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The EPA's Blueprint for Disaster
A new regulatory regime from our environmental bureaucrats would grind the economy to a halt.
By Phil Kerpen
Opponents of massive new energy taxes and regulations breathed a small sigh of relief last month when the Lieberman-Warner climate-tax bill went down in flames on the Senate floor. Even 10 Democrats broke from the party line and voted against it, writing that they would have opposed the bill on final passage. Unfortunately, power-mad bureaucrats at the Environmental Protection Agency remain undaunted.
The EPA is expected today to release a document that blueprints a dizzying array of greenhouse-gas regulatory programs under dozens of different provisions of the 1970 Clean Air Act. The document, called an “Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking,” will formally begin the process of implementing restrictions more draconian than those in the Lieberman-Warner bill -- all without a single vote of Congress.
Payment-Card Reporting Nonsense
Another expensive bad idea from congressional Democrats.
By Phil Kerpen
Last week the House Ways and Means Committee marked up the so-called Alternative Minimum Tax Relief Act of 2008. As expected, the Democrats are proposing several permanent tax hikes in exchange for a provision to protect the middle class from the unintended consequences of the AMT. What wasn’t expected was the addition of a nasty new regulation.
The bill now includes a $30.98 billion capital-gains tax increase on the carried interest of general partners in investment partnerships and a $13.57 billion income-tax hike for oil companies. Basis reporting, which would require financial firms to report capital-gains basis information to the IRS, was thankfully not included in the bill. However, payment-card reporting was. This is real bad news.