The bureaucracy within the EPA has indeed done what all bureaucracies do -- expanded wherever and however it can.
Even so, it is easy to justify placing a reasonable amount of responsibility for environmental regulation at the federal level. For one thing, pollution does not remain neatly within state lines. For another, for a variety of reasons it makes sense to ensure consistent standards between states. So even if this stupid bill were to pass and be signed (never happen), there would still be a need for a Federal agency with the same mission.
Moreover, it's worth recalling the rather unpleasant history of environmental problems prior to the advent of the EPA and federal environmental legislation in general. Leaving it to states and individuals didn't work then, and it's naive or disingenuous to claim that things would be any different now.
If Congress really wanted to address problems with the EPA and other agencies, there are better ways of doing it.
Yeah, there would have been changes. When rivers catch fire and burn railroad bridges, something is going to change. The EPA didn't start that change, the mechanisms were already in place. The Rivers and Harbors act goes back to 1899 at the Federal Level.
But rather than just establish
a standard the EPA established a bunch of them--for the same thing, one after another.
Those moving target standards are a business killer and no business is too big to not be killed by them.
As for State Standards, let the states work that out. California established its own emissions standards, and that's up to California. California needed them, as did some other places.
We just didn't have a smog problem here, so we didn't need the extra added expense and complexity on our vehicles.
But even beyond the moving target standards, there is the continuous overreach by the EPA. They have no business regulating a puddle in my yard. Nor CO
2 as a 'pollutant', nor laying claim to all the water in and below and above the topsoil.
If we know the harmful levels of pollutants, then what more is needed?
If a polluter is affecting people in an adjacent state, then they can be dealt with in one jurisdiction or the other, and that can be sorted out in federal court, because laws exist by which that can be done: see the Clean Water Act of 1972.
What we don't need is an agency which changes the rules with amazing regularity for the purpose of targeting and eliminating industry. That is the role of the EPA in severely damaging the coal industry, and in attempting to find reason to condemn hydraulic fracturing. Especially the latter was a political attack without basis in science, the former based on yet more revised standards. If a 'standard' is under constant revision, I would submit that there is nothing 'standard' about it.
If a specific level of a pollutant is considered harmful, so be it, If an established level of that pollutant is considered acceptable, there's the standard. It should not need to be revised.
