We're not defending EPA but…

… the claim that the agency has asked for 230,000 new employees and $21 billion to implement its greenhouse gas rules is not true. That said, the truth is actually worse.

A Daily Caller article stated,

The EPA is asking taxpayers to fund up to 230,000 new government workers to process all the extra paperwork, at an estimated cost of $21 billion. That cost does not include the economic impact of the regulations themselves.

“Hiring the 230,000 full-time employees necessary to produce the 1.4 billion work hours required to address the actual increase in permitting functions would result in an increase in Title V administration costs of $21 billion per year,” the EPA wrote in the court brief.

Though the EPA has not actually asked for 230,000 employees and $21 billion, it has actually broken the law to avoid doing so.

When EPA decided that it would regulated greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act, it then obligated itself to write permits for all sources that emit 100 tons or more annually.

According to EPA’s analysis, this would have meant hiring 230,000 employees and spending $21 billion per year for three years in order to issue 6.1 million permits.

As even the Obama administration realized the impossibility of that task, the EPA unilaterally decided to raise the Clean Air Act threshold from 100 tons to 75,000 tons, thereby dramatically reducing the number of permits needed to be written (down to about 500 or so).

But as only Congress can change the law — not the EPA — the agency’s so-called “tailoring rule” is illegal. It is now the subject of ongoing federal litigation.

The EPA’s illegal re-write of the law is the real scandal; the Daily Caller article is a misunderstanding of the facts.

We’re all for attacking EPA for its regulatory overreach, but our attacks must be fact based. And with the tailoring rule, the facts are pretty damning.