Today, April 25, 2024, the Biden Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) finalized its unconstitutional “suite of rules” being imposed to force premature retirement of politically disfavored sources of electricity generation.
Also, GAO just obtained a copy of this letter to the EPA. It turns out the pressure groups really, really wanted the Agency to make sure to “finalize and implement the strongest possible pollution standards by April 2024”, to “finalize and begin implementing the strongest possible pollution standards no later than early April 2024.”
GAO presumes this pertains to concerns about a re-elected President Trump signing a resolution of disapproval under the Congressional Review Act, as one immediate step to try and preserve what remains of electricity reliability while working to undo the damage. Chatter has it that, to avoid this, rules should be finalized by mid/late-May (May 22 in this reckoning). But maybe the plea for finalizing the rules today was to build in a cushion for error:
Administration Preparations
Agency leaders are working to finalize rules in time to meet this deadline. At a recent conference held by the American Law Institute’s Continuing Legal Education, Vicki Arroyo, the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Associate Administrator for Policy, explained that the deadline is “something that [the EPA is] very focused on.”[3] Although the deadline is uncertain, she noted that to be cautious, agencies may submit rules as “early as the end of April or May.”[4]
Federal agencies have already begun or plan to submit rules to Congress before the late May deadline, including:
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An EPA rule that sets new standards to reduce air pollutant emissions from cars and a rule that requires fossil fuel plants to rely on new technologies to reduce pollution levels.
Under time and over budget, way to go, team!