Alabama asks Trump to stop ‘unlawful’ EPA plan

Alabama Attorney General Luther Strange has asked President-Elect Donald Trump and other Capitol Hill leaders to take action against President Obama’s “Clean Power Plan,” and to ensure that future lawmakers won’t be able to cross the same boundaries again.

In a bipartisan letter addressed to Vice President-elect Mike Pence, Senate President Mitch McConnell and House Speaker Paul Ryan, the Attorneys General of 24 states suggested a “four point” strategy that includes doing away with the plan on the first day Trump takes office. They go on to suggest that legislative action be taken that would prevent the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from issuing similar rules in the future.

“Conservative Attorneys General continue to play an important role in reversing unlawful federal mandates by challenging them in court and working with the incoming Trump administration to stop them at the source,” said Attorney General Strange. “We are committed to working with the new administration and Congress in uprooting unlawful rulemaking which has had an adverse effect on States and our economy.”

Alabama in October of 2015 joined 26 other states in suing the Obama administration over the president’s so called Clean Power Plan.

The plan, which would be implemented by the EPA, would mandate a 750 million metric ton reduction in CO2 emissions through increased regulations on existing power plants, especially coal-fired plants.

A study released by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce last year predicts the environmental mandates in the plan would ultimately cost the United States more than 220,000 jobs.

According to the study, the proposed regulations will have a disproportionate impact on southern states, where energy costs would jump by $6.6 billion per year over the next decade-and-a-half. The “East-South-Central” region of Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee and Kentucky would see its GDP shrink by an estimated $2.2 billion and would lose 21,400 jobs as a result of the plan.