The House Energy and Commerce Committee is poised to approve a piecemeal overhaul of the Clean Air Act this week, albeit in the face of what will likely be unified Democratic resistance.
The committee has set a Wednesday morning markup for a half-dozen bills that would cumulatively amount to the biggest makeover of the landmark environmental law in more than 35 years.
The panel’s Environment Subcommittee approved them all last month on party-line votes. Also on the agenda is the House version of a bipartisan hydropower measure that unanimously cleared the Senate last year and another bill that would strip EPA of its authority to review highway construction projects already subject to review under the National Environmental Policy Act.
Inevitably, the package of Clean Air Act legislation will take center stage. It marks the latest in an intermittent series of Republican-led attempts over the years to rework the act, which was last significantly amended in 1990.
