‘Whose Line Is It Anyway’: The Biden edition

OPINION:

Remember the comedy program “Whose Line Is It Anyway,” described by host Drew Carey as the show “where everything’s made up, and the points don’t matter”? Well, the spinoff has now taken shape in Washington, with President Biden at the helm.

In this edition, everything is still made up, but the points — which are now political — do matter. They’re the whole point.

The game goes like this: Activist politicians and their unelected bureaucrats will do or say anything to advance their political agendas, even if it means bending the truth or discarding it altogether. They are even willing to commission “experts” to produce questionable scientific research studies with pre-determined conclusions to justify their overzealous regulatory ambitions.

Rep. James Comer, the Kentucky Republican who chairs the House Oversight and Accountability Committee, is trying to stop this behavior in relation to the Food and Drug Administration.

In a March letter to the FDA, Mr. Comer stated that his committee is concerned that the decisions of the Center for Tobacco Products, or CTP, “have been influenced by political concerns rather than scientific evidence.”

This includes a proposal to regulate flavored cigars that is not supported by sound science or an appropriate legal foundation. A December report from the government-created Reagan-Udall Foundation found, “Fundamental policy and scientific issues remain unanswered that the Center must address.”

As if that weren’t enough, a whistleblower told the Office of Special Counsel that CTP “directed scientists to stop using objective, quantitative data to evaluate applications and to instead use an approach which was more akin to ’eyeballing it,’ resulting in unclear review standards and less reliable decisions.”

That’s right: Even after receiving significant backlash for using pseudoscience to push COVID-19 mandates and regulations, the Biden administration has continued to use questionable claims and data to move its policy agenda forward. This agenda, in the case of the misguided proposal to ban flavored cigars, will do nothing but restrict the choices of adults.

If only this were a comedy sketch!

While Mr. Comer’s committee is holding the FDA’s feet to the fire by requesting documents and communications from the FDA to bring the CTP’s foul play out into the open, the buck shouldn’t stop here. After all, the Democratic Party uses junk science to advance its political agenda in many other areas and sectors.

In the energy industry, the government’s use of junk science is almost as comedic as the sketches that were put on in the comedy show. The Biden administration’s now-infamous proposal to ban gas stoves is a case in point.

The administration claimed enough evidence existed regarding gas stoves’ negative impact on indoor air quality to warrant a notice of proposed rulemaking; however, it leaned on a low-quality study by a green energy group that found gas stoves cause a considerable percentage of asthma cases.

Economics professor Emily Oster at the Breakthrough Institute, an environmental research center, and Kelsey Piper at Vox criticized the study because they saw it for what it was: shoddy science created by a front group for alternative energy products to make a competitor — natural gas — look bad.

But even as leaders of the climate justice movement had enough principle to call out this “research,” the Biden administration and liberal cities such as Berkeley, California, and New York have used it in their efforts to stop the use of gas stoves.

The same is true when it comes to Mr. Biden’s use of public health to justify his unaffordable, unworkable new emissions standards.

The president cites data from his own Environmental Protection Agency to make the claim that these new rules “would protect public health by cutting nearly 10 billion tons of CO2 emissions — twice the annual U.S. emissions today.” But when you look under the hood of the proposal, all of that it is is a far-left energy agenda driven by another flimsy argument.

An American Economic Association study found that, on average, each electric vehicle in the U.S. causes an additional $1,100 in air-pollution damage over its lifetime. Not to mention the fact that the Biden administration’s EV push will make America even more reliant on critical mineral supply chains dominated by the world’s biggest polluter, China.

I am dismayed and disillusioned at how extensive this unholy alliance between the far left and the junk science industry has become. It’s no wonder studies show that America is losing faith in its political leaders and most tried and true governmental institutions. They feel they can’t trust anyone anymore — not even public health experts and their so-called public servants — and they have every reason to feel this way.

It’s encouraging to see Mr. Comer and other members of Congress working to end these abuses of trust and support the American people. I hope they continue the fight. These unsupported rationales might make for good sketches on Comedy Central, but they have no business anywhere near our nation’s capital.

• Joseph R. Pitts is a former chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Health.