Suppose you’re the Obama administration’s EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson, and suppose you wish the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act gave you more powers than they actually give you. You could go back to Congress and propose that they amend the legislation to expand your powers. Or instead, you could just circumvent the law like this:
- Get your friends in the environmental movement (like the Sierra Club, where disgraced former EPA employee Alfredo Armendariz now works) to sue the EPA for failing to do something that the law doesn’t allow it to do.
- “Negotiate” with the suing environmental group and enter into a “consent agreement” with them in which the EPA agrees to impose the extra-legal regulations that the environmental group asked for.
- Get the judge in the lawsuit (who’s probably in on the scam, since the plaintiff chose the jurisdiction with an eye on who the judges are) to sign the consent decree, since the parties to the suit are “in agreement.”
Shazam! Now the EPA has the power to impose regulations that the laws passed by Congress don’t give them!
This is how the coal industry is being destroyed — among others. This is how the Obama administration is subverting the rule of law, thumbing its nose at Congress, and expanding its ability to rule by executive decree.
The only thing left to do is to stonewall FOIA requests that might uncover the collusion with the environmental groups. See this NetRight Daily post by Rick Manning for more details.
