House Votes to Prohibit Enforcement of Clean Air Act - Doyle Votes to Allow EPA to Base its Environmental Policies on Science

Press Release

U.S. Representative Mike Doyle (PA-14) voted against H.R. 910, a bill that would prevent the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from regulating greenhouse gas emissions that are causing global climate change. The bill would also overturn an EPA scientific finding that greenhouse gases endanger human health and welfare. The bill was approved on a largely party-line vote.

"My Republican colleagues have said repeatedly that we should base federal environmental policies on sound science, but they'll go to any length to kill policies they don't like, regardless of what science tells us," Congressman Doyle noted after the vote. "It's still hard for me to believe that the House is going to vote to repeal a conclusion by scientists and other experts in the field of climate science."

"Apparently, when Republicans say they want to go back to the good old days, they don't mean the days before we enacted environmental protection laws," Congressman Doyle observed. "They mean the days when the Inquisition condemned Gallileo for his scientific finding that the Earth revolved around the Sun."

Congressman Doyle also opposed H.R. 910 several weeks ago when it was considered in the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

H.R. 910 would overturn EPA's scientific findings that man-made greenhouse gas emissions are endangering human health and the environment, and it would prohibit the EPA from taking any action to control greenhouse gas emissions in the United States.

Congressman Doyle has worked for several years to enact policies that curb U.S. greenhouse gas emissions in a way that doesn't unfairly penalize our country's energy-intensive, trade-sensitive industries or move US jobs overseas. In the last Congress, he supported the American Clean Energy Security (ACES) Act and played an active part in writing provisions into the bill so that energy-intensive, trade-sensitive industries like steel and cement wouldn't have been put at a competitive disadvantage compared to those industries in other countries. The House passed the American Clean Energy Security Act (H.R. 2454) in 2009, but it was never approved by the Senate.

During House consideration of H.R. 910, Congressman Doyle offered an amendment to H.R. 910 that would have required a study to determine whether regulations of the Environmental Protection Agency under the Clean Air Act to address climate change would cause greenhouse gas leakage and reduce the international competitiveness of energy-intensive industries.

Critics of the EPA have charged that the Agency's greenhouse gas regulations would drive more U.S. manufacturing jobs overseas, while manufacturers who testified before the Energy and Commerce Committee recently explained that they are not even covered by the current EPA greenhouse gas regulations.

"There is one thing that is abundantly clear -- the truth and science have not played a key role in this bill's life," Congressman Doyle said on the House Floor when offering his amendment. "I ask you to support my amendment so we can bring some truth, facts and data to this debate."

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