Obscure part of Clean Air Act could kill Obama's climate plan

By Kyle Feldscher, Kyle Feldscher

Published December 20, 2015

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Congress is poised to kill the legal justification for President Obama's Clean Power Plan by eliminating an obscure passage in Clean Air Act amendments passed in the early 1990s.

Three top House Republicans say in a letter sent to the Environmental Protection Agency on Monday that Congress' nonpartisan Office of Law Revision Counsel ruled in 1992 that an amendment in section 111(d) of the Clean Air Act, which the agency is using to justify its power plant rules, is unenforceable. If the law is enacted as written by the office, it would replace the current Clean Air Act as law and the Clean Power Plan's legal justification would be significantly undermined.