Mirroring action that Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) took in late January, three House lawmakers Thursday introduced a joint resolution of disapproval that seeks to nullify the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) endangerment finding that greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are a threat to human health and therefore could be regulated under the Clean Air Act (CAA).

Reps. Collin Peterson (D-MN), chairman of the Agriculture Committee; Ike Skelton (D-MO), chairman of the Armed Services Committee; and Jo Ann Emerson (R-MO), ranking member of the Appropriation’s Subcommittee on Financial Services and General Government sponsored the bipartisan resolution in the House to negate the endangerment finding.

The endangerment decision held that carbon dioxide (CO2) and other GHG emissions pose a danger to the public health and welfare. The finding, which was issued in December, provides the trigger for the EPA to regulate GHG emissions under its CAA authority (see Daily GPI, Dec. 8, 2009).

“When Congress passed the Clean Air Act, it never gave EPA the explicit authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions for the purpose of stopping global climate change. But that is exactly what EPA has proposed to do,” Skelton said. This resolution keeps the EPA from “threatening Congress with its own greenhouse gas policy as we write [climate change] legislation,” he noted.

“I have no confidence that the EPA can regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act without doing serious damage to our economy…Congress should be making these types of decisions, not unelected bureaucrats at the EPA,” Peterson said. The Peterson-Skelton-Emerson resolution “is important…and I’ll be working hard to get it passed because if Congress doesn’t do something soon, the EPA is going to impose these regulations on its own…We need to do something now before the EPA does.”

Murkowski, a vocal critic of the EPA’s effort to regulate GHG emissions under its CAA authority, applauded the House’s action. The House disapproval resolution “sends a clear message: there is bipartisan and bicameral agreement that command-and-control regulations from EPA are not the right way to reduce the emissions blamed for climate change,” she said.

In January Murkowski, along with a number of Republicans and a few Democrats, introduced a bipartisan “disapproval resolution” to block the EPA’s effort to regulate GHG emissions under the CAA (see Daily GPI, Jan. 22). EPA regulation of GHG emissions could effectively be negated if the Senate and House disapproval resolutions are ratified.

She is expected to bring up the resolution, which has 41 sponsors, for a vote on the Senate floor by the middle of the month, said Murkowski spokesman Robert Dillon. The resolution would only require 51 votes to pass the Senate, but it is much less likely to receive a favorable vote in the House where leaders are strong supporters of GHG regulations.

In addition to the House lawmakers, Murkowski called on eight moderate Democrats from coal states, who wrote a recent letter to EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson challenging the endangerment finding, to support the disapproval resolution. The Democrats included Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV of West Virginia, chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee; and Sens. Sherrod Brown of Ohio, Robert Casey of Pennsylvania, Claire McCaskill of Missouri, Mark Begich of Alaska, Carl Levin of Michigan, Robert Byrd of West Virginia and Max Baucus of Montana.

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