WASHINGTON   –  U.S. Rep. Jo Ann Emerson (MO-08), a sponsor of House legislation to bar EPA regulations on greenhouse gases and resulting energy tax hikes, today said that a Senate compromise to prevent EPA from acting for two years is insufficient.

“We shouldn’t be delaying these rules, we should be stopping them.  There is little basis and even less authority for allowing EPA to implement a cap-and-trade system Congress has refused to pass into law.  A two-year delay doesn’t change anything at all,” Emerson said. “So many Missourians are working hard to provide for their families and to revitalize our state’s economy, willfully enacting double digit rates of increase in the cost of gas and electricity is a grave disservice to their efforts.”

Emerson is the cosponsor of a Resolution of Disapproval in the U.S. House of Representatives which would simply remove the authority of the Environmental Protection Agency to enforce any cap-and-trade rules.  Various versions of the resolution have garnered strong support in both the House and Senate.

“Because this issue is so vital to the economic fundamentals in many American states, we have had no trouble finding broad bipartisan support for the bill.  Families in Southern Missouri can’t afford $6 gas or thousand-dollar electric bills, but that is the ultimate effect these regulations would have on them,” Emerson said.  “Thousands of jobs and billions of dollars of economic activity would be at risk in the state of Missouri alone.”

Chairman of the House Agriculture Committee Colin Peterson and Chairman of the Armed Services Committee Ike Skelton are also sponsoring the effort.