Cain only GOP-er to attack EPA in CNN debate

Herman Cain was the only GOP presidential candidate to attack the EPA during last night’s debate sponsored by the Tea Party Express and CNN. Good try Herman, but here’s what you should have said.

As reported by Politico,

In his response to the question about how to achieve energy security — posed by an audience member, then directed to Cain by Blitzer — Cain went on the attack against “an EPA that’s gone wild.”

He proposed a “regulatory reduction commission” that would aggressively review federal regulations for all agencies, starting with the environmental agency.

“The people that I would appoint to that commission would be people who have been abused by the EPA,” he said to applause. “That would be the commission to straighten out the regulatory burden.”

Kudos to Cain for hitting the EPA on regulatory overreach, but his commission idea is a politics-as-usual plan to nowhere.

What’s need is super-mandate legislation overriding all existing environmental laws and regulations that:

• Requires the EPA to meet a meaningfully tough legal standard when relying on scientific and economic data to promulgate regulation;
• Requires that the benefits of regulation exceed its costs, with all regulations subject to periodic review;
• Sunsets all regulations (forcing them to be re-promulgated and, so, subject to review) every 5-10 years; and
• Enables aggrieved parties to promptly enforce all the above in court.

It’s no longer 1970. We need laws and regulations that reflect the reality of the clean and safe environment of the 21st century.