Texas Resisting Obama Power Grab

August 27, 2010
by Bob Livingston



Sensing the political failure of the Left’s environmental whacko agenda of raising energy costs to cap emissions of a gas we all exhale and that plants need to thrive — carbon dioxide — President Barack Obama has instructed his Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to rewrite its Clean Air Act and give itself authority it doesn’t have.

Thankfully, one state is resisting: Texas.

Texas Attorney General Greg Abbot and Texas Commission on Environmental Quality Chairman Bryan W. Shaw call the EPA’s actions an illegal power grab and in a letter to the EPA they wrote:

"In order to deter challenges to your plan for centralized control of industrial development through the issuance of permits for greenhouse gases, you have called upon each state to declare its allegiance to the Environmental Protection Agency’s recently enacted greenhouse gas regulations — regulations that are plainly contrary to U.S. laws… To encourage acquiescence with your unsupported findings you threaten to usurp state enforcement authority and to federalize the permitting program of any state that fails to pledge their fealty to the Environmental Protection Agency. On behalf of the State of Texas, we write to inform you that Texas has neither the authority nor the intention of interpreting, ignoring or amending its laws in order to compel the permitting of greenhouse gas emissions."
In an Op-Ed piece in today’s The Washington Times, Texas state director of Americans for Prosperity Peggy Venable writes that:

Federalist principles have allowed Texas to become the strongest state in the union. The Lone Star State leads the nation in job creation, is the top state for business relocation and has more Fortune 500 companies than any other state and is the top state for wind generation. President Obama said he wants to double U.S. exports in five years; he could look to Texas, as we are the top exporting state in the country. The Obama administration could learn a lot from Texas.
Instead, it is attempting to ride roughshod over Texas, and it goes beyond the greenhouse-gas issue.

After 16 years of allowing Texas to run its own permitting program to meet Federal air-quality standards, in May the EPA announced the state was not in compliance with Federal regulations. This despite the fact that Texas had met or exceeded its clean air obligations the entire time.

The Obama administration’s agenda is simple: Grab more and more power from the States and consolidate it under the Federal government. Thankfully, Texas will have no part of it.

If only the other 49 States will follow Texas’ lead.

http://www.personalliberty.com/conserva ... ower-grab/