Trimming the EPA

Donald Elliot, over at the Atlantic, makes the case for trimming the EPA.

Many of our environmental laws still command the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to eliminate pollution without regard to economic or job costs. They put the EPA on autopilot churning out one rule after another without heed to cost or competing values. Today in some (but not all) EPA rules, we spend huge sums chasing tiny risks that probably don't actually exist and thereby kill jobs and steal from the poor.

Mr. Elliot was EPA general counsel and a law professor at Yale. He makes a good case, but like Paul Ryan's budget, I'd say that it doesn't go far enough.

Abolish the EPA and rescind all the laws that caused the problem in the first place.