EPA's Mission Leap

What does the Environmental Protection Agency say it needs to fully implement new greenhouse gas emissions rules? How about an army of 230,000 new bureaucrats and an additional $21 billion a year?
According to the Daily Caller news site, a court brief filed by the Justice Department on behalf of the EPA argues that the agency would need "230,000 full-time employees necessary to produce the 1.4 billion work hours required" to administer rules under the Clean Air Act. This added burden, it is reckoned, "would result in an increase in Title V administration costs of $21 billion per year." This scenario is part of a brief filed during a lawsuit brought against the agency by a trade group hoping to block the EPA's greenhouse gas regulatory regime. The group maintains that the Clean Air Act doesn't give EPA that authority. A couple of publications insist the Daily Caller got the story wrong, that the EPA was simply laying out the facts should it be required to fully implement the regulatory scheme instead of phasing it in, as it wants to do. Rather than regulating more than 6 million sources of emissions, the EPA wants a "tailoring rule" so it can regulate only the largest emitters, which ostensibly will take fewer employees and dollars. We're not here to defend or attack the Daily Caller's reporting. But even if it is wrong, the fact the EPA says it would need 230,000 new bureaucrats and an extra $21 billion a year to fully administer a regulatory regime is alarming...more