West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey on Wednesday wrote a letter to U.S. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Senate Minority Leader Sen. Mitch McConnell opposing President Joe Biden’s pick to head the U.S. Environmental Agency’s air office.
The Biden administration nominated Joseph Goffman to lead the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Office of Air and Radiation. He has led the air office on an acting basis for more than two years and was instrumental in the development of former President Barack Obama’s Clean Power Plan.
Goffman’s nomination has been lingering for nearly two years, and the Attorney General said that’s for good reason.
“During his time as an officer with former President Obama’s EPA, and in his present position Principal Deputy Assistant for the Air Office, Mr. Goffman has been directly involved in—and often led—some of EPA’s most problematic proposals,” Attorney General Morrisey wrote, noting in the letter that Goffman, “…. seems to prefer regulatory measures that destabilize our grid, hamper our economy, eliminate jobs, and disregard Congress’s authority.”
“And our country cannot tolerate the billions of dollars in regulatory costs that Mr. Goffman seems determined to impose.”
Among other burdensome regulations, the EPA’s air office not too long ago released new stringent emissions standards on American-made vehicles, including both light-duty cars and heavy-duty trucks.
In 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court threw out Goffman’s trademark initiative—the Clean Power Plan—in its West Virginia v. EPA ruling—which marked the most consequential development in environmental law since Attorney General Morrisey won a historic and unprecedented stay of the Obama-era Clean Power Plan at the Supreme Court in February 2016. West Virginia v. EPA has already become one of the central cases in administrative law.
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