EPA Smacked by OMB

On cap and trade (cap and TAX), major pushback by the Office of Management and the Budget on the EPA's nutso plans, (which the Supremes enabled). Via Tapper's Political Punch:

A spokesman for the Office of Advocacy said he did not know who would have contributed the comments, but noted that Shawne C. McGibbon, the Acting Chief Counsel for Advocacy in the Small Business Administration, wrote about greenhouse gases last November, writing that the expansion of the the scope of the Clean Air Act to regulate greenhouse gases "could make hundreds of thousands of small entities that have not previously had to deal with the Clean Air Act potentially subject to extensive new clean air requirements. ...The compliance burdens associated with these requirements would devastate small entities throughout the economy..."

McGibbon, however, is not a "Bush holdover," having been with SBA since 1994. [snip]

In the nine-page memo, the "Bush holdover" voices "a concern that EPA is making a finding based on (1) 'harm' from substances that have no demonstrated direct health effects, such as respiratory or toxic effects, (2) available scientific data that purports to conclusively establish the nature and extent of the adverse public health and welfare impacts are almost exclusively from non-EPA sources, and (3) applying a dramatically expanded precautionary principle."

Let's hope this is the death blow for this kind of idiocy. We can breathe out now. You know, CO2. Respiratory harm my foot.

More: Planet Gore.