We talked last week about congressional Republicans working to derail Bush/Cheney-era efficiency standards on light bulbs, which the GOP now consider outrageous. That the advanced light-bulb standards were successful in spurring innovation, lowering costs, and improving energy efficiency — and were approved with bipartisan support — is apparently irrelevant.
House Republicans are now moving on to ceiling fans.
The House fanned an old debate this week by adopting a provision that would block the Energy Department from setting energy efficiency standards for ceiling fans.
Tennessee Republican Marsha Blackburn offered the policy rider to the Energy-Water appropriations bill (HR 2609), saying companies such as Memphis, Tenn.-based Hunter Fans cannot afford burdensome regulations that would drive up the price of products.
Those rascally Obama administration bureaucrats and their burdensome regulations, they have a lot of nerve, don’t they? What were they thinking creating these anti-business measures?
Oh wait, they didn’t. The efficiency standards for ceiling fans were requested by the industry itself so they wouldn’t have to deal with a patchwork of state-by-state regulations, and the standards were approved in 2005. For those keeping score at home, in 2005, there was a Republican White House, a Republican-run Senate, and a Republican-run House.









