The NPR Politics Podcast - Trump Targets Environmental Regulations

Episode Date: March 28, 2017

Plus this week's cancelled hearing in the House Intelligence Committee. This episode: host/White House correspondent Tamara Keith, White House correspondent Scott Horsley, political reporter Danielle Kurtzleben, and political editor Domenico Montanaro. More coverage at nprpolitics.org. Email the show at [e-mail]. Find and support your local public radio station at npr.org/stations.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hey, this week, don't miss Terry Gross's conversation on Fresh Air with Hamilton creator Lin-Manuel Miranda. He talks about how making mixtapes as a teen prepared him for being a Broadway composer and how he crafts elaborate rhymes without tripping over his tongue. Also on the Fresh Air podcast, you'll find in-depth conversations about Russia, Donald Trump's business dealings, and segregation in schools. Find Fresh Air on the NPR One app or wherever you listen to podcasts. about Russia, Donald Trump's business dealings, and segregation in schools. Find Fresh Air on the NPR One app or wherever you listen to podcasts. Hi there. This is Sergio Matos from Lima, Peru.

This podcast was recorded at 3.52 p.m. on Tuesday, the 28th of March. Things may have changed by the time you hear it. Keep up with all of NPR political coverage at Npr.org, on the NPR One app, and on your local public radio station. Okay, here's the show. Hey guys, it's the NPR Politics Podcast, here to talk about President Trump's new order that would bring big changes to U.S. environmental policy. And a few other things.

I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House for NPR. I'm Danielle Kurtzleben, political reporter. I'm Scott Horsley. I also cover the White House. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, political editor. All right, guys. As far as I'm concerned, you're not wearing any clothes because I can't see you. Whoa. We are fully clothed. I think two of us actually have sweaters on. So I, too, am fully clothed in my basement hidey place at the White House in our booth. I have a little creeped out tail. Scott hasn't said a word. It's going to be getting a lot warmer.

You won't need those sweaters. So before we get to these big environmental policy changes that we talked about and what they may or may not mean. Really quickly, some news of the day about those ongoing congressional investigations into Russia's meddling in last year's election and any links between members of the Trump campaign and Russian officials. There was supposed to be another hearing in the House Intelligence Committee as part of that investigation today. A bunch of Obama administration officials were supposed to be testifying,

including former acting Attorney General Sally Yates, former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, and former Director of the CIA John Brennan. But that didn't happen. Remember, Sally Yates is the former acting Attorney General who fell on her sword and was fired when she refused to enforce the first version of the Trump travel ban. But that's not what she was supposed to be talking about here. She's also the former acting attorney general who went to the White House to alert the president through his counsel that his national security advisor, Michael Flynn,

had told a story to the vice president and others in the administration that wasn't entirely true about what conversations he'd had with the Russian ambassador. Right. So Democratic Representative Adam Schiff was here at NPR today. He had a conversation with a bunch of us. And, you know, he sort of talked about what Yates could have, you know, brought into this hearing what she could have been asked. And one of the things he said is, you know, she could have answered that question. How long did Trump know that Michael Flynn had not told the truth before doing anything? And so, like, she really could have been a key witness here. It was the Republican chairman of the Intelligence Committee, Devin Nunes, who called off the public hearing. But the suggestion was that maybe Nunes was acting at the

White House's behest. We should say about Devin Nunes was acting at the White House's behest. We should say about Devin Nunes, who's the chairman of this committee, he's been a Trump ally. He was a transition official. And there was kind of a mess all of last week, frankly, because of this. You know, we did find out a couple things. We found out that there is an investigation into the Trump campaign's ties to Russia and what those are. We know the FBI is doing that, and we know that the House Intelligence Committee has been undertaking that. But on Wednesday of last week, Nunes kind of broke with the bipartisan tradition of this committee because he went over

to the White House Tuesday night after the FBI Director James Comey had testified and said that there was no evidence of wiretapping. He met with what he says now is an intelligence official on the grounds of the White House at the Eisenhower Executive Office building, which is kind of right next to the White House, obtained some information that he didn't share with other committee members, which has gotten Democrats upset over that, that apparently had shown some incidental surveillance that scooped up some Trump transition officials as other countries' officials were being monitored. This was, he said, being disseminated by the intelligence community when he thought that was inappropriate and didn't need to be. He thought this was alarming enough that he went to the White House and he briefed Donald Trump. He briefed the president before even briefing the ranking member of the Intelligence Committee, Adam Schiff, or any other

