Stopping The EPA From Driving Up Gas Prices & Making It Harder To Create New Jobs

Congressman John Boehner
March 9, 2011

With gas prices rising and experts predicting a surge in prices at the pump to rival what we saw in the summer of 2008, the new House majority is taking action to stop the Obama Administration from driving gas prices up higher and making it harder for small businesses to create new jobs.

Tomorrow, the Energy & Power Subcommittee will vote on the Energy Tax Prevention Act of 2011 (H.R. 910), Pledge to America legislation sponsored by Rep. Ed Whitfield (R-KY). The bill would stop the EPA from going around Congress and unilaterally imposing a backdoor national energy tax that would make everything from gas prices to utility rates more expensive and send American jobs overseas. According to the House Committee on Energy & Commerce:

Previous congressional efforts to regulate and put a price on greenhouse gas emissions were estimated to increase the price of a gallon of gasoline by 19 cents in 2015 and 95 cents in 2050. While estimates are not available for the full cost of the litany of regulations being proposed and contemplated by the EPA in large measure because the EPA has refused to conduct an economic analysis per Lisa Jackson herself, greenhouse gas regulation is expected to impose even greater economic costs than the bills that ultimately failed in Congress. A Senate report examining the consequences of the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill projected $43.6 billion in additional transportation fuel costs in 2020, $78.1 billion in 2030, $128 billion in 2040, and $215.8 billion in 2050.