Submitters: Marco Rubio, Tom UdallEPARichard Nixon established the EPA in 1970, as the protection of the environment was an issue of national security and citizen welfare.
This is something there is bipartisan agreement over. So clearly, the EPA should continue existing, to protect citizens through preventing contamination of Water Supplies in rural areas and regulating the amount of sulfur dioxide released into the atmosphere, which causes acid rain.The next question is whether the EPA should regulate corporations specifically.The environment is generally considered an externality in the free market, which is to say that it is a byproduct of the fossil fuel industry that does not impact the consumer or the business directly. This means that corporations would have no incentive to even explore methods of fossil fuel burning that emit less carbon dioxide, even if it costs the same amount of money to do so.
Given that carbon taxes are highly controversial, the EPA is able to step in as a regulatory body to ensure that companies are not releasing more carbon dioxide than they need to, due to sheer negligence.However, due to the politicised nature of the EPA, allegations have been made that it has been using bogus data, in order to forward a specific President’s agenda. Most of these allegations have been proven to be false, but some have held true. Therefore we propose a solution:Requires the Senate and House Committees on Environment and Public Works to perform biannual checks on the validity of scientific research conducted by the EPA and in the event the EPA has been found to have published invalid research the following measures will be put in place:Prosecution of individuals who had intentionally published invalid data, andSuspension of regulations related to the data until further scientific investigations are published;Campaign Finance ReformThe fossil fuel lobby has fought incessantly against the Renewable Energy Industry.
The intense lobbying of lawmakers from both parties by special interest groups is the primary reason for the decades of inaction on this issue. In fact, in 2008, Republican Presidential Candidate John McCain said that climate change was an issue of natural security and that the only reason climate change was a partisan issue was because of fear of special interests who would coerce lawmakers into voting in favour of fossil fuel industries by funding the opponents of those who refused to do so.The 2010 Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v. FEC was a victory for special interests at the expense of the American people. It enabled corporations to spend freely from their treasuries on campaigns and gave rise to Super PACs which spent more than billions in the 2016 election season. This has allowed special interest groups such as the fossil fuels lobby to wield massive political power through their ability to determine the victors of an election and thus control the writing of law in Congress.
Are solutions to this are as followsEstablishes that Congress shall have the power to regulate the raising and spending of money in all Federal elections by limiting the following:The amount of contributions to candidates for nomination for election or for election to Federal office,The amount of contributions in opposition to candidates such as methods including by not limited to:negative advertisementFunding a candidates’ opponentsGrants greater powers to the Federal Election Commission (FEC) to regulate campaign donations to ensure thatThere is a cap to the amount of money that is donated to a campaign by a corporationAll candidates running for similar seats are granted an equal capCandidates are not allowed to request for any donations to candidatesAll donations are made directly to the FEC, from which point they will be transacted to the campaign, to ensure the anonymity of donors