members of the Intelligence Committee, which has created this firestorm over the past week. It's certainly unusual when you're investigating somebody that you go and you talk to that somebody and don't talk to your investigating colleagues. Yeah. He said that it wasn't about Russia, that it was unrelated to the Russia investigation, but was about other stuff, though he didn't say what. And the other crazy thing is that he held a press conference at the Capitol. Then he went over to the White House, briefed the president. And since then, he's done about so many media hits and press conferences that it's hard to keep track. And what Nunes has been saying is sort of a moving target. And we know there's been a lot of smoke on this Russia stuff. conduct of the GOP chairman of the House Intelligence Committee has kind of been a

gift. They've been able to say, look, we can't let this guy lead the investigation. But we should say that the White House itself insists it played no role in the cancellation of today's hearing. And we should add here that Devin Nunes, the chair of that committee, said that they canceled it because they wanted to be sure to get more questions to FBI Director James Comey, who was not scheduled to testify this week, but that possibly could have come in a like a closed door session. Interestingly, though, also all the closed door sessions were canceled this week. It's just kind of a sign that this committee at the moment is adrift. Yeah, I mean, this is the big problem. You know, Jim Himes, who's a member of the committee,

is a Democrat from Connecticut, was on MSNBC's Morning Joe, and he called the committee. He said the committee has been put into suspended animation, said they were supposed to have a meeting on Monday that was canceled. These open hearings have been canceled. He said they haven't had any meetings with Nunes. So at this point, he's under fire. essentially the committee is not doing its work. OK, so let's circle back. I'm not clear on what happens now. Is it the Senate's job to investigate this or can they? Well, the Senate is going to have their own investigation that goes forward on Russia. The Senate Intelligence Committee, led by Richard Burr, is handling that. The problem is the House Intelligence Committee with all of what's going on, whether or not they can operate independently. There's a lot of questions now whether or not Nunes can operate impartially. There's this cloud that's hanging over him and over this committee.

He's dug in, as we said. He's refusing to say that he would step aside whatsoever. He has the confidence of Paul Ryan, the House Speaker at this point. He is the chairman, and there's no process for him to be taken out of the chairmanship or to recuse himself. He can't be forced to do so as long as the House Speaker says he can stay, he can stay. Thus far, the Senate Intelligence Committee has been operating a little bit more smoothly than the House Intelligence Committee. The chairman, Richard Burr, and the ranking Democrat, Mark Warner, did come out with

a joint statement not so long ago saying that they had seen no evidence to back up the president's claims that former President Obama wiretapped Trump Tower. So there's been a little bit more bipartisan cooperation on that committee. Okay. That was the swirling Washington story of the day, the week. But the big policy news happened at the EPA, where today President Trump signed an executive order. Today, I'm taking bold action to follow through on that promise. My administration is putting an end to the war on coal, going to have clean coal, really clean coal. With today's executive action, I am taking historic steps to lift the restrictions on

American energy, to reverse government intrusion, and to cancel job-killing regulations. The official title of the executive order is the Executive Order Promoting Energy Independence and Economic Growth. And it begins the process of reversing President Obama's Clean Power Plan and a number of other regulations. And we'll get to the policy in a second. But first, I want to talk about symbolism. This was at the EPA and essentially every speaker seemed to touch on the same image. Perhaps some of you, this is your first visit to the EPA.

