Ohio Congressman John Boehner warns that the Environmental Protection Agency plans to "declare war on motorists, homeowners, consumers, and everybody in America who uses energy or has a job."
"Bureaucrats in the Clinton administration don't like cars and have plans to make owning and using them much more expensive," charges automotive writer Eric Peters in a recent Wall Street Journal editorial. These bureaucrats, Peters continues, "don't think you have any right to know about this, let alone have your congressman vote on the matter."
The beans were spilled, however, when an internal memo issued on October 31, 1994 by the Office of Policy, Planning, and Evaluation in the Environmental Protection Agency found its way into the hands of Representative John Boehner of Ohio. Boehner had the good sense to let the rest of us in on the little secret. Peters says the memo "details plans for the imposition -- by bureaucratic fiat -- of a 50-cent-per-gallon federal tax on gasoline, as well as a host of other, colorfully named taxes on fossil fuels."
Peters predicts that the tax "could cost the average American family more than $1000 a year directly -- plus indirect costs in the form of higher prices on consumer goods, owing to added transportation costs. EPA's own memo estimates the total [annual] cost to the economy at $47 billion." The EPA recognizes that such an ill-advised and unpopular tax is not likely even to be proposed, much less enacted, by a Republican Congress. However, in the internal memo committed to paper by one of its ghoulish functionaries two Halloweens ago, the EPA argues that "the administration has the authority to begin rule-making on its own, without legislation." The pretext for such usurpation is supposedly to be found in Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962.
According to the EPA's interpretation of this obscure legislation, the Secretary of Commerce is empowered to investigate the impact of oil imports on national security. "If the secretary finds that oil imports threaten or impair national security," the memo argues, "the president would decide to impose a gasoline fee of 50 cents per gallon to reduce consumption of petroleum and, in turn, oil imports."
The car war is being fought on other fronts, as well. "The EPA also has plans for much stricter vehicle emissions inspection programs designed to get older cars off the roads, while subjecting new cars to even stricter tailpipe exhaust standards," reports Eric Peters. "The memo further indicates EPA's intention to pursue another two-percent reduction in new-car carbon dioxide emission levels via a progressive increase in the Corporate Average Fuel Economy standard -- a move industry experts agree will add $500 to $1000 to the price of the average new vehicle." Peters predicts no "substantive benefit from such a move, since 1996 model-year cars and trucks are already 95-98 percent 'clean,' as compared with cars of the 1960s."
