John Stossel on Our Bloated EPA
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has required sewage treatment plants, catalytic converters on cars, and other things that made the world cleaner than it was a few decades ago. Today, America's waterways are cleaner, and so is the air we breathe. In a rational world, argues John Stossel, environmental bureaucrats would now say, "Mission accomplished. We set tough standards, so we don't need to keep doing more. Stick a fork in it! We're done." We could keep around some EPA bureaucrats to enforce existing environmental rules and watch for new pollution problems—but not the 16,000 environmental regulators currently employed. This EPA bloat means that today, instead of environmental regulations that actually save lives, we pay to subsidize politicians' cronies and pet projects, such as electric cars.