It's good to see some coal miners here at the EPA. All these great coal miners here at the EPA today. Basically, you know what this says? You know what it says, right? You're going back to work. You're going back to work. That was the EPA Administrator, Vice President Mike Pence, and, of course, the President. So, guys, this is a massive reversal of how the U.S.

government approaches the environment. Yeah. Well, yeah, it really is. I mean, listen, this clean power plan wasn't just some little rule that the EPA came up with. This was a big part of the Obama administration's entry into the Paris climate agreement. And so this was the Obama administration showing the world, hey, we are committed to cutting back on emissions. So it's a change in approach. Now, as far as a change in what happens, I mean, that was part of that. The rule to increase the fuel economy of cars and trucks was a big part of that. The EPA was the tip of the spear in former President Obama's climate agenda. Now, under Scott Pruitt, the new EPA administrator and the former Attorney General of Oklahoma, who is a climate change skeptic. The EPA has been turned 180 degrees and it's now a forum for coal miners to stand on stage. So this was, if ever there was a sign that elections have consequences, this was it. One more thing to add here, to be clear, in terms of what this would actually do,

undoing the Clean Power Plan, that plan has been locked up in courts for a while. So it hasn't actually gotten the chance to really do much just yet. No. And the undoing of the Clean Power Plan will also be a lengthy and litigious process, one that the administration itself has admitted could take years. But what the Obama administration was trying to do was move the country away from coal-fired power plants in the direction of more cleaner burning natural gas and renewable energy. And the Trump administration is now going to try to move back the other way. When you hear Donald Trump tell those coal miners, you're going back to work, he's suggesting that somehow we're going to have more smokestacks, more coal-fired power plants.

There's a lot of skeptics about that. Yeah, Domenico, you wrote a really interesting piece that sort of goes back to when when President Obama was running for president and how he talked about coal jobs. Can you can you talk us through this? I mean, Danielle and Scott are the more of the economics experts than I am in here. But, you know, I definitely remember back in 2008, there was an ad that stuck with me that Barack Obama ran. It was called Hands. And he talks about how the hands that built this nation can build a new economy. The ad cuts to men on roofs working.

And it says the hands that install roofs can also install solar panels. And it has men with solar panels installing them. And you know what's actually happened over the past decade is there has been a boom in solar panel installation and the solar industry. Some quarter million people work in the solar industry now, the majority of those being solar panel installation, actually. And when you compare it to coal mining jobs or coal jobs, it dwarfs it. I mean, it's three and a half to four times as many jobs in the solar industry than in the coal industry. The difference here is where. When you look at who's got those jobs, where those jobs are, about a third of those jobs are in California.

A state that really pushed forward, wanting, you know, incentivizing solar power. And the bottom 11 or so are all states that went Republican. That's not a coincidence. That's because those states, like you said, Tam, incentivize those states one direction or the other. I'd say another difference is not only geography, but the pay. Those solar installation jobs don't necessarily pay as well as coal mining jobs. But the fact of the matter is, as recently as 2000, coal was responsible for generating half the electricity in this country. That is now down to about a third. It was eclipsed in the last year or so by natural gas, which has gotten a lot cheaper thanks to fracking. And as a result, coal's market share is just destined to go down,

not because of environmental regulations, but because of competition from cheaper natural gas and cheaper and booming renewables. What's more, even to the extent we are still relying on coal, it takes fewer people to mine that coal. So the notion that we're going to go back to a country where hundreds of thousands of people are engaged in the mining of coal just doesn't make a lot of sense. Never mind that, though. President Trump is not about inventing a new economy.

His appeal, his political appeal, is a nostalgic throwback to the old last century economy. Right. And I mean, a lot of what you just said there, you could take out coal mining and put in the word manufacturing and get a bit more of what President Trump has said about the economy, trying to bring back this industry that, you know, has been hurt by other competition where employment has come down because processes have gotten more efficient, you know, robots in factories that we keep hearing about. But I would point out that on the Obama side, there are these hands that, you know, mine coal, can create solar panels. Totally true. As Domenico pointed out, some of those jobs are in other places. But also, it's very easy to say, you know, coal miner,

just jump from that job to this job. But there are many, you know, retraining steps that go into there. So that sort of thing really is a complicated multi-step process that is very easy to gloss over in political rhetoric. Right. There are growing pains when it comes to these kinds of transitions, you know, and especially if you think about West Virginia, Kentucky, for that matter, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, those aren't the places that have seen the solar boom. The solar boom have been in other places. So for the people who have been working, what were, you know, a job that was a path to the middle class in a place like West Virginia, and now that's no longer available, it's no consolation to them to feel like, oh, somebody in Nevada has a solar job

because of it. Okay. A lot of that is the politics. Let's get to what is actually in this order. Scott, lightning round. What does it do? So there's the formal, it formally launches the process of rethinking the Clean Power Plan, which affects coal-fired power plants. It lifts the moratorium on coal leases on federal lands. But one big thing that this order does is it unwinds something called the social cost of carbon. And this is kind of arcane in the rulemaking process, but it's interesting because of the politics here. It used to be conservatives and Republicans who said, if we're going to have regulations, we ought to have a cost-benefit analysis. What does it cost to have a regulation, and how do we measure that against the benefits that a regulation might have?

