Responsibly and Professionally Invigorating Development Act of 2015

Floor Speech

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Mr. GOSAR. Mr. Chairman, I rise today to offer a commonsense amendment that will protect American jobs and our economy by prohibiting Federal agencies from being forced to follow job-killing and unlawful draft guidance that sneakily seeks to implement Federal policies that pave the way for cap-and-trade-like mandates.

Congress and the American people have repeatedly rejected cap-and-trade proposals pushed by this President and his Big Government allies.

Knowing he can't lawfully enact a carbon dioxide tax plan, President Obama has chosen to circumvent Congress and is now seeking to address climate change by playing loose and getting creative with the Clean Air Act as well as through an unlawful guidance issued in December 2014.

The underlying bill already prohibits Federal agencies from utilizing the social cost of carbon valuation. Furthermore, the social cost of carbon valuation was rejected four times by this very body last Congress.

My simple, clarifying amendment adds to the Obama administration's revised draft guidance for greenhouse gas emissions and the effects of climate change that were issued by the White House in December 2014 to the definition for social cost of carbon in the bill.

This straightforward amendment is common sense, as this deeply flawed guidance instructs agencies to include a controversial measurement of the social cost of carbon into their analyses and is the Obama administration's latest tool for attempting to implement this terrible new model that has consistently been rejected by the House.

Roger Martella, a self-described lifelong environmentalist and career environmental lawyer, testified at the May 2015 House Natural Resources Committee hearing on the revised guidance and the flaws associated with the social cost of carbon model, stating:

The `` `social cost of carbon' estimates suffer from a number of significant flaws that should exclude them from the NEPA process.

``First, projected costs of carbon emissions can be manipulated by changing key parameters such as timeframes, discount rates, and other values that have no relation to a given project undergoing review. As a result, applying social cost of carbon estimates can be used to promote pre-determined policy preferences rather than provide for a fair and objective evaluation of a specific proposed federal action.

``Second, OMB and the other federal agencies developed the draft Social Cost of Carbon estimates without any known peer review or opportunity for public comment during the development process. This process is antithetical to NEPA's central premise that informed agency decision making must be based on transparency and open dialogue with the public.

``Third, OMB's draft Social Cost of Carbon estimates are based primarily on global rather than domestic costs and benefits. This is particularly problematic for NEPA reviews because the Courts have established that agencies cannot consider transnational impacts in NEPA reviews.

``Fourth, there is still considerable uncertainty in many of the assumptions and data elements used to create the draft Social Cost of Carbon estimates, such as the damage functions and modeled time horizons. In light of the lack of transparency in the OMB's process, these concerns over accuracy are particularly problematic.''

Mr. Martella's testimony was spot on. Congress, not Washington bureaucrats at the behest of the President, should dictate our country's climate change policy.

These sweeping new changes that are seeking to be implemented by the White House did not go through the normal regulatory process, and there was no public comment.

Furthermore, the Obama administration has refused to answer pivotal questions about this guidance and even failed to send a witness to a May 2015 hearing on this matter.

While the Obama administration acknowledged the draft guidance is not legally enforceable, you best believe that Federal agencies that received the 31-page revised guidance will treat this document like it was signed into law by the President.

Unfortunately, this administration just doesn't get it and continues to try to circumvent Congress to impose an extremist agenda that is not based on the best available science.

Worse yet, the model utilized to predict the social cost of carbon can easily be manipulated to arrive at any desired outcome.

The House has rejected the social cost of carbon numerous times. I ask all those to join me once again in rejecting this flawed proposal and protecting jobs right here in America.

I commend the chairman and the committee for their efforts on this legislation and for recognizing that the NEPA process is in desperate need of reform.

I reserve the balance of my time.

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