The blogosphere has proven a fertile ground for anti-EPA rumors and accusations. EPA $21B rumors 'comically wrong'

It’s a story too good to be true for the anti-Obama and anti-regulation crowd: The hated Environmental Protection Agency is looking to spend $21 billion per year to hire an additional 230,000 people to enforce greenhouse gas regulations.

One problem: It’s not true.


Patient zero for this story is The Daily Caller, which on Monday wrote that the EPA is “asking for taxpayers to shoulder the burden of up to 230,000 new bureaucrats — at a cost of $21 billion — to attempt to implement the rules.”

To put that to scale: EPA currently has 17,000 employees at an annual budget of $8.7 billion.

"Much of what is said or written about EPA these days is entirely inaccurate — but The Daily Caller's report is comically wrong,” EPA spokesman Brendan Gilfillan told POLITICO. “At least one job clearly needs to be created: They're clearly in the market for a fact-checker."

The blogosphere has proven a fertile ground for anti-EPA rumors and accusations, aided by the current anti-regulation fervor from Capitol Hill Republicans. EPA chief Lisa Jackson has had to repeatedly insist, for instance, that her agency has no plans to regulate farm dust, place a “cow tax” on farmers for the greenhouse gases emitted by livestock or regulate spilled milk the same way it regulates spilled oil.

The Daily Caller item immediately went viral, appearing on Fox News Channel, Fox Nation, National Review Online and Hot Air, among other sites, according to Media Matters.

So what happened? Here’s the simple version:

The EPA, using two recent Supreme Court decisions, wants to regulate greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act. But if it were to do so now, the effects on, well, everyone, would be dramatic.

So the agency has proposed the so-called tailoring rule, which would limit permitting requirements to the biggest industrial emitters. However, industry groups are challenging the tailoring rule in court, saying the EPA doesn’t have the Clean Air Act authority it says it has, while some greens say the EPA proposal is too permissive.

That brings us to earlier this month in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, where the Justice Department filed an extensive brief outlining some of the potential costs if the tailoring rule were blocked. Among them, DOJ said, the $21 billion and 230,000 employees could be needed to help regulate more than 6 million sources.

“Hiring the 230,000 full-time employees necessary to produce the 1.4 billion work hours required to address the actual increase in permitting functions would result in an increase in the Title V administration costs of $21 billion per year,” DOJ wrote.

DOJ adds that the tailoring rule is designed specifically to avoid that kind of scenario.

The EPA determined that phasing in the statutory limits would still allow most of the emission benefits “while avoiding the permit gridlock that unquestionably would result from the immediate application” of the thresholds laid out in the Clean Air Act, DOJ said in the brief.

The Clean Air Act currently requires permits for facilities that emit more than 100 or 250 tons per year of harmful pollutants like lead and sulfur dioxide. But the EPA has said those limits aren’t appropriate for greenhouse gases, which are emitted in much larger quantities.

Daily Caller Executive Editor David Martosko said the publication stands by its story.

"The EPA is well-known for expanding its reach, especially regarding greenhouse gas emissions. What's 'comically wrong' is the idea that half of Washington won't admit it. The EPA's own court filing speaks volumes," Martosko said in an email.

"What's more likely: that the Obama administration's EPA wants to limit its own power, or that it's interested in dramatically increasing its reach and budget? Anyone who has spent more than a few months in Washington knows the answer," he added. "The suggestion that the EPA — this EPA in particular — is going to court to limit its own growth is the funniest thing I've seen since Nancy Grace's nipple-slip."

Robin Bravender contributed to this report.

This article first appeared on POLITICO Pro at 8:34 p.m. on September 27, 2011.