Biden admin’s new emissions rule forces states to set greenhouse gas reduction targets to receive federal highway funding

The day before Thanksgiving, the Biden administration announced a new emissions rule that will effectively force states to set greenhouse gas reduction targets in order to receive federal highway funding.

The Biden administration’s Department of Transportation’s Federal Highway Administration published a press release declaring that the finalized performance measure will provide a national framework for tracking and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The department noted that the new rule grants states the “flexibility to set their own targets for reduction.”

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg touted the new performance measures for its claimed flexibility.

“Every state has its own unique climate challenges, and every state ought to have the data, funding, and flexibility it needs to meet those challenges head on,” Buttigieg said. “This new performance measure will provide states with a clear and consistent framework to track carbon pollution and the flexibility to set their own climate targets—which we will also help them meet with more than $27 billion in federal funding through President Biden’s Investing in America agenda.”

The FHWA’s performance management measure will enable the department to “make more informed investment decisions,” the press release added.

Federal Highway Administrator Shailen Bhatt claimed that the administration does not expect states “to solve a problem this large on their own.” Bhatt noted that states will not receive penalties for missing their reduction targets.

Critics of the new rule contend that it imposes the federal government’s emissions priorities on states by withholding funding.

Republican West Virginia Senator Shelley Moore Capito told the Daily Caller News Foundation, “Federal overreach to advance a misguided climate agenda has become a staple of the Biden administration.”

“The final rule, which imposes the performance measure and the requirement to set greenhouse gas targets on state departments of transportation and metropolitan planning organizations (MPO), is just one more example of these harmful regulations,” Capito added.

Republican North Dakota Senator Kevin Cramer released a statement last week addressing the administration’s new rule.

“As the ranking member of the Transportation and Infrastructure subcommittee, I was intimately involved in negotiating and passing the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. The committee specifically debated whether to grant [the Department of Transportation] this authority, and the Committee’s unanimously-passed bill chose not to include this poison pill,” Cramer stated, referring to the requirement for states to reduce emissions for federally funded highway projects.

“Once again, the Biden bureaucracy is returning to their stale playbook of inventing illegal, punitive regulatory schemes,” Cramer continued. “This final rule is contrary to congressional intent, usurps state authority by putting the federal government in the driver’s seat, and is fundamentally unworkable in rural states like North Dakota. I look forward to leading a Congressional Review Act resolution of disapproval overturning it.”

A FHWA spokesperson told the DCNF that the timing of the announcement “is not unusual for a significant rulemaking, particularly one that received over 39,000 comments.”

“We prioritized making vast resources within the Biden-Harris administration’s bipartisan infrastructure law available to states ahead of asking states to set greenhouse gas emissions targets and measure their progress,” the spokesperson said.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment from the DCNF.

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