Congressional Democrats are offering up a bill whose effects will be to destroy the American plastics industry and drive manufacturing to China:
Republican lawmakers are raising concerns that provisions in the sweeping climate bill from top House Democrats would stifle the plastics industry.
One late addition to the nearly 1,000-page piece of legislation, known as the CLEAN Future Act, is meant to curb greenhouse gas emissions and air pollution emitted from the petrochemical facilities that produce plastics or the raw materials used to make plastics.
Most significantly, the bill would impose a temporary pause on air pollution permits needed for approval of new plastics production facilities.
The legislation also directs the Environmental Protection Agency to issue new greenhouse gas and air pollution controls for these facilities within three years, including requiring plastics production plants to use zero-emissions power and improve emissions monitoring.
Buy into our green energy graft or we won’t let you do business.
The EPA regulations must also require any permit for a plastics production facility to be accompanied by an “environmental justice assessment,” which would include consulting with the people who live in the region where the facility would be located, according to the bill.
Pay off our social justice warriors or we won’t let you do business.
Several Republicans, during a legislative hearing on the bill Thursday, argued it would dampen the plastics industry at a time when the pandemic exposed a need for more plastic materials for personal protective equipment such as masks and gloves.
Rep. David McKinley, a West Virginia Republican, asked whether the Democrats’ bill would preclude the opening of new facilities such as an under-construction ethane cracker plant being built by Shell near Pittsburgh or a similar plant planned for eastern Ohio.
“Yes, I believe that language would jeopardize future investment into those types of facilities,” said Kevin Sunday, director of government affairs for the Pennsylvania Chamber of Business and Industry, in response to McKinley’s question.
Sunday added that beyond PPE, plastics are also used to weatherize homes and can be found in automotive devices, recreational equipment, and even components used to transport and store the coronavirus vaccines.
Plastics are basically in every part of the American economy, from cars to medicine to semiconductors to clothing. As the biggest petrochemical producing state, Texas would be badly hurt by such regulation, but so would Louisiana, Pennsylvania, Ohio, New Jersey and Illinois (among many others).
Rep. Dan Crenshaw, a Texas Republican, questioned whether the provisions targeting plastics production would have any measurable benefit on curbing emissions or reducing plastic waste in the oceans.
“I take that cotton bag to Whole Foods, I do, but I know it’s virtue-signaling,” Crenshaw said during the hearing. He suggested that the bulk of the plastics waste in the oceans can be traced back to Asian countries and that the United States isn’t as big a piece of the problem.
Of course, this bill wouldn’t stop anyone from opening plastics plants in China, where environmental regulations are far more lax. If this bill passes, opening a plastics plant in China may indeed require less money in bribes for communist party officials than opening one in America would require in crony capitalist payoffs to Democratic Party toadies. So the end result will be more global pollution and fewer American jobs.
This is yet another area where Democrats’ rent-seeker behavior will harm the American economy to ensure that their own palms are greased. One hopes there are still enough Democratic senators willing to listen to major employers in their states to vote down this naked attempt to tank a vital sector of the American economy.
(Hat tip: Director Blue.)