By Rep. Fred Upton

Today’s high gas prices put a tremendous burden on Michigan families and businesses, particularly during the summer travel season.  The very last thing that folks can afford right now are Washington policies that raise energy costs even higher and disproportionately hurt the nation’s most vulnerable.

We are a nation that is fortunate enough to be blessed with abundant energy resources.  As Chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, my committee is focused on commonsense policies that support the production of affordable North American energy, promote the creation of jobs, and fortify our energy security.

That includes projects like the Keystone XL pipeline, which would create tens of thousands of good-paying jobs and bring nearly 1 million barrels of oil from Canada to U.S. refineries each day.  But after more than four years of regulatory delay, the administration continues to drag its heels on approving this historic jobs and energy project.  This despite the President’s most recent pledge to focus on jobs.

In that same period of time, the administration has proposed or finalized a number of costly new energy-related rules that endanger jobs and threaten to drive gas prices even higher. 

One example is the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) new Tier 3 rule requiring ultra-low sulfur gasoline.  It is estimated that this regulation alone will cost billions of dollars annually and could add up to 9 cents to the cost of a single gallon of gasoline.

Faced with a fragile economic recovery and today’s already-high gas prices, such rulemaking is unacceptable.

In order to bring greater transparency to the rulemaking process, the House will soon consider my committee’s Energy Consumers Relief Act (H.R. 1582).  This commonsense bipartisan legislation protects families from the harmful economic consequences of future EPA regulations by requiring an assessment of the cumulative impact that such regulations would have on U.S. jobs and energy costs.  Further, EPA would be prohibited from finalizing certain energy-related rules if the Secretary of Energy determines that the rule would cause significant adverse effects to our economy.  Frankly, it’s a level of scrutiny that is long overdue at a federal agency run amuck.
 
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