Trump's Plan to Gut EPA Leaked ...

This is quite a to-do list ...

Anyone laboring under the impression that the new Trump administration will be all bark and no bite when it comes to overturning long-established bipartisan policies should watch Team Trump’s assault on the Environmental Protection Agency closely. Aside from appointing Scott Pruitt, who is mainly familiar with EPA as a hated adversary in court, to be in charge of that agency, plans for an initial regulatory wave and budgetary policies amount to a 180-degree turn in environmental enforcement, as reported today by Axios. They include the complete elimination of climate-change programs; a half-billion-dollars in funding cuts for EPA grants to state and local governments; an immediate halt to Clean Air Act regulations affecting new and existing power plants; an about-face on auto emissions standards; and a general defanging of EPA’s crucial ability to overrule federal and state regulations that pose environmental dangers.

That’s probably just the beginning, because these plans were formulated by Trump’s EPA transition director, Myron Ebell, mostly famous as a climate-change skeptic, but more generally active as a policy wonk at a very prominent libertarian-ish think tank called the Competitive Enterprise Institute, financed mostly by a rogue’s gallery of fossil-fuel industries and right-wing foundations.

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/01/team-trump-is-launching-a-frontal-assault-on-the-epa.html

While tragic this is no revelation or surprise Sal . . . . the come-to-Jesus moment will not be evident until the consequences begin to emerge down the road when the American people will have their first real opportunity to weigh the benefits against the consequences . . . . nevertheless, the outfall will linger up until the next election.

The lawyers are going to have a field day with this. The legal profession will probably erect statues to Trump before his term is done.

Federal agencies are huge bureaucracies and not so easily destroyed--you can tweak them around the edges but  a massive sea-change of policy is much more difficult. There are probably enough pro-environment Republican reps and senators to quash any major changes. Also, the states are going to oppose ANY loss of Federal funds. That money hires local constituents.

Sal wrote:
Hopefully, in the time it will take to plow through all of the bureaucracy, we will be fortunate enough to have a replacement who is not a lunatic installed in the Oval Office.

Ack! Who? Pence? He might actually be able to get stuff done. To me, he's an order of magnitude worse than Trump. And he ain't no Agnew--we're going to be stuck with him for the duration.

Trump has so many vulnerabilities and can be so easily distracted that his administration can be kept in turmoil for his entire term. Also, as I mentioned, I don't think congress is going to be so cooperative on this issue.