WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senator Tom Carper (D-Del.), top Democrat on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, today released the following statement after the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) proposed a rule that would warp the cost-benefit analysis for its regulations. 

“This is not about reforming the agency’s cost-benefit process. This is not about improving transparency or ensuring consistency in the regulatory process. This is about ensuring EPA can disregard the benefits of reducing air pollution and ignore the real, human costs of increasing it.

“From EPA’s slew of attacks on clean air protections in recent weeks – amid a deadly respiratory pandemic, no less – to the agency’s refusal to accept and act on the reality of climate change, it’s old news that the Trump Administration ignores science. However, this proposal is something new. By warping the cost-benefit analysis EPA must use in rulemaking, this effort is aimed at eroding the importance of sound science and analysis in rulemaking for decades to come, and preventing future administrations from doing what must be done to protect the planet and all those who inhabit it.

“Like many of the legally flawed proposals we’ve seen from EPA over the last several years, this move is antithetical to EPA’s mission to protect human health and the environment. I’m confident it will be relegated to the growing list of rules that will be overturned in court or reversed by the next administration.” 

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