White House press secretary Jay Carney said Thursday that critics in Congress are making “doomsday claims” that the president’s forthcoming climate regulation will devastate the economy.
Carney said that special interests and their allies in Congress will use the scare tactic against the administration’s cornerstone limits on carbon emissions from existing power plants.
{mosads}”We know that special interests and their allies in Congress will make doomsday claims about harm to jobs and harm to the economy,” Carney said Thursday. “They have made those claims every time America has set clear rules and better standards for our air and our water and our children’s health.
“Every time, they’ve been wrong. So, the president believes strongly that this is the right thing to do.”
Republicans have railed against the regulation, calling it a “war on coal” that will effectively shutter plants across the U.S. due to unrealistic greenhouse gas targets.
Carney also said that the U.S. has a “moral obligation” to leave younger generations a planet that isn’t polluted.
“The effects of climate change are already being felt across the nation, and in the past three decades, the percentage of Americans with asthma has more than doubled, and climate change is putting those Americans at greater risk of landing in the hospital,” Carney said.
He wouldn’t go into the details of how the Environmental Protection Agency will unveil the proposal Monday, but Obama has indicated his intent to announce the rule himself.