Well, in this case, it's the conservatives, it's the Republicans who are saying, let's get rid of that cost-benefit analysis, because the social cost of carbon was saying, when you burn coal, when you burn fossil fuels, that generates pollution, and there is a social cost to that that we ought to measure so that when we think about what's the cost of the regulation, we can also accurately weigh the benefits of doing away with that pollution. This order says, let's chuck that. We're going to assume carbon pollution is free. Nobody has to pay for that. Which had been the assumption for a very long time until President Obama

came in and put that regulation in place. That's right. And so in terms of how this will actually work, President Trump signs this order and that begins what I understand to be a long and slow process. One analogy I heard was that getting the clean power plan and these regulations in place was like, you know, building a brick house. In order for the Trump administration to undo it, they can't go in and just knock the house down. They actually have to take it apart brick by brick. And every brick is going to be litigated.

And all the bricks seem to be commented on and put through this long process of, you know. They have to go up on the National Register. Right. I mean, the rulemaking process is always long. And this is a very complicated thing they're trying to unwind here. OK, before we finish today, one listener question that Danielle is for you. It's about a charge that President Trump and others have leveled against the Affordable Care Act in the wake of the Republican health care bill failing last week. Ian wrote, Will Obamacare explode? How likely

and what does that mean? Is it in a death spiral or can it sustain as is for the foreseeable future? Seriously, what is going on? Love you all so much from deep in my heart, Ian. Aw, so romantic. Oh, stop, Ian. Got so many questions here, it's hard to figure out what order to take them in. But I mean, were Obamacare to stay as is right now, the CBO said in its recent assessment of the Republicans' plan, of course, the one that failed, that the markets are stable right now. It predicted the uninsured rate would hold roughly where it is for the next decade. As far as will Obamacare explode,

it's not entirely clear what President Trump means when he says that. Now, death spiral has a bit of a clearer definition. A death spiral is sort of the snake eating tail sort of thing that happens when, you know, if you don't have enough healthy people in a market, then the costs in that market go up because it's a marketplace that's full of sick people, then more people drop out and it just kind of keeps going on and on in that terrible cycle. Vicious cycle. Yeah. And will that happen, Danielle? No, no. I mean, listen, there are problems with Obamacare right now, right? I mean, you know, you have in several places, you only have one insurer, actually, you know, in large swaths of the country, you know, you have high deductibles and a lot of employer plans. There is a lot of regional variation when you look at the Obamacare marketplaces. We talk about how

the average premium across the country went up around 25 percent. President Trump always talks about Arizona, where prices more than doubled in the current year. There are places like California where prices were up in the single digits. And there were even a handful of states where prices went down over the last year. So there is a lot of regional variation. Rural communities, southern states tend to have the highest increases, the biggest bills, because of just the nature of the health care system. But Danielle's right. The CBO says in most parts of the country, the marketplaces will remain stable unless the administration goes in and sabotages, which they have the power to do. But that's, you know, remember, those marketplaces are still a pretty small part of the overall pie.

Most of us still get our insurance either through a government program like Medicare or through our employer. And Medicaid, which was expanded under the Affordable Care Act, that's been a big part of the growth in the insured population. And now that it looks like Obamacare is going to hang around for a while, we have even red states like Kansas that are talking about taking the expansion after years of saying no. You know, guys, this might be a totally unanswerable question,

but in two weeks, it's April 15th, your taxes are due. And if you don't get health insurance, that's where you have to pay that penalty. It's known as that individual mandate when it comes through Obamacare, through the Affordable Care Act. If you don't get health insurance, you pay that penalty. It goes to the IRS.

