Even breathing has a cost these days

As the deficit continues to grow and jobs are lost every day, the Obama Administration has once again introduced more costly regulations and energy taxes that will kill jobs and drive up energy prices. Yesterday, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) declared the air we breathe as a danger to the public and therefore, it would take steps to regulate carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases labeled as pollutants under the Clean Air Act. Apparently, carbon dioxide, the very gas that we exhale when breathing, is a danger to our health. Not only is breathing now an endangerment to other humans, but it will also prove to be expensive. These detrimental claims would implement costly restrictions on vehicle and industry emissions, severely restricting businesses, and promoting bad public policy, like a national energy tax, that will take our economy from bad to worse.

It is no accident that this announcement was made the same day as the climate change summit opened in Copenhagen. President Obama needed something to show the summit, and the EPA delivered. As we witnessed with the administration’s recent EPA decision, liberal Democrats will stop at nothing to overcome the strong objections of the American people to a cap and tax system. The American people deserve to have their voices heard in this important debate, not silenced by bureaucrats at the United Nations.

To stop the EPA from enforcing such misguided regulations, I joined Rep. Marsha Blackburn, in January, as an original cosponsor to H.R. 391 that would legislatively prohibit the EPA from regulating carbon dioxide under the Clean Air Act. Adding more costly government mandates and increasing energy costs will result in further limiting economic growth and job creation in our already struggling economy. This is a troubling equation that provides further evidence that the President Obama’s agenda is becoming increasingly driven by Speaker Pelosi and her liberal special interest groups at the expense of families and small businesses.