Press Release
Report: EPA’s $2 Trillion Promise Based on Attitudes Not Economic Growth
June 15, 2011
(Alexandria, VA) -- As U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
Administrator Lisa Jackson heads to Capitol Hill today to testify before
Congress regarding her agency’s regulations, the National Taxpayers Union (NTU) released a new report analyzing the
purported economic effects of those rules. In “Assessment of Obama
Administration’s Cost-Benefit Analysis of Clean Air Act Regulation,” economist David
Montgomery reveals the very large net regulatory benefits touted by EPA rely on
apples to orange comparisons, where the vast majority of the benefits have none
of the financial reality that the costs do.
“In its Clean Air Act appraisal, EPA substitutes calculated misdirection
for solid analysis,” explained NTU Executive Vice President Pete Sepp. “Nearly all of EPA’s promised $2 trillion in
benefits from existing regulations stem from feelings rather than fiscal improvements.
“Federal regulators arrived at their staggering figures by polling
individuals on how much they’d be willing to pay to reduce risks in general, mostly using estimates
from studies of occupational risks unrelated to air pollution,” Sepp
continued.
Dr. Montgomery added: “While less
than 3 percent of the EPA’s purported benefits will show up as
additional jobs or real output in the economy, 100 percent of the costs will do
so. Even EPA’s own macroeconomic analysis shows
that existing air pollution regulations are a net drag on the economy. And EPA’s tally doesn’t even take into
account the costs of its pending new ozone standards and regulations on
electric utilities over the next decade.”
Click here to read the full report.
To speak with Sepp or
Montgomery, please contact Doug Kellogg at (703) 683-5700 or dkellogg@ntu.org.
NTU is a nonpartisan, nonprofit citizen organization founded in 1969 to work
for lower taxes, smaller government, and economic freedom at all levels. Note:
For more on NTU’s regulatory policy work, visit www.ntu.org.
