Newt Gingrich CPAC Speech: EPA Should Be Scrapped

WASHINGTON — Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich is criticizing President Barack Obama's policies as a "war on American energy."

Gingrich, who is weighing a bid to challenge Obama in 2012, used an appearance Thursday at a conservative meeting to pitch his own energy alternative. Gingrich says a revised energy policy could help create jobs and increase national security.

He told the Conservative Political Action Conference, the unofficial start to the 2012 White House campaign, that he would scrap the Environmental Protection Agency and its regulations and replace it with an Environmental Solutions Agency that rewards innovation.

Gingrich warned that hundreds of thousands of jobs are in danger if Obama is allowed to continue his environmental policies.

Comments

[Slingingstones]

10:06 AM on 03/16/2011

"She turned me into a newt!"
"You're not a newt, now."
"I got better."

[bcmom]

02:22 PM on 02/14/2011

Newt, why don't you cut some of the trillions of dollars wasted in defense spending? It makes me so angry that Repubs won't even touch the sacred cow. We do not need to be in every country in the world.

[JWIII]

10:03 AM on 02/14/2011

hey Newter, buy us all another round and pass the peanuts

[Organic-Guy]

09:32 AM on 02/14/2011

Yes Newt. that's right. anything you don't like must have been created by a democrat(EPA was invented by Nixon), and it must be a job killer...(alternative energy is one of the few sectors of the economy that is growing and can only get larger while fossil fuels can only decline as reserves are used up and the cost of extraction goes up, but yes Newt, keep spreading the myth. After all, you're good at deception. It's been your life's work since you left the house years ago. You're the nation's best snake oil salesman around.

[moflard]

07:42 AM on 02/14/2011

I think that would be a GREAT idea.

While the rest of the world moves forward and develops cleaner and cleaner technologies, transforming into a post-petrochemical world complete with carbon taxes, the USA could happily regress back to the 1950´s. When men were men, women were women and a dirty red commies lurked under every bed.

Well, until the realities of being an economic dead end hit.

[verflixed]

11:44 PM on 02/13/2011

Gingrich should be scrapped

[atexasdem]

02:01 PM on 02/14/2011

I thought we'd scrapped him once already.

[ThomasPaine1776]

09:26 PM on 02/13/2011

BP, EXXON and TEXACO should be SCRAPPED, or at least NATIONALIZED and brought into the 21st century and be made into green energy companies ONLY. NO MORE OIL. Solar, wind, geothermal ONLY.

[atexasdem]

02:05 PM on 02/14/2011

While that all sounds nice and in the long run I support it, in the short term we have an addiction to "cheap" oil. We've gotten ourselves into a situation where cutting off oil based energy would return us to a horse and buggy economy. Horse and buggies worked when we had 100 million people most of whom were subsistence farmers. With over 300 million people most of whom live in cities and could barely plant a garden, we're in trouble.

[whirlpool]

02:58 PM on 02/14/2011

A common sense transition would be to use our abundant natural gas and build some modular nuclear plants until we can get this other stuff in place.

[nevernot]

04:51 PM on 02/14/2011

You'd be surprised how easy it is to make the transition. I haven't owned a car in over ten years getting around by bicycle and public transport. I haven't paid for gas in that entire time either. As a side effect, I have more expendable income, lost loads of excess weight, and am currently healthier than I've been my entire life. btw, my garden is quite excellent, I use squarefoot gardening, devote 2 4'x4' plots to it and feed myself daily from the garden.

[stape45]

09:09 PM on 02/13/2011

Let’s scrap irresponsible, eco-wrecking, strictly-for-profit, corporate practices, then talk about scrapping the EPA.

[stape45]

09:03 PM on 02/13/2011

EPA: "Newt should be scrapped."

[Titanshanks]

08:52 PM on 02/13/2011

It really is an interesting phenomenon how many poor people support right wing politicians like Newt. I don't think it's because they expect to get any help; rather they're embarrassed with their station in life and deny that they could benefit from help.

[atexasdem]

02:09 PM on 02/14/2011

I can not for the life of me understand how working class people can support the likes of Gingrich, Palin, Beck, Limbaugh etc.. These are all open and up front in their support for the ultra rich, the giant corperations. They don't even try to hide it. Nobody seems to be an advocate for the working middle class. I honestly don't understand it.

[missjulilb]

08:34 PM on 02/13/2011

How does the dissolution of the EPA create jobs?

The EPA was developed in 1970 to curtail the various pollutions created by the activities engaged in by commercial entities. Because of the EPA, companies are required to invest in practices that provide safety to all interested parties.

Without the oversight of the EPA, these companies will no longer be required to invest in safety measures to interested parties. Without surprise, these companies will acquire a higher profit margin without any guarantee of stimulating an increase to the workforce. An example to this point is Massey Energy, who actively ignored safety measures in order to cut costs. They did, indeed, develop the ability to make new hires due to Massey's management's greed ... um ... because they killed half of their staff.

We owe it to ourselves to educate ourselves to the destruction that we would be doing to our environment and to contact our Representatives to alert them that the dissolution of the EPA cannot occur. Regulatory agencies are not imposed for no reason. The private sector has proven time and time again that they cannot be trusted to act in the best interest of the public at large, rather than for their own personal interests.

[Rmtns]

08:14 PM on 02/13/2011

Here's a radical idea, let's make sure that this fool's words are put on the airwaves, preferably with a video and ask if you are willing to kill your kids and the neighbor kids to have a job.

[1jdgriff]

07:14 PM on 02/13/2011

Newt believes that pollution is OK so long as it makes a profit.

[tooncesrocks]

06:03 PM on 02/13/2011

the country should what Newt says...

about as much as they should care what tooncesrocks says

[snowballinhell]

03:27 PM on 02/13/2011

You Republicans would make Richard Nixon roll over in his grave!