Trump is overwriting Obama’s unlawful green schemes

NY Post ^ | October 9, 2017 | Rich Lowry

[Oshkalaboomboom]

One by one, the artifacts of President Barack Obama’s rule by administrative fiat are tumbling.

The latest is his signature Clean Power Plan that EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt says he’ll begin the arduous process of unwinding.

The first year of Donald Trump’s presidency has been characterized — despite his bumptiousness — not by executive overreach, but executive retrenchment. The populist Trump has operated within constitutional lines better than his technocratic predecessor, who used tendentious readings of the law and sweeping bureaucratic actions to impose his policies on immigration, health care, college campuses and the environment.

The Clean Power Plan, which sought to reduce US carbon emissions to 32 percent below 2005 levels by 2030, was government by the administrative state on a scale that has never been attempted before. The EPA took a dubious reading of a portion of the Clean Air Act (Section III, which arguably prevented the agency from taking this action rather than empowered it to do so) and used it to mandate that the states adopt far-reaching plans to reduce carbon emissions, under threat of the loss of federal highway funds.

The legal foundation of the Clean Power Plan was so rickety that the Supreme Court took the extraordinary step of blocking its implementation pending all the lawsuits against it.

The presumption of the plan was jaw dropping. The EPA usually targets pollutants; carbon dioxide isn’t one (though the Supreme Court erroneously said it meets the definition in the case of Massachusetts vs. EPA).

The EPA has always regulated specific power plants; in this scheme, it went “outside the fence” to mandate broader actions by the states, e.g., the adoption of quotas for renewable energy. The EPA once considered its mandate to be protecting clean air and water for Americans;

[Oshkalaboomboom]

This #NeverTrumper Lowry is shocked that Trump is doing exactly what he said he would do on the campaign trail.

[bigbob]

One man’s “retrenchment” is another man’s “restoring America to the rule of law under the Constitution”.

[stars & stripes forever]

Jonathan Cahn’s Last Words to Obama and Charge to President Trump
https://www.charismanews.com/opinion/watchman-on-the-wall/62623-jonathan-cahn-s-last-words-to-obama-and-charge-to-president-trump

[pigsmith]

Bfl

[AnotherUnixGeek]

The first year of Donald Trump’s presidency has been characterized — despite his bumptiousness — not by executive overreach, but executive retrenchment.

And that's the problem. Trump is doing his job in the executive branch as I would have expected him to - but that only means he is undoing some of the damage Obama did with executive actions. Any future president can reverse all of this. For real, lasting change, the worthless Congressional GOP needs to use the mandate the voters gave them to pass laws defining limits on the EPAs power and codifying restrictions on what unelected federal bureaucrats are allowed to do at a president's behest.

[SoothingDave]

I don’t see any “shock” in the article.

[milagro]

Love the term “bumptiousness”!