Under the EPA’s proposed Clean Power Plan, the price of electricity will go up. The price of everything made with electricity will go up. And who will be hit hardest? The poor and minorities.

That’s not a Republican claim about the Obama administration’s plan – that’s what the head of the EPA herself says.

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Gina McCarthy said in an interview last week, “”We know that low-income minority communities would be hardest hit.”

As Heritage Foundation economist Nicolas Loras explains, “McCarthy downplayed that fact by saying any minimal higher prices would be offset by implementing energy efficiency measures that would save consumers money in the long run.”

But those measures – federally funded efficiency projects for low-income housing – are years away. The Clean Power Plan would send energy prices skyrocketing immediately.

“Low and fixed income families will be hardest hit by the administration’s regulations and energy efficiency programs will not save them,” Loras says. “While the median family spends about five cents out of every dollar on energy costs, low-income families spend about 20 cents of every dollar. And the economic pain from the regulations will not be simply the direct costs of higher energy prices, but through higher prices for all the goods we purchase as energy is a necessary component to manufacture those goods.”

What’s more, many of those programs the EPA is depending on to soften the blow to the poor won’t work, simply because the poor don’t have the cash to buy new, energy-efficient appliances.

“For many, their priorities are putting food on the table and making sure the bills are paid from month to month,” Loras says. “They may prefer cheaper appliances and light bulbs as opposed to mandated pricier ones. Forcing low income families to pay higher upfront costs for a washing machine for dubious savings isn’t desirable if the government is taking money and choices away from more pressing needs that are in the families’ self-interest.”

This is an administration that has bandied about the term “disparate impact” to force outcomes. When statistics show that black boys are disciplined more often in school than other classes of students, the Obama Justice Department steps in, along with the Education Department, to threaten a school’s federal funding if those numbers don’t change.

Yet here is a clear example of disparate impact. The Clean Power Plan will harm poor minority families much more than, say, white suburbanites (who can better afford those energy efficient appliances).

Even so, the administration’s outrage is misdirected.

“We’ve got critics of this plan who are actually claiming that this will harm minority and low-income communities – even though climate change hurts those Americans the most, who are the most vulnerable,” President Obama said on Aug. 3.

But that’s comparing real and immediate harm – higher power bills and consumer prices – to the largely theoretical, future harm of climate change. That’s cold comfort to families who have to make hard choices in order to pay the electricity bill.

The Clean Power Plan must be rejected.