I mean, after the debacle with the Republican health care bill, if you don't have health care and you want to buy insurance, A, can you still do that? And B, are you going to get fined by the IRS if you don't do it? A, no. B, yes. The open enrollment period for 2017 has closed, so you can't go and buy it now, unless you've had a life change, a qualifying life change, like lost a job. But I'll be able to do it. Lost a job, have a child. But you can do it for next year, it looks like. Looks like it's going to still be around in 2018.

And yes, you do have to pay a penalty if you didn't have insurance in 2016. Now, the IRS has said if you leave the box blank where you're supposed to tell whether you had insurance in 2016, they'll still process your tax return. So there's kind of a wink and a nod to say, if you want to skip this question, we're not going to just send your return right back to you. So there is a little bit of a tacit, weak enforcement mechanism there from the IRS. It's called a silent return in IRS lingo. Oh my gosh. A silent return. Yes. Sounds like a romance novel title. Anyway. Well, it was a romantic question. She was a lonely tax preparer. He was someone who hadn't bought insurance on the exchange. I mean, here I am trying to get back into policy and Scott is just...

Their eyes met across the computer screen. Oh my God. Okay. One more thing to add here is that, you know, Scott mentioned this whole wink and nod thing. Now, to be clear, the IRS did say in its statement on this, you know, this whole idea of still accepting these silent returns, they did say, you statement on this, you know, this whole idea of still accepting these silent returns, they did say, you know, listen, the individual mandate is still the law of the land. But by directing the IRS to let people submit their return without answering the question, that is one of the small ways that the Trump administration can sort of undermine the exchanges if that's what they want to do. For example, they could simply drop a court case and stop paying a subsidy to insurers that helps low-income people cover their

deductibles and out-of-pocket expenses. That would drive even more insurers out of the business. That would leave fewer people in the marketplaces. And what you want to have if you want to have stable marketplaces is more insurers, more customers. So there are things that the administration could do to torpedo this if that's what they want to do. But if they take those steps and it's clearer than who's launching the torpedo, politically, do the Democrats pay the price for that or does the administration and their fellow Republicans pay the price? Does a lot of this hinge upon Tom Price and how he deals as HHS secretary,

Health and Human Services secretary, and the kinds of regulations he's doing? Regulations and how he deals as HHS secretary, health and human services secretary, and the kinds of regulations. Exactly. Regulations and how he administrates things. You know, really, one expert that I spoke to, she said, you know, hypothetically, one other thing that the Trump administration could do that she could foresee, we don't know, of course, but is that, you know, it takes a lot of people, a lot of upkeep to keep the websites going. I was going to say, remember the website debacle. What if the website keep the websites going. I was going to say, remember the website debacle. What if the website goes down? Exactly. I mean, that could nudge a few more people out. Conversely, there are things that the White House, HHS, and the Congress could do if they actually wanted to really prop this thing up and make it work well. There are certainly steps they could

take along those lines as well. They could have a stiffer penalty for people who don't sign up. They could have more generous subsidies to make it a little bit sweeter to get people into the tent. They could adjust, tweak the ratios of what young people pay versus old people pay, because young people are paying a hefty price now for insurance, and that discourages a lot of young, healthy customers from getting in. All of these things could be adjusted at sort of a technical level and turning the knobs to make it work better. And we've done these kinds of fixes in the past when the, during the George W. Bush administration, when they introduced the new pharmaceutical benefit for seniors, that policy took some tweaking before it worked just right. So we have a history where we roll

out a big entitlement program like this, and it's not perfect right out of the gate, especially one that was as contentious as this. And the experts go back in and do some tweaking. We haven't seen that with Obamacare because it has been such a knock-down, drag-out political fight. All right, that is it for today. We will be back with our regular weekly roundup on Thursday. And if you want to email us a comment, question, or your own version of our timestamp disclaimer for the top of the show, our email address is nprpolitics at npr.org. And it is the last week of Tripod, the podcasting world's month-long campaign to get you to get a friend into podcasting. So go out and do it. Let us know with the hashtag Tripod, T-R-Y-P-O-D. Okay, I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House for NPR. I'm Danielle Kurtzleben, political reporter. I'm Scott Horsley. I also

cover the White House. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, political editor. And thanks for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast. © transcript Emily Beynon