Comically corrupt Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) administrator Scott Pruitt has taken the first steps toward rolling back the fuel efficiency standards for cars and light trucks.
Without saying what the new standards would or should be, Pruitt ordered the agency to begin the review process to roll the standards back.
The corporate average fuel economy, or Cafe, standards, were not appropriate and should be revised, the EPA said in a release. EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt said the Obama administration “set the standards too high” and “made assumptions about the standards that didn’t comport with reality,” but he did not offer any specifics on revising them.
Pruitt ordered the agency to begin the review process because rolling back the standards outright would probably be illegal or, at the very least, not well received in a federal court room. The Trump regime has not fared well in the past when it tried to cut corners and speed up the process.
With that said, there's no doubt what the agency's sham review process will conclude. This is a formality.
This is being reported as a "win" for automakers, but it's possible not all of them are on board. Without offering more detail, the vice president of Honda's American operations says this is not what the industry asked for, but that remains to be seen.
You may have noticed that Americans are buying lots of SUVs again, just as they did in the mid-2000s, because gas is cheap. But how long will that last? Are we just setting ourselves up to repeat every mistake of the Bush administration, from wars to tax cuts, deregulation, and financial turmoil? I feel like we've seen this movie before and it didn't end well.