Here are 10 administration rules that will be in the GOP's sights this year:

Best get calling yours Reps--whatever strip. Stop these!



10 Environmental Regulations the Republican Congress Wants to Kill
GOP lawmakers target Obama rules on oil, gas and coal, for starters.
By Jason Plautz


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The Endangered Species Act listing for the greater sage grouse is just one of many environmental regulations that is in the sights of Congressional Republicans this year.(Jeannie Stafford/USFWS/Flickr)

February 5, 2015 Committee rosters are set, oversight plans are signed, and witnesses are being called up to the Hill. For congressional Republicans, it's regulation-hunting season.

Republicans have made no secret of their plans to swipe at what they've deemed an overly burdensome environmental agenda from the Obama administration, and the change in power in the Senate provides both some new turf and leverage to do it. That effort kicked off in earnest Wednesday when the House Transportation and Infrastructure and Senate Environment and Public Works committees teamed up for a joint hearing to grill Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Gina McCarthy on the agency's proposed expansion of its Clean Water Act authority.

Here are 10 administration rules that will be in the GOP's sights this year:

1. The Clean Power Plan

The tent pole of the Obama administration's climate action plan, EPA's plans to curb greenhouse-gas emissions from new and existing power plants will face challenges on all fronts. EPA will finalize the rules in one package this summer, but the congressional challenges will come early and often. Environment and Public Works and the House Energy and Commerce Committee have both said they'll hold hearings on it and legislators are already looking to the appropriations process to kill the rules. No less than Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell put himself on the Appropriations subpanel that oversees EPA, with a promise to "continue to fight back against this administration's anti-coal jobs regulations on behalf of the Kentuckians I represent." A Congressional Review Act attack is also a possibility, but that can't come until the rules are finalized this summer.

2. Endangered Species Act

Individual listings for species like the sage grouse or the lesser prairie chicken are sure to attract tons of attention, as they have in the past (the sage grouse listing was the subject of a controversial rider in the appropriations bill that passed in December). But Environment and Public Works may be ready to take on the whole bill. Chairman Jim Inhofe told reporters that the decades-old Act has "gotten out of hand" and that his committee will be gearing up for a wholesale look at some of its flaws. Among them, the Oklahoma Republican said, is an alleged "sue and settle" strategy by environmentalists to get species protection and the trouble in removing a species from its designation. "Logically, it's hard to go home and explain why there are things that have been listed … and all of a sudden changed," he said.

3. Ground-Level Ozone Standards