OPINION:
Your dishes are safe from the Biden administration — for now. The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals earlier last week rejected the Department of Energy’s clumsy attempt to force consumers to buy expensive new dishwashers that don’t wash and clothes washers that don’t get clothes clean.
Since the 1990s, no modern convenience has been spared from a series of increasingly meddlesome federal edicts intended to save water and electricity. Showerheads, lightbulbs, etc., have been made more expensive and less functional as a result.
Dishwashers, for instance, had strict limits placed on the way they could use power and water, meaning dishes would still be dirty after running them through the normal cycle. Washing machines had the same fate, forcing consumers to run the same load one more time — or several more times — until the job was done properly, which meant greater water and energy usage overall.
In 2020, then-President Donald Trump upset Washington’s busybodies by instructing his team at the Department of Energy to allow a new class of fast dishwashers able to fully clean a load in an hour and laundry machines that would finish in 30 minutes, unburdened by the previous restrictions.
At the time, Mr. Trump mocked the idea of imposing a one-size-fits-all water-saving rule on the entire nation, pointing out that “in many places — in most places of the country, water is not a problem. … It’s called ‘rain.’”
The reprieve proved temporary. On his first day in office, President Biden directed his minions to undo everything Mr. Trump had done. Fortunately, when DOE got around to dismantling the dishwasher and laundry rules, the agency acted with such haste that its legal arguments fell apart. According to the court, DOE ignored “ample evidence” showing the administration’s nannying rules had the opposite of their intended effect
“The Department failed to adequately consider the negative consequences of the Repeal Rule, including the substitution effects of energy-and-water-wasting rewashing, prewashing, and handwashing,” the unanimous three-judge panel ruled.
The agency’s own statistics confirmed the pre-Trump dishwasher rules increased the average cycle time for a set of dishes from one hour to 2½ hours — wasting more power and more water than devices that comply with Mr. Trump’s rules.
As if that weren’t enough, the court pointed out the Energy Department never had the legal authority to regulate water use in dishwashers and clothes washers in the first place. The judges not only restored Mr. Trump’s dishwasher and laundry rules, they skewered the Biden DOE’s approach to the issue as “nonsensical.”
The Competitive Enterprise Institute deserves credit for teeing up the topic in a way that put overly ambitious regulators in their place for a change. That said, restoring freedom in just two appliance types isn’t enough. It’s past time for Congress to repeal the misguided 2007 statute that encouraged DOE to expand its reach into our bathrooms, kitchens and bedrooms.
The choice the public makes in November isn’t just about who gets to sit in the Oval Office. It’s about whether consumers will be allowed to decide for themselves what refrigerators, furnaces, toilets, showerheads, lightbulbs, humidifiers, water heaters, television sets, ovens and air conditioners they can buy.
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