Quigley Introduces Amendment to Calculate American Health Care Costs With and Without the Clean Air Act

Thank you Madam Speaker and to the Ranking Member and Chairman,

My amendment would require the GAO to report to Congress the results of a study of healthcare costs in the U.S. as affected by the elimination of EPA regulation under this Act. Further, the report would also detail healthcare costs in the U.S. proceeding under the EPA's current regulating authority as determined in 2007 in Massachusetts v. EPA.

It is science, hard facts and figures that have lead hundreds of scientists to confirm that global warming is real. Despite the other numbers you've heard the most convincing one is that there are over 200 scientific peer reviews that have determined global warming is real and man contributes to that and exactly zero that prove the contrary.

It was science that lead the Congress to pass the Clean Air Act, the Act which designated the EPA as the body charged with overseeing, adapting and implementing these regulations. And, it was science that lead the Supreme Court, through jurisprudence, to rule in 2007 that the Environmental Protection Agency does in fact have the authority to regulate greenhouse gasses.

My amendment is simple. It directs the GAO to report the costs of health care under the Clean Air Act, and then to report the costs of health care without the Clean Air Act. In 2010 alone, EPA reported, the reduction in fine particulate and ozone pollution from the Clean Air Act prevented more than 160,000 premature deaths, 130,000 heart attacks, 13 million lost work days and 1.7 asthma attacks.

These are serious health issues that burden the government with serious bills. We face serious budgetary times " we may be out of a recession, but we are far from recovered. If we are committed to making the government more efficient and effective, to cutting waste, fraud and abuse " then we must acknowledge that spending a smart dollar upfront saves many dollars on the backend.

I encourage my colleagues to support this amendment that will allow the experts at the GAO to show us a world with the Clean Air Act, and a world without.

My estimation is that a world with less mercury in our water and ozone in our air will cost far less in dollars and deaths than the opposite " but I will defer to the experts and look forward to their report on the subject.