Steven Palazzo: EPA, once needed, now a runaway bureaucracy

Last month I co-sponsored a bill to terminate the Environmental Protection Agency. Since then, I have heard from many people in South Mississippi who both support and oppose this bill. Mainly people want to know: can we really get rid of the EPA?

Probably not, and honestly, my goal in cosponsoring this legislation is not to go back to the dirty water and air of the 1970s. It’s to put a runaway bureaucracy on notice that the days of crushing the American economy in the name of red tape are over.

I am a sportsman. I love clean air and clean water and want the same for my kids. And I will openly admit that the EPA was a necessary function of government in the 1970’s when pollution was destroying our nation’s resources. But the EPA has grown far too vast and is now doing more harm than good to our country.

In 1970, the first year of the EPA’s existence, the agency employed 4,084 people. Today, even after five years of Republican budget cuts, it employs 15,376 bureaucrats—a growth rate of 376 percent! And while many may not believe it, the entire federal civilian workforce is actually 9.5 percent smaller than it was in 1970.

Since 1970, we now have half as many uniformed soldiers in the military to protect us from terrorism at home and abroad, but we have four times as many EPA employees to perform duties such as designating coal as “hazardous waste” or designating ponds and ditches as “waters of the United States” and thereby subjecting them to the Clean Water Act. I think you get my point.

The EPA has become the epitome of a government agency of unelected bureaucrats who are killing American jobs and American businesses with red tape and regulations.

Some estimates indicate EPA regulations cost the U.S. economy more than $350 billion annually. Researchers in 2012, only halfway through President Obama’s time in office, found 88,852 specific regulatory restrictions in federal environmental code. During Obama’s time in office, there have been 4,000 new EPA regulations and compliance costs have grown $50 billion.

The Office of Management and Budget rated the 30 least cost-effective regulations—the EPA created 17 of them. So if you’re a farmer trying to dig a ditch on your land or a construction company looking to build a new small business, good luck. Tens of thousands of EPA regulations and 15,000 EPA bureaucrats are here to stop you.

We all want clean air and water. The Gulf Coast is a living coastline. I want to continue to take my kids hunting and fishing here in Mississippi. We can still have a healthy environment without 15,000 people telling us where we can put our ponds. The EPA can take a big cut and still do its job.

We also have the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality which duplicates many of the same functions as the EPA. I know many of their employees and they do a great job. We have 49 other states with their own agencies around the country doing the same thing and we have laws on the books protecting our air and water.

The bill to terminate the EPA is a shot across the bow against a federal agency that has gotten too large and is too damaging to our country. We may not, and probably should not, eliminate the EPA, but the American people are fed up with these runaway agencies who have run our economy into the ground, and they have demanded a change.

It is our job as elected officials to give it to them and ensure we put a stop to the mountain of unelected bureaucrats. I cannot support rogue agency actions that make America a harder place to create jobs in order to pursue policies that will do very little to change our climate. That is bad government and that is not what my constituents sent me to DC to do. EPA or not, the government needs to shrink and people need to be left to live their lives, run their businesses, and reach for the American dream.

This story was originally published March 2, 2017 at 3:47 PM with the headline "Steven Palazzo: EPA, once needed, now a runaway bureaucracy."