Since it’s creation by Nixon’s executive order in 1970, the EPA has grown into a monstrous bureaucracy with police and confiscatory powers. Obama has used the EPA as a cudgel against his political enemies and American business. Inasmuch as the EPA was created by executive order, it can also be dismantled by executive order. We will probably always have an EPA, but the Trump administration will greatly reduce the size and scope of power of that agency.
President-elect Trump’s pledge to “drain the swamp” in Washington struck a chord with millions of Americans and helped propel him to his stunning election as the nation’s 45th president.
Trump can start by reversing many of the laws the Obama administration created on its own, in its serial abuse of executive authority. Unable to get Congress to enact his environmental and energy policies, Obama had federal agencies concoct regulations that accomplished the same thing and he bound the U.S. to self-inflicted wounds via an international climate agreement.
Trump has pledged to tackle these abuses, and Obama’s unilateral actions are vulnerable to Trump’s own administrative counter-measures. It’s a game two can play. Here’s where Trump can start:
Clean Power Plan: After failing to pass cap-and-trade legislation through Congress, Obama had his political appointees at the EPA slap coal-fired power plants with greenhouse-gas-emission limits they knew the industry couldn’t meet—the Clean Power Plan, Obama called it. In doing so, EPA usurped the states’ role in regulating electricity markets within their boundaries, and even commandeered the states to enforce its new policy. The power grab is on hold by the Supreme Court pending the outcome of lawsuits filed by 27 states and the energy industry. Trump has said that the Clean Power Plan must go, and his Justice Department could ask that the case be dismissed, sending the rule back to EPA, where it could be rewritten and defanged.
Paris Climate Change Agreement: During the campaign, Trump vowed to withdraw the U.S. from this scam. It will send an unmistakable message that the U.S. — the world’s largest producer of natural gas and fastest-growing producer of oil — intends to use its vast energy resources as befits a country that’s serious about its global role and the economic well-being of its people.
Waters of the United States: President Trump’s Justice Department can cease defending WOTUS in court, sending the rule back to EPA for a rewrite that would effectively nullify the power grab.
Environmental Protection Agency: Congress didn’t create EPA — President Nixon brought it into being by a 1970 executive order. Trump can dismantle it with his own executive order.
Trump has already expressed interest in devolving EPA’s functions to state environmental agencies. It’s an idea whose time has come. Appointing Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt, a relentless EPA critic, to head the agency bodes well for change.