DALLAS – Gov. Rick Perry is asking President Barack Obama to stop the Environmental Protection Agency's efforts to take over Texas' air permitting program.
Speaking in Dallas, Perry said the Obama administration has taken "yet another step in its campaign to harm our economy and impose federal control over Texas."
With their decision to take control of a permitting process that the Clean Air Act allows to be delegated to the states, the EPA is on the verge of killing thousands of Texas jobs and derailing a program that has cleaned Texas' air, Perry said.
The governor touted the Lone Star State's process, which involves the Legislature, Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, business owners and the public. He said Texas focuses on results instead of "big-government control," which has led to cleaner air in the state than it was 10 years ago as well as strong economy.
Perry said the issue was non-partisan.
"Our emissions control program went into effect under Gov. Ann Richards in 1994 and was approved by the Clinton administration," he said. "Since then, the EPA's unelected bureaucrats haven't ruled on it once, yet, with the arrival of a new administration in Washington, they have put a bulls-eye on the backs of hardworking Texans."
An increasingly activist EPA, Perry said, is ignoring the 22 percent reduction in ozone and 46 percent decrease in NOX emissions that Texas has achieved since 2000.
"On behalf of those Texans whose jobs are threatened by this latest overreach, and in defense of not only our clean air program but also our rights under the 10th Amendment, I am calling upon President Obama to rein in the EPA and instruct them to study our successful approach for recommended use elsewhere," Perry said.