Republicans love to say that regulations kill jobs and destroy the economy.
That’s the meme they used to oppose Obamacare, it’s how they attacked the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill, and it’s how they frame every argument against common sense environmental laws.
I hear it every day on my radio program and I see it every day on this TV show. The way Republicans put it, Washington bureaucrats don’t know anything about the economy, and whenever they try to make things better, they end up making things worse. But in reality, regulations are usually NOT the job-killers Republicans and Big Business say they are. If anything, good regulations actual create jobs and boost the economy.
Case in point: President Obama’s Clean Power Plan, which aims to cut carbon pollution in the U.S. by 30 percent of 2005 levels by 2030.
Ever since it was announced last June, the Clean Power Plan has come under attack from Republicans around the country and the fossil fuel industry that supports them. They’ve called it everything from a costly disaster to a job-killing attack on the coal industry and an unconstitutional power grab.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has led the charge,
writing in a recent piece for the Lexington Herald Leader that, “The regulation is unfair. It’s probably illegal… [a]nd in Kentucky, the regulation would likely… throw countless out of work.”
The legal arguments against the Clean Power Plan don’t really hold much muster, especially now that the D.C. Circuit Court has thrown out the main case against it. But because right-wing talking points still dominate the media, the "job-killer" argument against the Clean Power Plan is still very persuasive to a lot of people.
But here’s the thing: that argument is a lie.
