In Michigan v. Environmental Protection Agency, No. 14-46, the Supreme Court ruled the EPA must include the cost to comply with their rule. This particular one was about Mercury. In shooting down the Obama administration’s Environmental Over-Reach the Supreme Court put a common-sense limit to the economic damage Obama’s EPA and his Eco-Warriors can impose on American citizens. It’s about time.
The EPA has been running roughshod over the wallets of Americans by increasing the cost to live. In effect the EPA imposes a cost which should be considered a tax whenever it regulates because compliance costs money. When the EPA imposes a limit on Mercury from burning coal or oil it takes money to comply with their limit. The additional money needed to comply operates the same as a tax but it also imposes additional burdens because time and effort are also imposed to comply with the regulations. Justice Antonin Scalia wrote: “It is not rational, never mind ‘appropriate,’ to impose billions of dollars in economic costs in return for a few dollars in health or environmental benefits. Statutory context supports this reading.”
Those are not things which the President has the power to do. He can enforce the law but he must not write it. He can collect a tax but he cannot create one. So far as the regulation about Mercury, a heavy metal which in sufficient quantities can affect human health. Obama’s been doing that but he’s neither the first nor the only President who stepped into forbidden territory. The EPA began in 1970, 45 years ago but Presidents had established similar agencies since the late 1950’s. One would think that after 65 years everything that needed to be regulated to protect the climate had been done. But the Federal Government is as close to Eternal Life as we can get said President Reagan.
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