House leadership lays out target list of Biden climate rules to cancel
https://www.newsbreak.com/share/3821916455460-house-leadership-lays-out-target-list-of-biden-climate-rules-to-cancel
By Maydeen Merino
House Republican leadership outlined a number of Former President Joe Biden ’s climate regulations that it will seek to overturn through a special legislative process in the coming weeks.
House Majority Leader Steve Scalise on Thursday released a list of the previous administration ‘s climate and energy regulations that Republicans will aim to reverse through the Congressional Review Act (CRA).
The CRA allows Congress to bypass the filibuster and take a simple majority vote in the House and Senate to overturn recently implemented rules. The process allows the vote to come to the floor in an expedited fashion, forcing all members to go on the record with their votes. If Congress votes to undo a rule, the agency cannot propose a similar regulation.
Scalise listed 10 regulations Republicans will look to undo, with the majority being climate-related. At the top of the list is the California Clean Air Act Waiver granted by the Environmental Protection Agency, which allows the state to implement stricter vehicle emission standards than federal requirements. California has required all new car sales to be zero-emissions by 2035.
A number of states follow California’s auto emission standards. Republicans have vocally opposed California’s standards as a ban on gas vehicles, and Trump has promised to reverse the waiver.
The waiver has “resulted in higher vehicle prices for consumers, increased costs and manufacturing complexities for automakers, and a more complicated regulatory environment,” Scalise said in a press release .
Another prominent target is the Waste Emissions Charge for Petroleum and Natural Gas Systems, which was implemented as part of the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act passed by Democrats and signed by Biden that included hundreds of billions of dollars in funding for clean energy projects. With the charge, the EPA imposed a fee on oil and gas facilities that exceed specific methane emissions thresholds.