A Few thought on a new E.P.A.

Newt Gingrich wants to scrap the Environmental Protection Agency and replace it with The Environmental Solutions Agency, "incorporating the statutory responsibilities of the old EPA while making necessary statutory changes that will eliminate the job-killing regulatory abuses and power grabs of the old EPA." Gingrich wants the new E.S.A "dedicated to bringing together science, technology, entrepreneurs, incentives, and local creativity to create a cleaner environment through smarter regulation." The new ESA "will focus on developing actual solutions to environmental challenges rather than simply trying to litigate them into existence. The ESA will work with industry instead of dictating to industry and incentivize the use of newer technologies instead of punishing current businesses.

This all sounds great, of course. We all want bureaucrats to use the most accurate information possible when making their decisions, and we'd prefer them to use incentives rather than punishments. But why does this switch from the whip to the carrot require a new agency? Any bureaucracy, from the EPA to the NSA, ultimately answers to the President for its actions, even self-initiated one, and so the change of mission statement would require nothing more than a statement from the oval office. Creating a new organization, after all, may just leave new members of that organization struggling to define or understand their role--and does Gingrich want them doing that on the public payroll?

Worse, the use of government incentives would still be government control of business, even if through unusual means, and regardless of those means, we can largely expect economic problems. For one thing, any incentive for a business to clean itself will have to be large enough to increase the profits of any company enjoying them significantly. At some point though, the government will probably decide to withdraw those benefits, perhaps as part of a program to pay a deficit or line a congressional pocket, and this will still amount to an unplanned burden on that company. That company, then, will still have to kill jobs to survive--and any politician worth his snake oil will still be able to use this threat to pressure American business....

Just some thoughts....

Note: All quotes above are from Newt Gingrich's website http://www.newt.org/newt-direct/replacing-epa