Free Republic

CNN and the Reagan administration were born in the same year. Presidencies have been partly a “reality show” ever since. The Donald Trump reality show this week turns to overhauling the Obama fuel-economy mandate. Let’s recall a few things about how those rules were born. Team Obama’s target of 54.5 miles per gallon, as a congressional investigation later found, was not the product of science and engineering but the White House’s desire for an impressive sounding “headline number.” (The decimal was apparently included to show the White House had a sense of humor.) So full of loopholes, credits (including for...

The Environmental Protection Agency on Monday took the Obama fuel economy rules off autopilot. This is good news for consumers, automakers and the U.S. economy, but the Trump Administration’s big test will be negotiating around the political potholes. Corporate average fuel economy (Cafe) standards are a vestige of the 1970s gas shortages. Like the Nixon-era price controls, the fuel standards were intended to reduce gas consumption. But the environmental left long ago hijacked the rules to impose their vision of an electric-car future. In 2012 the Obama EPA turned up the Cafe dial and mandated a fleetwide average of 54.5...

Linking increased fuel economy to the larger issue of economic growth, President Obama on Tuesday directed his administration to write new rules to improve mileage for the nation’s big-rig trucks. Mr. Obama made the announcement during a speech at a suburban Maryland Safeway distribution center and cast it as the latest move in his so-called “year of action,” a time he’ll act without Congress wherever possible. “Improving gas mileage for these trucks is going to drive down our oil imports even further,” Mr. Obama said. “That reduces carbon pollution even more, cuts down on businesses’ fuel costs, which should pay...

[California] has regulated and spent itself into a well of debt so deep it makes the economic situation in the other 49 states seem not half-bad. But instead of putting a chokehold on California's run-amok bureaucrats, the federal government just gave them the go ahead to impose California-specific fuel economy and emissions control requirements on new cars sold there, beginning with the 2016 model year. California has long wanted to demand that new cars achieve 40 mpg, on average -- 5 mph higher than the "49 state" requirement recently passed by Congress and signed into law by President Obama. Now...

The Obama administration will issue new national requirements for the emissions and mileage of cars and light trucks in an effort to end a long-running conflict among the states, the federal government and auto manufacturers, industry officials said Monday. President Obama will announce as early as Tuesday that he will combine California’s tough new auto-emissions rules with the existing corporate average fuel economy standard to create a single new national standard, the officials said. As a result, cars and light trucks sold in the United States will be roughly 30 percent cleaner and more fuel-efficient by 2016. The White House...

The Obama administration is preparing to test whether capping greenhouse gas emissions will push the economy into higher gear, or deeper into a rut. The likely subject of the experiment is the ailing auto industry. Later this month, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson is expected to declare that carbon dioxide emissions from automobiles endanger health and welfare because of their impact on the climate. That finding will be a trigger for the EPA to regulate greenhouse-gas emissions under the 1970 Clean Air Act -- independent of any congressional action on broader climate-change measures. A senior administration official familiar with...

WASHINGTON — A key House Democrat said Monday he plans to question EPA officials about why the agency refused to allow California to require reductions in greenhouse gas emissions from cars and trucks. At least 16 other states, including New Mexico, were prepared to implement the same limits had the government issued the waiver California needed to set the standards, which would have been the first in the nation. Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, sent a letter to Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Stephen L. Johnson naming seven high-level managers he wants to...