President Obama knows he cannot pass costly regulations that give "green" energy industries an extra boost while costing affordable energy companies  — and thus consumers —  a fortune through Congress.  So he is using the regulatory process to make law instead. 

Last week, the EPA proposed stricter standards for gasoline that will reduce the allowable amount of sulfur from 30 parts per million (ppm) to 10 ppm.

At first glance, it may seem as though making gasoline cleaner is a good thing. After all, no one wants to breathe dirty air.

Yet the proposal comes with significant costs. According to the American Petroleum Institute, not only will the new regulations cost a whopping $2.4 billion a year in compliance costs, they will raise gasoline prices by 9 cents per gallon while actually increasing refinery greenhouse gas emissions by 1 percent. Some experts estimate the regulation could increase gas prices by as much as 25 cents per gallon, which is a lot considering fuel prices are already uncharacteristically high.

According to Louisiana Senator David Vitter, the rule’s economic impacts, “include importing more foreign energy, increasing our trade deficit and reducing our energy security.” In other words, by making it more difficult for refineries to produce fuel here in the U.S. we will drive gas production abroad, loosing jobs and domestic energy security. According to the Institute for Energy Research, refineries are already shutting down due to excessive regulations, and this new proposal is icing on the cake.

Politico claims that the EPA's newest efforts to regulate gasoline are "a sign that the White House is finally popping the cork on regulations bottled up by election-year politics." The floodgate has opened and more regulations will soon come. 

The President has claimed he wants to replace gasoline in vehicles. He is working to keep gasoline prices high by refusing to open federal lands for drilling, delaying the Keystone' Pipeline's benefits of cheaper fuel and jobs, and raising fuel efficiency standards on new vehicles which makes them more expensive and even less safe. Now he is making it more difficult to produce fuel here at home, adding another regulation to his campaign against domestic energy production.