JEFFERSON CITY
Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt is suing the Biden administration over an executive order to tighten regulations on greenhouse gas emissions.
Schmitt, considered a contender for Roy Blunt’s now-open U.S. Senate seat in 2022, is leading 12 other Republican states in the effort, including Kansas.
It is the first legal challenge Republican state officials have jointly brought against the Biden administration. Both Schmitt and Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt backed a legal challenge against Pennsylvania mail-in votes in the 2020 election.
“In practice, President Biden’s order directs federal agencies to use this enormous figure to justify an equally enormous expansion of federal regulatory power that will intrude into every aspect of Americans’ lives—from their cars, to their refrigerators and homes, to their grocery and electric bills,” the attorneys general wrote in the lawsuit.
The states argue the administration overstepped its authority in January when it issued an executive order directing federal agencies to calculate a “social cost” of carbon, methane and nitrous oxide emissions that would be used in future environmental regulations. The order, which also canceled the controversial Keystone XL pipeline project, was one of a series of sweeping actions the Biden administration said would both lessen the effects of climate change and deliver green jobs.
Biden has not supported the Green New Deal resolution pushed by the progressive wing of Democrats in Congress, but Republicans have aimed to paint his own climate plan as similarly far-reaching. The resolution calls for net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2030. In a statement announcing the lawsuit Schmidt accused Biden of attempting “to end-run Congress and implement parts of the so-called ‘Green New Deal’ by executive order.”
Schmitt, Schmidt and others say Biden’s order would only harm the local manufacturing, agriculture and energy sectors.
“Once again, an administration wants federal bureaucrats to do by burdensome regulation what it is unable to pass through Congress,” Schmidt said in a statement Monday. “No president has authority to impose this massive job-killing cost on our economy by executive order.”
The “social cost” is intended to represent the economic damages caused by increased emissions of the three gases, including flood damage and human health impacts, according to the executive order.
In Missouri, nearly 400,000 people work in the agriculture industry. More than 475,000 work in manufacturing, according to the Missouri Economic Research and Information Center.
“Government should not get in the way of our continued progress by adding regulations that dramatically increase production costs,” Missouri Farm Bureau president Garrett Hawkins said in Schmitt’s news release.
According to the Kansas Department of Labor manufacturing is the second highest driver of jobs in Kansas with 156,407 workers. Agriculture accounts for 12,950 workers and utilities accounts for 6,163 jobs.
Schmidt, who is openly considering running for governor next year, is also pushing against executive regulations at the state level. Last month, he proposed a constitutional amendment that would allow the legislature to cancel or suspend regulations issued by state agencies.
This story was originally published March 08, 2021 2:27 PM.