Last week, Americans for Tax Reform, joined by ten other organizations, sent a letter urging the Environmental Protection Agency to refrain from authoring a Chemical Action Plan for siloxanes, a kind of silicone compound. Despite the fact that no evidence exists that siloxanes present a health or environmental threat, the EPA is poised to regulate the chemical, which is ubiquitous in today’s marketplace. The coalition letter states:

What’s more, Congress is currently considering reforming the TSCA. CAPs allow the EPA to function without accountability, shutting the public out of debate on important regulatory issues until after the recommendations have been written. Any attempt to preempt Congressional action by authoring new CAPs demonstrates a blatant disregard by the EPA for the strict constitutional authority it is afforded.

At a time when the country can least afford it, hasty regulatory action by the EPA on siloxanes could threaten millions of jobs and have serious reverberations throughout the consumer marketplace. Given its widespread utility, restriction of the use of siloxanes would necessarily cause prices on goods as varied as cosmetics to car tires to skyrocket, since no safe and effective alternative to the chemical is available.

“This is another egregious example of devious regulatory overreach,” said Americans for Tax Reform President Grover Norquist. “The EPA, bored with regulating the air we breathe, has set its sights on the most useful chemical compound in the marketplace today in hopes of increasing the cost of manufacturing, driving up the prices of consumer products and generally making Americans’ lives harder. After being forced to shoulder the Pelosi-Reid-Obama spending debacle of the past two years, this is hardly a burden taxpayers can afford.”

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Posted by Mattie Duppler on Monday, November 1, 2010 10:09 AM EDT

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