Senate report: EPA regulations could kill 800,000 jobs
By: Mark Hemingway
Commentary Staff Writer
09/29/10 10:00 AM EDT
Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., Ranking Member of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, has just released a report titled, “EPA’s Anti-Industrial Policy: Threatening Jobs and America’s Manufacturing Base.” The report notes that 800,000 jobs are at risk, thanks to the EPA’s overzealous regulation:
* New standards for commercial and industrial boilers: up to 798,250 jobs at risk;
* New standards for Portland Cement plants: up to 18 cement plants at risk of shutting down, threatening nearly 1,800 direct jobs and 9,000 indirect jobs;
* The Endangerment Finding/Tailoring Rules for Greenhouse Gas Emissions: higher energy costs; jobs moving overseas; severe economic impacts on the poor, the elderly, minorities, and those on fixed incomes; 6.1 million sources subject to EPA control and regulation; and
* The revised National Ambient Air Quality Standard for ozone: severe restrictions on job creation and business expansion in hundreds of counties nationwide.
Along with the report Senator Inhofe released the following statement:
<<< “I have great personal respect for EPA Administrator Jackson, but we disagree fundamentally on EPA’s policies and the economic and financial harm they pose for consumers, workers, and small businesses. The record as outlined in this Minority report, which includes EPA’s own analysis, is very clear: EPA will make consumers pay more for electricity, shut down the local factory, and give Chinese firms a decisive advantage over America’s manufacturers, which are struggling to meet the agency’s bureaucratic mandates.
“The irony of EPA’s agenda is that, along with higher costs, it will fail to provide the American people with meaningful environmental benefits. In some cases, it will actually impose environmental harm, as EPA’s ever-increasing mandates shift production to China, where technology and standards don’t measure up to our own.” >>>
As it happens, the Examiner is running a big investigative series this week looking at the environmental movement. One of the things we looked at was the impact of environmental regulations on businesses. The costs are huge:
<<< Regulatory compliance costs are skyrocketing. According to a Small Business Administration report titled “The Impact of Regulatory Costs on Small Firms,” the total cost of complying with federal regulations is $1.1 trillion a year as of 2004. That’s more than $10,000 per household. The cost of regulatory compliance was just $7,000 in 1995 — up 30 percent in less than a decade.
Of that total, environmental regulation is estimated to cost $221 billion a year, second only to a broadly defined category of “economic regulation.”
The SBA also reports that environmental regulation is the leading regulatory expense for businesses with fewer than 20 employees, at $3,296 per worker.
Overall, regulatory costs are 45 percent higher for small businesses than for larger firms, and environmental regulations are the “main cost drivers in determining the severity of the disproportionate impact on small firms,” according to the SBA. Compliance with environmental regulations costs 364 percent more for small firms than large firms.
Since the vast majority of American businesses are small, the effect these regulations have on job creation and the broader economy is enormously negative. >>>
Be sure and read the whole series.
Read more at the Washington Examiner: washingtonexaminer.com |
