In the run-up to the "State of the Union," The Wall Street Journal reported Monday on the language contained in directives to the EPA on how to decide what constitutes onerous regulation that tamps competitiveness and job creation. What they found were terms like "equity, human dignity, fairness" and "distributive impacts."
One official stated that her mission is in "explicitly integrating environmental justice considerations into the fabric of the EPA's process."
All good things, to be sure, but hard items to numerically quantify, especially from an administration that promised to return science to the debate. It was the overall theme of last night's performance—a delicate balancing act between simultaneous calls for debt reduction and new government "investment;" between an increase in competitiveness and reining in Wall Street run amok; between free trade agreements with South Korea while Union-opposed CAFTA and Columbia deals languish.
