The Republican Party Is On The Attack-- Now It's The Environmental Protection Agency

I'm not claiming Republican Party congressmen want to kill your children-- let alone their own; they just don't care. To them the dead and dying, whether in Afghanistan or in the American heartland, are just collateral damage in their quest for corporate profits. And this is nothing new. This is always how conservative have behaved.

The video above was released by American Family Voices and their take on what the Republicans are trying to do to the EPA is pitch-perfect. Their main point is that Congress’ multiple bills to defund, eliminate and take authority away from the EPA is an all put war on public health… By working to block EPA from implementing new safeguards for cean air they’re putting big polluters before our families and filling the air we breathe with harmful, toxic pollutants that threaten the health of our families and children.

The Clean Air Act protects the public health and reduces health care costs for all by preventing thousands of adverse health outcomes, including cancer, asthma attacks, heart attacks, strokes, emergency department visits, hospitalization and premature deaths. Bills proposed by Congress would slash EPA’s budget by a third, prevent scientists from updating new standards for air pollution and allow polluters to continue to emit into the air toxics like arsenic, mercury, lead, soot, smog and carbon.

“The Clean Air Act prevented 160,000 early deaths last year, including 230 infants, yet Congress is busy working to prevent the EPA from updating and enforcing standards that would limit toxic pollutants that endanger the public health,” said Mike Lux, President of American Family Voices. “If we don’t curb those pollutants, they’ll end up in our air, water and food and eventually in our children. Congress needs to let the EPA do its job to protect public health.”

A recent bipartisan survey conducted for the American Lung Association indicates the overwhelming view of voters:

• 69 percent think the EPA should update Clean Air Act standards with stricter limits on air pollution;

• 64 percent feel that Congress should not stop the EPA from updating carbon dioxide emission standards;

• 69 percent believe that EPA scientists, rather than Congress, should set pollution standards.

A recent EPA analysis, The Benefits and Costs of the Clean Air Act from 1990 to 2020, found that the air quality improvements under the Clean Air Act will save $2 trillion and prevent at least 230,000 deaths annually by 2020.

As we saw yesterday, the most conservative state in Germany, Baden-Württemberg, which has been dominated by conservatives for 58 straight years, just defeated them-- over environmental policy-- and handed the state premiership over to a Green! We should do the same... if we care half as much for our future and our children's futures as the Germans do.