The fossil fuel industry and Big Pharma are the darlings of Corporate Congress next week.

Clean Power Plan
Lawmakers in both the U.S. Senate and U.S. House of Representatives will move forward with Congressional Review Act (CRA) resolutions to disapprove of two key rules designed to curb climate change. One is the Clean Power Plan, which would curb emissions from existing power plants. The other rule addresses emissions from new power plants.

Lawmakers are pushing these despite the fact that the rules are commonsense safeguards against carbon pollution, with significant public health and economic benefits. The more controversial of the two rules, the Clean Power Plan, would benefit consumers by lowering their electricity bills. (On Monday, Public Citizen will release a report with state-by-state information about this.)

The Clean Power Plan will save thousands of lives and reduce asthma attacks by the hundreds of thousands. It gives states the flexibility to develop their own plans to meet pollution reduction targets.

In the Senate, lawmakers will take a floor vote on the disapproval resolutions. In the House, the resolutions will be considered by the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

FDA Commissioner
Also next week, lawmakers will consider the nomination of Dr. Robert Califf – who has a well-documented and cozy relationship with pharmaceutical and medical device companies – for U.S. Food and Drug Administration commissioner. That agency oversees the industries Califf is cozy with. Because of the conflicts of interest, Public Citizen has called on President Barack Obama to withdraw Califf’s nomination.

Budget
It is rumored that by Nov. 20, appropriations subcommittees will complete their work on the budget and will forward the work to the full committees.

Public Citizen and a coalition of nearly 200 groups are working to block ideological policy riders that corporate-backed lawmakers couldn’t get passed otherwise. We’re talking about policies that deny women access to the health care provider of their choice; block safeguards that protect our homes, pocketbooks and workplaces; lower standards that keep our food, air and water safe; and more.

A budget deal has been cut, but the fight isn’t over. The public is still at risk.

Lawmakers still must work on individual appropriations bills, which will have to fit within the framework agreed upon this week. During that appropriations process, corporate-backed lawmakers will try to attach to the bills ideological policy riders that they couldn’t get passed otherwise. We’re talking about policies that deny women access to the health care provider of their choice; block safeguards that protect our homes, pocketbooks and workplaces; lower standards that keep our food, air and water safe; and more.

Also on our radar screen:

– Lawmakers hold yet another hearing designed to undermine the regulatory system. This one comes on Thursday, when the U.S. Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs’ Subcommittee on Regulatory Affairs and Federal Management discusses the best way to review regulations. The wording of the notice trots out the usual rhetoric about burdensome rules and comes just a week after Sens. Angus King (I-Maine), Mike Rounds (R-S.D.), Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) and Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) announced the formation of a “regulations caucus,” ostensibly to address “overregulation.”

The focus of the caucus and next week’s hearing is wrong. At a time when people are being killed and injured by defective airbags, when entire towns are in harm’s way because they are in the path of dangerous oil trains, when many workers are still not adequately protected from workplace hazards, the problem isn’t too much regulation – it’s too little. In fact, regulations are a great investment. In a draft of its latest annual report (PDF) to Congress, the White House Office of Management and Budget found that the monetary benefits of rules dramatically outweigh their costs.

The regulatory process is too slow and too captured by industry to protect Americans. Instead of attacking safeguards, Congress should investigate why regulations are so slow to be issued and so poorly enforced.

– Fossil fuel boosters will continue to try to block the Obama administration’s climate rule. Lawmakers are using the Congressional Review Act (CRA) in an attempt to block implementation of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s new rules to limit carbon dioxide emissions from new and existing power plants. The lawmakers pushing it (Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, U.S. Rep. Ed Whitfield, both of Kentucky, and Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.)) hail from states whose residents will fare quite well under the rule for existing power plants. Consumers will save money because they will use less power, a Public Citizen analysis shows.

The McConnell-Boehner Corporate Congress really hates the new federal rules designed to curb climate change. Really, really hates them.

Holding weekly hearings to lambaste the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) (yet another hearing is scheduled for Thursday) hasn’t soothed their ire, so next week, lawmakers in both the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives are going to start down another path – the Congressional Review Act (CRA) – in an attempt to block implementation of the rules.

How does this work? Lawmakers in both chambers will introduce resolutions under the CRA to disapprove of the two rules, which call for new and existing power plants to curb emissions of carbon dioxide.

Who is pushing this? None other than Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, U.S. Rep. Ed Whitfield (both of Kentucky) and Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.). Like their friends in the fossil fuel industry, they claim that the sky will fall – consumers will not be able to afford electricity, the lights will go off and so forth – if the rules are implemented.

But consumers in their states – Kentucky and West Virginia – will fare quite well under the EPA’s rule for existing power plants, called the Clean Power Plan. A Public Citizen analysis of the rule as proposed found that Kentuckians (PDF) will pay 7.7 percent less for electricity in 2030 under the Clean Power Plan, saving the average household $104 annually. West Virginians’ (PDF) electricity bills will be 9.9 percent lower, for a savings of $160. We’re still crunching numbers for the final rule, which was published in the Federal Register today.

The CRA resolutions are unlikely to get very far, especially since the president would veto them, but their introduction speaks to the influence of the fossil fuel industry over some members of Congress.

