A House committee is exploring the many regulations from the Environmental Protection Agency – and while many Americans agree that rules are necessary, others say there’s a cost that may go unnoticed.

The House Energy and Commerce Committee met Wednesday to review the EPA’s regulatory activity during the Obama administration, particularly the activity in the energy and industrial sectors. Environmentalists and liberals have welcomed new and tougher standards on these and other sectors, but critics say they do more harm than good. In some cases, critics say rules aren’t even necessary, adding they overlap policies from states.

“In terms of costs to the economy, I think the EPA is the most expensive, the most costly, and the most destructive of economic growth and jobs,” says Myron Ebell of the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

Ebell adds that many small regulations are more annoying than destructive, but says the EPA “specializes in very big regulations that are taking over larger and larger chunks of the economy.” He points to greenhouse gas rules for power plants as an example.

“One of those rules is sometimes called the Clean Power Plan,” says Ebell – adding: “It ought to be called the Colossally Costly Power Plan. But that rule actually takes over the state authority to regulate electric utilities, [and] that’s the kind of thing that EPA under President Obama is engaged in.”

Still, one argument made over the years by supporters and even members of the Obama administration is that it has issued fewer regulations than the Bush administration. On the other side of that argument are critics who counter that those regulations issued by Obama are more expensive.

OneNewsNow asked Ebell if that’s still the case. “We get into a few gray areas here,” he responds, “but I would say, in general, [the administration of] President Obama … [who is] now in his last year of office … has caught up with and surpassed any previous administration in terms of writing new rules and the costs of those rules.”

Rules and regulations may not have everyone’s attention, but Ebell contends they should.

“Our economy, nationally, has been dead in the water now for a long time,” he explains. “It started before President Obama took office, but he hasn’t done anything [and] his policies are standing in the way of getting economic growth going again.”

Meanwhile, when one compares environmental protection and what it does for human health, Ebell says the overregulation that Obama’s administration is engaged in is impacting everything from jobs to income and even life choices.

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