By David McKinley, June 2, 2015

Connecting the Dots on Regulations
Too much of anything is a bad thing. If you plug too many appliances into an outlet, it will blow a fuse. If you overload a boat, it will sink.

Likewise, if you weigh down the United States economy with burdensome and excessive regulations, there will be fewer jobs, higher prices, and less opportunities for West Virginia families.

There is a fine line between reasonable levels of regulations controlling our health care, banking and manufacturing industries versus unwarranted abuse by regulatory bureaucrats in Washington.

The President’s allies will tell you the 80,000 pages of rules written each year are simply to ensure our water and air remain clean; and who could argue with that?

But that is not the whole truth. Federal agencies are not required to conduct cost-benefit analysis. Therefore, as they promulgate excessive, complex and questionable regulations, regulators are unaware that their rules often hold back economic growth. So let’s connect the dots between regulations and the consequences for West Virginia families.

The Environmental Protection Agency is currently pushing new requirements for coal power plants – rules too expensive to comply with. According to a study from the government’s Energy Information Administration, the new regulations will shut down about 90 gigawatts of coal-fired production.

To put that in context, we only create 310 gigawatts from coal in the whole country; the EPA’s rules are shutting down nearly a third of our coal power without any votes in Congress.

Connect the dots: If a power plant can’t afford to keep operating, what will they do? They will shut down, of course. And as more power plants are forced to shut down, our aging electric grid becomes over-stressed and the chances of rolling blackouts increase.

During the winter of 2014-15, the East Coast grid came within a few hundred megawatts, the equivalent of just one power plant, of collapsing.

West Virginians deserve better than worrying if their electricity will go out when the mercury drops.

In another example of executive overreach, the EPA is claiming control over nearly every body of water in the country – including streams, ditches, and even puddles.

Under the Clean Water Act the federal government is limited to protecting “navigable waters” but the EPA is now seeking to expand its authority over ditches and ponds. Bureaucrats within the EPA fervently contend they should be regulated like a major waterway. Seriously.

Connect the dots: If the EPA regulates all water, down to simple puddles, it will bankrupt small and family farms. Instead of planting and harvesting crops, small farmers will be required to get permits from Washington, D.C. to farm land they already own.

It has been estimated those permits cost $300,000 and months, if not years, to obtain. That means families forced to sell farms and fewer jobs for West Virginia.

Again, these regulations are written with no clear grasp of cost-benefit.

In 2012, the EPA changed a regulation in an attempt to improve air quality by removing more “fine particulate matter” (aka, dust) from the air. The change is tiny but it comes at a great cost to power plants, car makers, and manufacturers.

How tiny are the benefits? Imagine filling the Empire State Building’s 103 stories with billions of ping-pong balls. Now imagine you remove just one ping-pong ball from the entire skyscraper, at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars each year. This is the equivalence of the EPA rule.

Connect the dots: Instead of investing in research, expanding their production, and creating more jobs, American businesses are now forced to pay millions to comply with regulations from an unaccountable agency run by unelected bureaucrats. As the saying goes, ”Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.” This is particularly applicable to the EPA.

The endless stream of excessive, ill-conceived regulations coming out of Washington burdens our economy with costs that outweigh the miniscule benefits. Too much of anything is a bad thing, and too many regulations mean fewer jobs, higher prices, and worse service for you.

Connect the dots and you can see this is a bad deal for West Virginia families.