Fiorina: EPA has ‘decimated’ agriculture industries

by Mark Hensch - 08/29/15 5:23 PM ET

GOP presidential candidate Carly Fiorina on Saturday said the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is strangling the life out of many agriculture industries with overregulation.

“I have seen the agriculture industry almost destroyed in the state of California by bad policies and bad politics,” Fiorina told listeners at the Iowa Corn Growers Associations’ annual meeting in Des Moines, according to The Des Moines Register.

“We have seen industry after industry after industry decimated,” the Republican presidential candidate added. “We are seeing the most productive agricultural land in the world – in the central valley of California – being destroyed by the Environmental Protection Agency.”

{mosads}Fiorina also argued that she would uphold the EPA’s renewable fuel standard until its scheduled end in 2022, but vowed she would not extend the guideline past that date.

“Let us establish 2022 as the end point – let’s have a level playing field from now until 2022,” she said. “But in 2022, the government needs to get out of all this. Fossil fuels, sugar, corn subsidies – government needs to get out of all of it.”

“In the spirit of complete honesty and transparency, I’m also going to tell you this: I don’t think government should be in the business of setting prices and guaranteeing access to markets,” the former Hewlett-Packard CEO added. “I think the government has to be even-handed.”

Fiorina also criticized President Obama for his handling of both the Iran nuclear deal and trade promotion authority (TPA) talks.

“I stood up and said that I wasn’t comfortable just giving the president a blank check on TPA because he has demonstrated his absolute naiveté at the negotiating table,” she said, contrasting the two rounds of diplomatic discussions.

“What serves our nation best is bilateral trade negotiations that are an open book, where the American people know exactly what we’re trying to get,” Fiorina added of the TPA.

Fiorina’s remarks come as she completes a four-day, eight-stop tour of Iowa heading into the 2016 presidential election.

Her campaign announced Friday that one of its cars had hit a deer while traversing the Hawkeye State.

“We were driving from our last even in Storm Lake to our event in Carroll and the deer ran into Carly’s side of the car,” Fiorina’s press secretary Anna Epstein told The Hill that afternoon.

“I’ve been told that if you spend enough time on the roads in Iowa, this is bound to happen,” she added. “Looks like we’re spending the right amount of time here.”

Tags Carly Fiorina Environmental Protection Agency