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MAP Act Coalition Letter Freedomworks
April 13, 2021 Dear Members of Congress, We, the undersigned organizations representing millions of Americans nationwide highly concerned by our country’s unsustainable fiscal trajectory, write in support of the Maximizing America’s Prosperity (MAP) Act, to be introduced by Rep. Kevin Brady (R-Texas) and Sen. Mike Braun (R-Ind.). As we stare down a mounting national debt of over $28 trillion, the MAP Act presents a long-term solution to our ever-worsening spending patterns by implementing a Swiss-style debt brake that would prevent large budget deficits and increased national debt. Since the introduction of the MAP Act in the 116th Congress, our national debt has increased by more than 25 percent, totaling six trillion dollars higher than the $22 trillion we faced less than two years ago in July of 2019. Similarly, nearly 25 percent of all U.S. debt accumulated since the inception of our country has come since the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Now more than ever, it is critical that legislators take a serious look at the fiscal situation we find ourselves in, with a budget deficit for Fiscal Year 2020 of $3.132 trillion and a projected share of the national debt held by the public of 102.3 percent of GDP. While markets continue to finance our debt in the current moment, the simple and unavoidable fact remains that our country is not immune from the basic economics of massive debt, that history tells us leads to inevitable crisis. Increased levels of debt even before a resulting crisis slows economic activity -- a phenomenon referred to as “debt drag” -- which especially as we seek recovery from COVID-19 lockdowns, our nation cannot afford. -
In the News -- Jan. 29, 2007
District likely to ask for extension to meet standard BY STACEY SHEPARD, Californian staff writer Bakersfield Californian, Monday, Jan. 29, 2007 Valley air regulators will likely ask for a delay in meeting a federal air standard today. That's when the San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District will release its latest draft plan for cleaning up ozone, the main ingredient in smog. The current deadline for reducing ozone to levels mandated by the federal government is 2013. "We really have a problem here that no one else in the country has to face," said Brenda Turner, a spokeswoman for the district. Ozone is created when nitrogen oxides -- emitted from vehicle tailpipes, factories and construction equipment -- react with sunlight. Increased ozone is known to aggravate lung disorders. Ozone tends to become trapped here because of the valley's shape, stagnant air and hot temperatures. To make the 2013 deadline, the valley must cut emissions by nearly 70 percent. To do that, the last version of the cleanup plan, released by the district in October, estimated it would take 7.5 billion in taxpayer dollars to fund incentive programs. Even if money weren't an issue, the district doesn't believe the technology is available yet to make the needed reductions by 2013, Turner said. That's why more time seems to be the only alternative. Potentially, the deadline could be extended out by 10 years to 2023. Doing so would drop the price to fund incentive programs to about $2 billion or less, air district officials have said. The state Air Resources Board decides whether to grant an extension. -
HQ-FOI-01268-12 Processing
Release 3 - HQ-FOI-01268-12 All emails sent by "Richard Windsor" were sent by EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson 01268-EPA-2509 Richard To "Lisa At Home" Windsor/DC/USEPA/US cc 06/02/2009 05:23 PM bcc Subject Fw: Google Alert - lisa jackson epa From: Google Alerts [[email protected]] Sent: 06/02/2009 09:17 PM GMT To: Richard Windsor Subject: Google Alert - lisa jackson epa Google Blogs Alert for: lisa jackson epa EPA will push clean diesel grant money in Ohio on Wednesday By admin WASHINGTON – EPA Guardian Lisa A. Jackson generosity refuse suture information conferences angry Ohio humans officials paper Columbus wood Cincinnati other Wednesday, June BAKSHEESH write interpret grants fan these American Refreshment ... carsnet.net - http://carsnet.net/ Top Air Pollution Official Finally Confirmed: Scientific American ranking member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, offered his support for McCarthy's confirmation and said he expected EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson to support legislative efforts to limit the scope of EPA climate ... Scientific American - Technology - http://www.scientificamerican.com/ Controversial Coal Mining Method Gets Obama's OK « Chrisy58's Weblog By chrisy58 And EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson said this year that the agency had “considerable concern” about the projects. She pledged that her agency would “use the best science and follow the letter of the law in ensuring we are protecting our ... Chrisy58's Weblog - http://chrisy58.wordpress.com/ This as-it-happens Google Alert is brought to you by Google. Remove this alert. Create another alert. Manage your alerts. Release 3 - HQ-FOI-01268-12 All emails sent by "Richard Windsor" were sent by EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson 01268-EPA-2515 Arvin Ganesan/DC/USEPA/US To Richard Windsor cc 06/05/2009 06:56 PM bcc Subject coal ash FYI - (b) (5) Deliberative -------------------------------------------- ARVIN R. -