The Corporate Congress also will go after IRS Commissioner John Koskinen on Tuesday at a Senate Finance Committee hearing devoted to that targeting scandal (now almost two and a half years old). Instead of preparing for this hearing, Koskinen should be spending his time on providing clear guidance on what constitutes political activity for nonprofits. (The Bright Lines Project, housed at Public Citizen, offers precisely such a set of recommendations for clarity of the tax code and regulations, and for reducing the discretion of the IRS in determining nonprofit tax status.)

The McConnell-Boehner Corporate Congress returns to Washington, D.C., next week after taking a week off. Expect lawmakers to return to deal-making around the budget. To send a strong signal that using the budget to push corporate agendas is unacceptable, leaders of national civil rights, consumer, environmental, labor and women’s organizations will hold a telephone press call at 10:30 a.m. Tuesday to urge Congress to pass a clean budget that has no ideological policy riders and fully funds key national security and middle-class programs. We’ll be joined by U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.).

The rest of the week? Lawmakers will be targeting safeguards that help ensure we have clean air and water, a stable financial system, and safe roads and working conditions for miners:

•    The House Education and the Workforce Committee holds a hearing on mine safety on Wednesday. This comes as former Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship, who was at the helm of the company in 2010 when 29 workers were killed in an explosion at the company’s Upper Big Branch mine, is on trial for breaking mine safety laws. On Thursday, the former company president testified that Blankenship prioritized cost-cutting over safety – highlighting why we have federal safeguards. Even Blankenship, who grumbled about mine safety rules, seems to understand that rules save lives. He admitted in a phone call played for the jury that without federal mine regulators, “we’d blow ourselves up.”

•    The U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works holds a hearing at 10 a.m. Wednesday titled “Oversight of Regulatory Impact Analyses for U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Regulations.” Despite rhetoric from the fossil fuel industry, the fact is that benefits of clean air and water rules consistently outweigh their costs. This is true for safeguards across the board: The Office of Management and Budget found that rules issued between 2003 and 2013 resulted in benefits ranging from $217 billion to $863 billion, compared to costs ranging from $57 billion to $84 billion.

•    The U.S. House of Representatives’ Energy and Commerce Committee’s Energy and Power Subcommittee holds yet another hearing at 2 p.m. Thursday to attack the Obama administration’s new rules to limit carbon dioxide emissions from power plants. Despite the “sky-will-fall” claims from corporate-backed lawmakers, consumers will see their electricity bills decrease. Why? They will use less electricity thanks to increased efficiency measures states will adopt as part of the plan. Yes, that will happen even in Kentucky – home to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and the subcommittee chair, U.S. Rep. Ed Whitfield (R-Ky.), according to an early analysis of the rule by Public Citizen.

•    The House Financial Services Committee holds a hearing at 10 a.m. Wednesday to examine “legislative proposals to reduce regulatory burdens on Main Street job creators.” In other words, lawmakers likely will continue their efforts to dismantle the vital Dodd-Frank Wall Street rules that are designed to help stave off another catastrophic economic collapse like the one we experienced in 2008.

The McConnell-Boehner Corporate Congress avoided a budget showdown this week, but all lawmakers really did was push their disagreements to later in the year. Still pending, and of great concern to Public Citizen and more than 175 other organizations, are policy riders that lawmakers could attach to spending bills. The riders – which would jeopardize policies that restrain Wall Street abuses, guarantee clean air, food and water, keep homes and workplaces safe, hold big corporations accountable for wrongdoing, and more – have no connection to government funding and are highly controversial and unpopular.

Additional attacks on the public interest are in the offing next week. Here are a few we are watching:

– At 2:15 p.m. Tuesday, the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Oversight, Agency Action, Federal Rights and Federal Courts holds a hearing to address the impacts of regulation on minority communities. Hey! What about the benefits? Expect corporate-backed lawmakers not to focus on those. That’s why Public Citizen’s regulatory policy advocate, Amit Narang, will testify. He will explain how the harm caused by pollution, lax lending rules and unsafe workplaces often falls hardest on low-income communities and people of color.

– Senate lawmakers will launch another broadside against the regulatory process at 10 a.m. Wednesday. That’s when the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee meets to consider anti-regulatory bills that would be a boon to mega-companies but would hamstring our health and safety agencies. Several particularly dangerous bills being considered are:
• The Independent Agency Regulatory Analysis Act of 2015 (S. 1607), which would reduce the accountability of independent agencies to Congress and place new, unnecessary burdens on resource-strapped agencies;
• The Principled Rulemaking Act of 2015 (S. 1818), which would layer additional requirements onto the federal rulemaking process rather than streamlining it; and
• The Early Participation in Regulations Act (S. 1820), which would add more delays to the rulemaking process across the board.
– U.S. House of Representatives lawmakers will take aim yet again at the Obama administration’s attempt to protect people from pollution and save the planet. The House Energy and Commerce Committee’s Subcommittee on Energy and Power holds a hearing at 10 a.m. Wednesday on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s carbon dioxide rules for new and existing power plants. According to the hearing notice, the rules “seek to transform the way in which America generates, transmits, and consumes electricity.”

The subcommittee chair, Rep. Ed Whitfield (R-Ky.), says that prices would increase in Kentucky and across the United States. But he is omitting key information. Public Citizen analyzed how the Clean Power Plan would affect consumers in a variety of states, including Kentucky. The result: Electricity bills will decrease because people will be using less electricity thanks to increased efficiency measures that the state will adopt as part of the plan.