WASHINGTON — Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) on Wednesday blasted the Obama Administration for cutting a climate change deal with China, which the Alabama senator says gives the United States’ biggest economic rival a significant advantage over the next 15 years, while saddling American businesses with more burdensome regulations.
Earlier this week, President Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping agreed to new restraints on carbon emissions. The agreement requires the U.S. to emit between 26 and 28 percent less carbon in 2025 than was emitted in 2005, while China must produce 20 percent of its total energy from carbon-free sources by 2030 and not increase net carbon emissions after that year.
Following the announcement, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Gina McCarthy stated that this goal will be met using an executive order by the President, effectively preventing any input from Congress. The Obama Administration is already developing executive branch regulations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 30 percent below 2005 levels by 2030.
So significant are the additional regulations in Obama’s China deal that Politico published a piece simply titled, “The coming climate onslaught,” and called the President’s planned executive actions “a reality check for Republicans who think last week’s election gave them a mandate to end what they call the White House’s ‘War on Coal.'”
Sessions found fault with both the policy itself, and the President’s decision to go around Congress to implement his plan via executive fiat.
“The President has made a habit of circumventing Congress to unilaterally fulfill his agenda,” Sessions told Yellowhammer. “Despite holding commanding Democrat majorities in the House and Senate in 2009 and 2010, the President’s cap-and-trade agenda was rejected. Under this new agreement, China, our largest trading competitor, is allowed to emit carbon dioxide unabated until 2030. This will cement a huge economic advantage for them while saddling American businesses and workers with new, high-cost regulations. This action places the President’s ideology over the needs of struggling American workers. These are policies that will cost jobs, lower wages, and needlessly spike utility rates, while hurting vital industries that are often pillars of the local economy.”
Sessions has been one of the most vocal opponents of the Administration’s climate agenda in recent years.
In March, after 28 Senate Democrats talked through the night on the Senate floor about Global Warming, Sessions delivered a harsh critique of the Climate Change Caucus’s efforts. The Alabama senator said their all night talk-a-thon was pointless, considering the fact that Democrats held the majority and could bring legislation to address the issue if they wanted to act against the will of the American people.
“Why wouldn’t the Majority Leader bring a bill to the Senate floor to approve President Obama’s climate agenda?” Sessions asked. “[Because] the American people do not support this and neither does most of Congress.”
Around the same time, A Gallup poll was released showing a near-record number of Americans believe the issue of climate change is being exaggerated.
But Sessions said the claims of global warming alarmists had actually escalated from exaggerations to outright misinformation.
“Exaggeration isn’t even a fair word to describe it,” he said. “It has become deliberate misinformation. … The climate is not warming faster than experts predicted as the president claimed.”
A study released earlier this year by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce predicts the Obama administration’s environmental mandates will cost the United States more than 220,000 jobs over the next several years.
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.
With the addition of the China deal, those numbers are likely to go even higher.
Follow Cliff on Twitter @Cliff_Sims
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