Heartland Climate Economists List SAMPLE
U.S. Climate Economists Mailing List May 30, 2017 Name Contact Information Email Address Qualifications Anderson, Terry Property and Environment A founder of the Free Market Environmentalism, coauthor (with Leal) of the basic reference on the Research Center subject, head of PERC until just recently. See Anderson, T.L. and McChesney, F.S. 2003. Property Rights: Cooperation, Conflict, and Law . Princeton, MA: Princeton University Press. Suite A B.S. University of Montana, Ph.D. in economics from the University of Washington. Bozeman, MT Phone Ausubel, Jesse The Rockefeller University Director of the Program for the Human Environment and Senior Research Associate at The Rockefeller r.edu University in New York City. From 1977-1988 Mr. Ausubel worked for the National Academies complex in Washington DC as a fellow of the National Academy of Sciences, staff officer of the National Research New York, NY Council Board on Atmospheric Sciences and Climate, and from 1983-1988 Director of Programs for the National Academy of Engineering (NAE). Mr. Ausubel was a main organizer of the first UN World http://www.rockefeller.edu/ Climate Conference (Geneva, 1979), which substantially elevated the global warming issue on scientific research/faculty/researchaffi and political agendas. During 1979-1981 he led the Climate Task of the Resources and Environment liates/JesseAusubel/#conten Program of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, near Vienna, Austria, an East-West t think-tank created by the U.S. and Soviet academies of sciences. Mr. Ausubel helped formulate the US and world climate research programs. Ausubel is one of the top two or three authorities on how the environment is getting cleaner and safer overtime. -
Minimum Wage Coalition Letter Freedomworks
June 23, 2021 Dear Members of Congress, We, the undersigned organizations representing millions of Americans nationwide, write in blanket opposition to any increase in the federal minimum wage, especially in such a time when our job market needs maximum flexibility to recover from the havoc wreaked on it by the government's response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Workers must be compensated for their labor based on the value that said labor adds to their employer. Any deviation from this standard is harmful to workers and threatens jobs and employment opportunities for all workers. Whether it be to $11, $15, or any other dollar amount, increasing the federal minimum wage further takes away the freedom of two parties to agree on the value of one’s labor to the other’s product. As a result, employment options are restricted and jobs are lost. Instead, the free market should be left alone to work in the best interest of employers and employees alike. While proponents of raising the minimum wage often claim to be working in service of low-wage earners, studies have regularly shown that minimum wage increases harm low-skilled workers the most. Higher minimum wages inevitably lead to lay-offs and automation that drives low-skilled workers to unemployment. The Congressional Budget Office projected that raising the minimum wage to $15 would directly result in up to 2.7 million jobs lost by 2026. Raising it to $11 in the same time frame - as some Senators are discussing - could cost up to 490,000 jobs, if such a proposal is paired with eliminating the tip credit as well. -
President Trump's Campaign to Erase the Social Cost of Carbon
Hidden Costs: President Trump’s Campaign to Erase the Social Cost of Carbon By Alison Cassady April 19, 2017 On March 28, 2017, President Donald Trump signed an executive order that attempts to upend critical components of President Barack Obama’s Climate Action Plan.1 The sweeping executive order directs his Cabinet officials to review and potentially rescind several climate-related rules, including the Clean Power Plan, or CPP—which set the first-ever carbon pollution standards for power plants—and two rules establishing methane pollution limits for oil and gas drilling facilities. The order also ends a morato- rium on coal leasing on public lands, among other policy changes.2 Media coverage focused primarily on these significant rule reversals. But the executive order also rescinds what the chief economist of President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisors called the “the most important figure you’ve never heard of”—the social cost of carbon, or SCC.3 The SCC reflects the marginal economic cost of adding one ton of carbon pollution to the atmosphere or, conversely, the economic benefit of removing one ton. President Obama established an interagency working group to develop the SCC so that federal agencies had a sound basis from which to quantify the benefits of policies to cut carbon pollution and justify those policies relative to their costs. The SCC is currently set at $39 per metric ton in 2007 dollars. Because the SCC plays a key role in validating federal climate policies, fossil fuel interests and their allies in conservative think tanks—many of whom served on the Trump admin- istration’s transition team—have been pushing to eliminate or lower the SCC value.4 The executive order rescinds the current SCC and provides agencies with direction that could result in a SCC value that approaches zero. -
