Newt Gingrich’s CPAC Speech: Replace the EPA

Last weekend in Washington, D.C. the Conservative Political Action Committee (CPAC) http://www.conservative.org/cpac/ held CPAC 2011, an annual gathering of republicans the highlight of which is the famous CPAC Straw Poll, which traditionally gives the top three winners momentum to raise money for their presidential campaigns. Most of the 20 or so GOP hopefuls who have either formally announced their candidacy for president or hinted that they will soon be making a decision between now and this summer were in attendance.

According to CNN, Texas Rep. Paul received 30 percent of the vote, followed by former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney with 23 percent. There were the only two candidates to receive support in the double digits, and it was quite a gap between second and third place in this voting. In a relative tie for third were former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie with 6 percent each.

Notable absences were: Sarah Palin (3 percent), Huckabee (3 percent) and Giuliani (3 percent). Speaker Gingrich who received (4 percent) called for an all-American energy plan and a creation of a new department he called “Environmental Solutions Agency” to replace the Obama administration’s war on American energy.

“I want to replace, not reform EPA, because the EPA is made up of self selected bureaucrats, who are anti-American jobs, anti-American business, anti-state government, anti-local control, and I don’t think you can reeducate them,” Gingrich says and further claims that “an All-American Energy Plan will assertively develop all sources of American energy: oil, coal, natural gas, nuclear, solar, bio-fuels. American prosperity and national security are dependent on abundant, low cost American energy supplies.”

Gingrich’s energy initiative would call for a new Environmental Solutions Agency to replace the EPA, which has changed from an agency created to “protect human health and to safeguard the natural environment” into a job-killing, centralizing engine of ideological litigation and regulation that prevents economic progress. A new Environmental Solutions Agency would integrate science, technology, entrepreneurs, incentives, and local governments to preserve both a clean environment and a strong economy, all while decentralizing power and decision-making out of Washington and re-establishing control back to the states and local communities.

On energy policy Gingrich believes republicans are in the majority: “Now I believe, and by the way about 75 percent of the American people believe that relying on science, technology, markets, and incentives, is a better future, with better solutions, than relying on bureaucrats, trial lawyers, litigation, and regulation. This is a very fundamental question about can we do it better?” Gingrich queried.

What does Gingrich have against the EPA? After all wasn’t this bureaucracy created by President Nixon, a republican, in 1970? “I don’t think the EPA bureaucrats, who are dedicated to a Washington centered, top down, bureaucratic control by litigation and regulation, are going learn a new dance, a new approach, and a new model,” Gingrich replies. “What we need is, and by the way this is double true because Obama wants to use EPA to control carbon, so he can control all of the non-health economy to match his control of the health economy through Obamacare. And it is the two of them together that is such a fundamental threat to freedom in this country, by centralizing power in Washington, DC,” Newt declares.

But how can replacing one bureaucracy with another reduce the size of a leviathan government? “Now a new Environmental Solutions Agency, I believe, would do a better job of both protecting the environment and the economy. The principles are straightforward, localism when possible. I believe local people who actually live there, may have a higher value for their environment than a Washington bureaucrat who has never visited their town, and may never have even been in their state” Newt answers.

A leitmotiv throughout the environmental portion of his CPAC speech dealt with his strong belief in agencies working in partnership with the people rather than your typical top-down bureaucracy. “That [federal and] state governments can be very reliable partners, in that there ought to be a cooperative attitude from Washington, seeking to work with the states, not a dictatorial attitude, seeking to tell the states the limits of some bureaucrat here, based on paperwork,” Gingrich argues.

Gingrich further states that he believes “that incentives, innovators, and entrepreneurs will solve environmental problems, and improve the environment better than the bureaucrats, regulators and litigators. Furthermore that, “the new Environmental Solutions Agency [ESA] should see communities, states, and industries as partners, not adversaries in solving problems when one approaches.” In other words Newt seems to favor a private sector approach to the environment over a public sector one.

EPA or ESA, is their really a difference? Gingrich “rejects the idea that you have to choose one or the other” when he speaks with the voice of all Americans that, “We have always believed that you can create a better future, and in my mind, a better future as a healthy environment and a healthy economy, and healthy local control, within a Constitutional system of a limited federal government, and we Americans should be able to do that.”

What is Gingrich’s solution with the legion of bureaucrats presently ensconced in the EPA? Answering with a sardonic tone tinged with humor says, “I think you should allow them to go home, get a college job, write their memoirs “What I did before the Revolution”, and just go on with what we are doing.”

Tags: american energy, bureaucrats, cpac, environment, environmental, environmental solutions, epa, gingrich

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