Organizations Warn Congress: Watch Your Back, Sue-and-Settle Is in the Air
Behind Biden’s Earth Day announcements and Climate Summit are plans to circumvent legislative jurisdiction and sneak in transformational change.
WASHINGTON DC (April 19, 2021) – Today, nineteen organizations issued letters to Members of Congress warning of an apparent Biden administration end-run around the legislature to impose the Green New Deal through a regulatory back door, as part of what would be the biggest “sue-and-settle” arrangement ever attempted. The letters were organized by the American Energy Alliance (AEA), the country’s premier pro-consumer, pro-taxpayer, and free-market energy organization.
Pointing to email records obtained from state attorneys general (AGs) by Energy Policy Advocates, over the course of several months a plan was hatched to fundamentally transform the Clean Air Act’s National Ambient Air Quality Standard (NAAQS) provision into an unrecognizable and never intended framework for economy wide decarbonization – something that has never been authorized by Congress.
The emails show that for two years state AGs and the now-acting head of EPA’s Air & Radiation Office responsible for these rulemakings plotted to litigate this agenda into place. What was then a desperate ploy has turned into “sue-and-settle” with the AGs as partners.
This complicated legal maneuvering away from the democratic process and into the regulatory shadows is driven by the considerable political risk of promoting this agenda openly, the organizations’ letters to House and Senate leaders reads. They also cite the politically catastrophic 2009 cap-and-trade legislation, and failed Green New Deal vote of 2020, as the reason behind extremists’ search for a more discreet, backdoor strategy to sneak a transformational agenda into law.
The letters arrive days before “Earth Day” and President Biden’s international summit on climate change which is expected to announce expensive, ineffective and impossible goals.
AEA President Thomas Pyle made the following statement:
“Affordable energy won at the ballot box, not climate change. We already know the outcomes of Biden’s failed green jobs programs and since extremists can’t trick Congress into pushing through the Green New Deal, they may attempt to go around them. This is their warning.
“The swamp has been refilled and this kind of secretive effort – only revealed via lawsuit – demonstrates the worst elements of Washington DC. Unelected and unaccountable bureaucrats are again cycling through the revolving door of government and special interest groups to circumvent the will of the people all in the name of greater government control.”
View the letter and list of signatories sent to House leaders.
View the letter and list of signatories sent to Senate leaders.
Additional Resources:
- IER Commentary: If at First You Don’t Succeed, Try ‘Green Jobs’ Again
- Britain Underestimated the Cost of Making Homes Carbon Free
- Biden’s Infrastructure Bill: Green Handouts for the Politically Connected
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