Energy Environment
Energy and Environment FREE to PROSPER A Pro-Growth Agenda for the 117th Congress Energy and Environment REJECT THE GREEN NEW DEAL AND SIMILAR CENTRAL PLANNING SCHEMES The Green New Deal (GND), a nonbinding resolution introduced by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) in February 2019, calls for “a new national, social, industrial, and economic mobilization on a scale not seen since World War II and the New Deal era.” The GND envisions a massive expansion of federal spending and regulation to decarbonize the economy while guaranteeing health care, affordable housing, higher education, job training, family-sustaining wages, and retirement security for all. The costs required to achieve that end point are unsustainably large, vastly exceed benefits, and are not scientifically justified. Congress should: ◆ Reject the Green New Deal and similar central-planning schemes. The GND would impose unsustainable costs on the U.S. energy sector, inflate energy prices, depress gross domestic product (GDP) growth, and impoverish American households. A March 2019 study by American Enterprise Institute economist Benjamin Zycher estimates that “meeting 100 percent of the power demand in the United States through clean, renewable, and zero-emission energy sources” would cost $490.5 84 Free to Prosper: A Pro-Growth Agenda for the 117th Congress billion per year, or $3,845 per household. Factoring in the budget cost of the social spending programs required to sustain the pro-GND coalition in Congress and the deadweight loss of the associated tax hikes, Zycher estimates the total annual cost of the GND would be nearly $9 trillion. -
(EPA) in Its Entire 47-Year History
THE EPA UNDER SIEGE Trump’s Assault in History and Testimony Christopher Sellers Lindsey Dillon Jennifer Liss Ohayon Nick Shapiro Marianne Sullivan Chris Amoss Stephen Bocking Phil Brown Vanessa De la Rosa Jill Harrison Sara Johns Katherine Kulik Rebecca Lave Michelle Murphy Liza Piper Lauren Richter Sara Wylie EDGI June 2017 The Environmental Data & Governance Initiative (EDGI) is an organization comprised of academics and non-prot employees that promotes open and accessible government data and information along with evidence-based policy making. The EPA Under Siege is the rst part of a multipart series o n the early days of the Trump administration. In this series, EDGI authors systematically investigate historical precedents for Trump’s attack on the EPA, consequences for toxic regulation and environmental justice, the inuence of the fossil fuel industry on the new administration, changes to the public presentation of climate change, and the new administration’s hostility to scientic research and evidence. For the rest of the series see: h ttps://100days.envirodatagov.org. TABLE OF CONTENTS I. Executive Summary 3 II. Introduction 6 III. Precedent #1: The Early-Reagan Attack on the Environmental State 9 IV. What Ended the Gorsuch Era 18 V. Precedent #2: The Harper Administration in Canada 26 VI. Just Before Trump: An Agency Already in Decline? 33 VII. The Trump Administration Compared 38 VIII. Can the EPA Survive? 56 IX. Appendix: Interview Compendium 59 The EPA Under Siege 2 I. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY The Trump administration currently poses the greatest threat to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in its entire 47-year history. -
Politics of Climate Change Belief
editorial Politics of climate change belief Donald Trump’s actions during the election and his first weeks as US president-elect send a strong message about his belief in climate change, or lack thereof. However, these actions may reflect polarization of climate change beliefs, not climate mitigation behaviour. Earlier this year, Donald Trump appointed Trump’s strategy. However, it seems more Myron Ebell, a known climate science likely that Clinton’s explicit references to denier, to oversee the US Environmental climate change were designed to reach Protection Agency transition (he later young voters2 who are already concerned chose another sceptic, Scott Pruitt, to run about the environmental impacts of climate the agency), and said that he would ‘cancel’ change, rather than those who need to be the Paris climate agreement. By the end persuaded by economic arguments. One of his second week as president-elect, it could even speculate that merely saying was announced that under Trump funds “climate change” highlighted the political from NASA’s Earth Science Division would divide between these latter voters and be redirected to deep space exploration Clinton, something that this issue has come projects, effectively eliminating a world- to symbolize. renowned centre for climate change There is no doubt value in determining research (see ref. 1 for a complete overview how to better educate the public about of Trump’s actions). This is notable given climate science. However, interventions that, as discussed in our November News based on the assumption that informing the Feature2, climate change was not central to public about environmental consequences the US presidential campaigns, and is not will inspire pro-environmental behaviour an issue that motivates electoral decisions. -
Save Document As Question1 and Add Your Last Name Or Affiliation
