitate getting it approved, I asked the state “service forester” who is the person to approve the job- to walk the job with me. While walking up an old skid road- we got to a level area- where 20 years earlier, in a previous timber harvest, the logger’s skidder left some ruts. Now- when walking with the service forester- it was early in the spring and the snow was still melting- so every tiny depression has water in it. The rut (size of a bath tub) was full of water. The service forester asked why I didn’t put that wetland in the cut plan! I thought I’d have a stroke. She said it was definitely a wetland because she got a masters degree in wetland studies.
it wont be long people will need a permit to drain a bath tub.
Slightly off-topic, but I think it really does depend on the country you grew up in.
There is a fundamental difference between the underlying “English Common Law (ECL)” of the UK and the US (and a few other countries) and the “Napoleonic Code Civil (NCC)” that forms the basis of most continental European countries legal systems.
ECL axiom : Everything that is not explicitly forbidden is allowed
NCC axiom : Everything that is not explicitly allowed … or “permitted” … is forbidden
This results in most English and American laws having the generic format :
“Here is one more thing people are not allowed to do (any more), penalties for non-compliance are …”.
Countries with systems derived from the NCC, on the other hand, pass laws more like :
“People can now do ‘X’, but it will cost them ‘Y’ to obtain the relevant ‘permit / license’ …”.
There are exceptions in both directions, but any system that has been around for more than 200 years will necessarily influence how bureaucrats “automatically” phrase any new laws / government directives.
.
Anglo-Saxon “we the people” (/ “subjects”) to government : What are we not supposed to do ?
NCC-country citizens to government : What is the list of things we are “allowed” to do ?
A basic difference in upbringing that results in Anglo-Saxons tending to be more “bolshy” … AKA “annoying” or “awkward” for the authorities … in general.