Government Shutdown to Delay EPA $1 Gallon Gas Price Hike
October 1, 2013 By Daniel Greenfield
As the death toll for Government Shutdown Apocalypse 2013 continues to grow, it appears that the EPA’s plans to make it even more expensive for Americans to drive a car were “shut down” by the government shutdown.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will take one of the biggest hits of any federal agency if the government shuts down this week, operating with under 7 percent of its employees, according to guidance issued by the agency.
Just think of how much less the EPA will be able to do with only 7 percent of its employees. That EPA SWAT Team may have to sit out the week. Someone else will have to send $700,000 to Thailand’s pig farmers. And someone else will have to hike fuel prices.
Among those furloughed would be most workers at the Office of Air and Radiation, which is in charge of writing and implementing most of the EPA’s major air pollution rules. The clock would also stop, for now, on the EPA’s eagerly-awaited proposal on renewable fuel volume standards for 2014.
Who exactly is eagerly awaiting this proposal? Drivers who can’t wait to pay a buck more for gas.
Gas prices will increase about $1 per gallon by 2015 and take a $550 billion bite out of Americans’ take-home pay when the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) increases the ethanol mandate past the 10 percent “blend wall.”
Sadly the evil government shutdown may delay the environmentalist push for Electric Poverty in America
“People are not going to be able to be working on these rules at home,” said Dina Kruger, an environmental regulation consultant and former climate change director at the EPA, who worked at the agency when the government shut down in 1996.
Sure.
EPA employees won’t write arbitrary rules that steal money out of the pockets of hardworking Americans unless the Americans pay them first.
“Permitting does not qualify (as essential), so people should expect delays in permit processing and other licensing and approval processes,” said Scott Fulton, former EPA general counsel until January this year and an attorney at Beveridge and Diamond.
“This is a decidedly bad thing for the country. Everybody pays, including the regulated community.”
Gulag employees furloughed. Gulag prisoners waiting for meals hit hardest. There is a solution though. Free the prisoners.
http://frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/government-shutdown-may-delay-epa-1-pgallon-gas-price-hike/The
BIG question: will the government exempt themselves from the tax hikes, too?
