Exclusive — Cruz: ‘States Should Press Back’ Against EPA

FRANKLIN, TN — Emerging from an enthusiastic Presidential campaign rally, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) tells Breitbart News that “states should press back” against the EPA’s recently announced Carbon Pollution Emission Guidelines for Existing Stationary Sources: Electric Utility Generating Units rule, “with every tool they have available.”

Attorney generals of 16 states said last week the new rule was “illegal in numerous respects.”

“Should states refuse to comply with the EPA coal regulations?” Breitbart News asked Cruz.

“I think states should press back using every tool they have available. We’ve got to rein in a lawless executive that is abusing its power,” Cruz tells Breitbart News.

Cruz’s remarks came at the end of highly successful barnstorming campaign stops in Tennessee, which saw overflow crowds at three different events in Chattanooga, Murfreesboro, and Franklin.

In Franklin, a standing-room-only crowd of 1,500 packed into The Factory’s 10,000 square feet Jamison Hall.

Cruz, who was more than an hour late due to the success of his two previous stops, was introduced to the crowd by U.S. Representative Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), who represents the area in the House of Representatives.

Cruz traveled on a campaign bus across the state today, and spoke extensively with Tennessee grassroots organizers on the ride from Chattanooga to Murfreesboro, including Nashville Tea Party leader Ben Cunningham, Chattanooga Tea Party leader Mark West, and former state Rep. Joe Carr (R-Lascassas).

As Breitbart News reported about the EPA ruling last week:

The standards are so draconian they are quite likely, if implemented, to put the nation’s entire coal industry out of business. “The sweeping new regulations set a goal of reducing carbon [dioxide] emissions nationwide by 32 percent by 2030 as compared to 2005 levels,” as press reports note.

Currently, coal is the source for 39% of the electrical power in the United States.

Nowhere in the Clean Air Act, the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990, or the United States Code of Statutes can one find the language the EPA uses to claim it has statutory authority to regulate carbon dioxide emissions in general, or carbon dioxide emissions from existing power plants specifically.

Cruz’s bus tour continues through additional states over the next several days.