WASHINGTON - House Science, Space, and Technology Committee Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas) released the following statement today after the Obama administration attempted to bury news over the holiday weekend of the president trying to go around Congress to commit the United States to an ineffectual, costly and non-legally binding international climate agreement.
Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas): “In committing the United States to the United Nation’s Paris climate agreement, the president is wrongly trying to make law by his own executive action. His agreement bypasses Congress, puts our nation at an economic disadvantage, and imposes undue and unsustainable burdens on American families.
“While negotiating this deal, the president pledged to double taxpayer-funded foreign aid by $400 million per year for other countries’ climate change efforts. It is the constitutional role of Congress to appropriate all funding. By law, the president should have asked Congress to review his agreement. He didn’t, because he knew Congress would not approve it.
“The United States’ contribution to the Paris climate agreement, which includes the Clean Power Plan, could cost up to $176 billion annually, but would have no significant impacts on climate change. The president’s costly environmental regulations would only reduce global temperatures by just three one-hundredths of a degree Celsius, and sea level rise by the thickness of three sheets of paper. It is all pain and no gain.
“This deal will raise electric bills, cost jobs and slow economic growth. Why put Americans out of work and our nation at an economic disadvantage for little environmental benefit?
“The American people deserve policies based on good science, not an extreme agenda based on science fiction.”