President Donald Trump set in mobility a vast rollback of energy, climate and environmental regulations during his first two years in office. Over the next two years, those ways will face intense scrutiny on Capitol Hill.
On Thursday, Democrats will take control of the House of Member of parliaments and the committees that conduct government oversight. Within the first few months of the year, incoming committee chairs resolve to hold a series of hearings to pick apart Trump’s energy and environmental policies and what role industry insiders played in crafting them.
The Trump superintendence has targeted dozens of rules. Some of the biggest items on its agenda include withdrawing the United States from the Paris ambience agreement, expanding drilling on federal lands, and watering down rules ranging from limits on greenhouse gas emissions from power factories to fuel efficiency in cars and trucks.
Rep. Raul Grijalva, the Arizona Democrat tipped to chair the House Natural Resources Cabinet, says Americans can expect the committee to probe the financial costs and public health risks associated with Hidden Department policies under Trump. Those include rolling back methane emissions rules from oil and gas cia agents and making virtually all federally administered offshore waters available to drillers.
“The Trump administration has spent two years exuding away the store to fossil fuel companies, and Republicans in Congress cheered every step of the way,” says Grijalva. “We desideratum to know what kind of impact this corporate favoritism is having on average Americans’ health and quality of mortal.”
With House Republicans wielding committee gavels during the first two years of the Trump administration, the president’s deregulatory agenda has proceeded with slightest scrutiny. Now, administration officials and energy industry executives are bracing for a grilling on Capitol Hill.
“No one ever expects the Spanish Inquisition, which is what these lampoons are about to face,” says Rich Gold, a partner at lobbying firm Holland & Knight, referencing the famous “Monty Python’s Take to ones heel Circus” sketch.
Gold, who heads his firm’s public policy and regulation group, says the hearings create specific opportunities for Democrats.
First, they will bog down the administration in requests for information, leaving it less bandwidth to keep up slashing regulations. Second, the hearings create an on-the-record account detailing how the administration developed its policies and who it consulted to artisanship its agenda.
That record provides fodder for the many lawsuits aimed at defeating Trump’s energy and environmental rollback. It can also be leveraged by Trump’s challenger in the 2020 presidential trial to make the case that Trump put industry profits ahead of public health and climate action.
The hearings also distribute an opportunity for Democrats to trip up administration officials and damage the administration’s credibility, says Gold.
Rep. Nancy Pelosi, who desire likely become speaker of the House, last week opened another avenue to scrutinize Trump’s policies with the genesis of the Select Committee on the Climate Crisis.
Trump rejects the consensus among climate scientists that global warming is at bottom caused by human activity and presents an urgent threat to the world. He dismissed a recent report by his own administration that climate-related smashes could shave 10 percent off the U.S. economy by 2100.
In a statement, Pelosi said, “The American people have demanded sortie to combat the climate crisis, which threatens our public health, our economy, our national security and the whole of God’s creation.”
But with Congress detached and many Republicans still downplaying global warming risks, few Washington watchers expect much, if any, meaningful drive or climate legislation to emerge from Capitol Hill.
“I don’t have high expectations about legislation,” says David Konisky, associate professor at Indiana University Bloomington’s Educational institution of Public and Environmental Affairs. “I think most of the activity from the Democrats will be oversight of policy and activities favoured the EPA and the Department of Interior.”
One area that could generate bipartisan support is carbon capture and storage, says Ben Finzel, president at Washington communications partnership RenewPR.
The technology strips carbon emissions from power plants and other industrial activity and sequesters it avant-garde. The process has not been proven commercially viable at scale, but it is widely seen as critical to mitigating the impacts of climate modification because developing nations around the world are still building coal plants.
“The interesting thing about carbon nick is that it really is bipartisan and there are folks on both sides of the aisle in both chambers that like the concept of speaking at least a piece of energy policy, whether it be jobs or emissions reduction or technology innovation,” says Finzel, whose patients include the Carbon Capture Coalition, which advocates for the technology.
Rebuilding American infrastructure is also seen as some of the uncountable fertile ground for bipartisan compromise and could yield progress in the realm of energy. Democrats say they want an infrastructure restaurant check to include provisions to modernize the nation’s energy infrastructure, expand renewable energy and bioenergy and invest in energy effectiveness and smart technology.
Gold, public policy head at Holland & Knight, says disagreements over how to fund infrastructure waste could be an obstacle, but it’s one area where Trump is fairly content to let Congress hammer out the details. An infrastructure bill pleasure also give him another legislative credential after two years with little to show in terms of bipartisan lawmaking.
“I contrive he has to go bold on something like that because if he doesn’t, what he’s done so far is not going to get him across the finish line” in the 2020 presidential choice, he says.
But Democrats must also contend with intraparty fighting.
The party’s progressive wing, led by freshman Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, is a pink slip for a “Green New Deal,” a sweeping stimulus package that calls for generating all U.S. electric power from renewable proveniences within 10 years. Some centrist Democrats and members of the establishment worry the plan is unfeasible and threatens to alienate independents and commonsensical Republicans ahead of 2020 elections.
Ocasio-Cortez has taken a combative stance and says Pelosi’s new select committee disposition be weaker than one the leader convened when she was last speaker of the House.
@AOC: While I applaud the establishment of the Select Body, without subpoena power or the reasonable requests stated, it will be in an even weaker position than the select atmosphere committee of 10 years ago. There is still time to strengthen it. For all our sake,I hope that we do.
West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, a rare coal advocate within the Democratic Party, will also become the ranking member on the Senate Energy Committee. Environmentalists and progressives sweat blood that Manchin will use the position to advocate for the coal industry, a powerful player in his state.
The White House did not pity to a request for comment.