Additional Topics Submitter’s Name/Affiliation: William Prindle, Deputy Director, ACEEE If there is an additional topic related to the design of a mandatory market based program that you would like to address, please submit comments on this form. Why Energy Efficiency Requires Explicit Treatment in Climate Policy ACEEE wants to emphasize to the Committee the importance of engaging energy efficiency in any effective national climate policy. As the studies we have cited elsewhere in our responses to the Committee’s questions have shown, energy efficiency is one of the most cost-effective ways to address carbon emissions, and it can lead to a climate policy that produces net economic benefits, not penalties, for the economy. Yet energy efficiency will not happen automatically through a broad, upstream cap-and-trade program, because efficiency occurs downstream, at the end-use level. This means that emissions traders typically will not accept emission reductions credits from energy efficiency as valid, because reductions in energy use do not assure upstream emission reductions. This is particularly problematic in the power sector. Our analysis leads us to the conclusion that to be engaged effectively in climate policy, efficiency requires two key policy commitments: 1. A direct allocation, or auction, of allowances to entities charged with acquiring energy efficiency and other clean energy resources. 2. Parallel, complementary policies outside the cap regime, which are designed to achieve targeted energy savings in the most cost-effective way. These include energy efficiency resource standards (EERS), public benefits funds (PBF), and appliance standards The Modeling of Climate Policy Must Better Address Efficiency’s Benefits We suggest that the climate science argument is largely completed. -
Environmental Law in Warmer World
Adapting to Climate Change: Environmental Law in a Warmer World Matthew D. Zinn* Climate change presents a choice for publicpolicy mitigate our con- tribution to it or attempt to adapt to a changing world. In its most radical form, adaptation accepts as a given fundamentalchanges to our environ- ment caused by a warming climate and consequently demands similarly fundamental adaptationsin our ways of life. Those adaptationscould en- tail widespread and severe environmental impacts, complementing and enhancing the primaryenvironmental consequences of climate change. While environmental law has, if haltingly, moderated our environ- mental impacts in the recent past, this Article suggests that we should not assume that its successes will be repeated in a warmer world. Climate change threatens to exacerbate some of the problems of capacity that have limited environmental law, particularlythe inability to plan com- prehensively to minimize environmental effects. Climate change may also undermine the public support that has been integral to the creation and sustenance of environmentallaw by reorientinghuman relationshipswith the natural world. The environmental changes caused by a warming cli- mate may convert "the environment" from an endowment to be pro- tected to a hostile and unpredictable force to be controlled and from which we demandprotection. Although pessimistic about the prospects for environmentalprotec- tion in a world of unchecked climate change, the Article concludes with some optimism about our ability to avoid the worst of adaptation'scon- sequences through a policy of climate change mitigation. Copyright © 2007 by the Regents of the University of California. Environmental Law Fellow, California Center for Environmental Law and Policy, Uni- versity of California, Berkeley, Boalt Hall School of Law, 2006. -
The American Health Care Plan H a Free-Market, Pro-Liberty Alternative to Government- Controlled Health Care
April 2021 The American Health Care Plan H A Free-Market, Pro-Liberty Alternative to Government- Controlled Health Care Haskins - Karnick The American Health Care Plan Introduction . 4 1. The Obamacare Disaster . 5 2. A Free-Market, Pro-Liberty Health Care Plan . 8 A. Ending the Obamacare Exchanges . 9 B. Association Health Plans . 10 C. Direct Primary Care . 11 D. Revolutionizing Employer-Sponsored Health Insurance . 12 E. Incentivizing Efficient Spending Practices . 14 Table of F. Big Reforms, Big Benefits . 15 Contents 3. Fixing Medicaid . 17 A. Reforming Medicaid . 18 B. Available Funding . 18 C. Health Ownership Account Rules . 21 D. Ending the Cycle of Poverty . 22 E. High-Risk Pools . 23 4. A Brief Summary and Concluding Remarks . 25 Conclusion . 26 About the Authors . 27 The Heartland Institute >> Heartland.org 3 The American Health Care Plan Introduction he United States is at an important crossroads for health care system. It then offers to lawmakers and T health care and the nation’s economy. President the public a commonsense plan to create a pro-liberty Joe Biden and congressional Democrats, at the urg- health care system that would make health coverage ing of the party’s left-wing base, insist that Ameri- available to all Americans without compromising ca should adopt either a European-style single-payer quality or putting individual liberty at risk. health care system or a “public option,” which would inevitably lead to a single-payer system by driving The plan is laid out in two distinct parts. The first private health