Clean Air the Auto Industry Can Choke On

Giving California a waiver to substantially increase its fuel efficiency and clean air requirements for automobiles above EPA standards is not federalism. It is a cleverly crafted way for liberals to get the steeper standards they've always wanted without paying a political price for it. Automobile manufacturers cannot afford to build one set of cars for California and another set for other states. They can barely meet the federal emissions standards as it is.

What will happen is the draconian California standards will end up becoming the standard for the whole country. And it will happen too fast for automobile manufacturers to keep pace and more jobs will be lost and the economy will shrink even more.

Now I know the tree huggers out there couldn't care less about that. But I was hoping for a bit more consistency from our "leaders" in DC. All through the month of December we heard about how taxpayers had to step up and be patriotic by dumping billions of dollars into a moribund auto industry that was already heading for the toilet. Now President Obama is putting in place a ruling that will hasten that eventuality.