Unlike The DCCC's New Darling Ron Barber, Carol Shea-Porter Supports The EPA's Crucial Mission

The DCCC had hardly finished celebrating their win in Arizona-- holding Gabby Gifford's old seat with her ConservaDem former staffer Ron Barber-- when Barber was sworn in and was one of only 16 Democrats to join the GOP in voting to gut a whole slew of the EPA's most important regulations. Job well done, DCCC! The million dollars could have guaranteed the election of at least two progressives-- say, David Gill and Lee Rogers for example-- who are committed to progressive values and solutions. Or Carol Shea-Porter, the former New Hampshire congresswoman running against deranged teabagger Frank Guinta without any help whatsoever for the corrupt DC Democratic Establishment. Carol might as well be running as an independent... and polls show her winning in November. This week Carol explained to New Hampshire voters why the U.S. still needs what she referred to as "Richard Nixon's EPA."

What if the coal industry found coal in New Hampshire, blew the tops off some of our beloved mountains to get it cheaply, and then deposited the waste in our streams? Would you be outraged and expect the federal government to fine them? Sadly, the federal government would probably not fine the industry for either activity. In fact, they do blow the tops off mountains for coal in Appalachia, and they do dump the waste in streams-- both breaking the residents’ hearts as they lose their lovely mountains and poisoning their air and water. The Residents support taking coal, they just don’t want industry to ruin the environment as they do it. The coal industry, however, has powerful lobbyists.  
 
President Obama is working on a stream protection rule that would replace the one President Bush gutted. But our current House of Representatives is so influenced by special interest money that they actually held a hearing in West Virginia to protest restoring a buffer zone around the streams, and cynically called the hearing “Jobs at Risk: Community Impacts of the Obama Administration’s Effort to rewrite the Stream Buffer Zone Rule.” Bo Webb, a member of Coal River Mountain Watch, told the Congressional Committee that “…a baby born in a mountaintop removal community has a 181 percent greater chance of a heart or lung birth defect… that, honorable committee members is staggering. If that does not get your attention, then you have sold your very heart and soul.”
 
This true story is awful enough, but there are many others from the most anti-environmental Congress in recent history. It wasn’t always this way. Republican President Richard Nixon and Congress addressed a host of environmental problems by creating rules of the road-- regulations-- and our country made a bipartisan commitment to clean up the air and water, to regulate toxic chemicals, and to address causes of acid rain and climate change. In 2010, Industries and the National Chamber of Commerce saw the opportunity to wiggle out of regulations by running attack ads against pro-environmental candidates and supporting tea party, anti-government candidates, to create an anti-environmental Congress. They succeeded. The House has voted more than 190 times to undermine environmental protection.  
 
Here are some tidbits to show why this matters. Our NH asthma rates are among the highest in the country, because we are the “tail pipe” for the country. University of Texas scientists found that almost half of the conventional brands of cold cuts and peanut butter in their local grocery stores have the flame retardant hexabromocyclododecane (HBCD). As Dr. Arnold Schecter of the University of Texas School of Public Health, an author of the study, said, “This is not good news.” The Environmental Protection Agency says HBCD is bad for marine life and can affect our hormones and reproduction. We have many other man-made chemicals in our food, air, land, and water, and we need regulations to protect people. The news on climate change has gotten worse also. Monitoring stations in the Arctic show that we have hit a new high for the heat-trapping gas, carbon dioxide, the main global warming pollutant. Pieter Tans, a senior NOAA scientist, called it “depressing,” and indeed, it is. We ignore these signs at our peril.

Today, we count heavily on the EPA to regulate and protect. However, many representatives, including Frank Guinta, want to abolish the Environmental Protection Agency, which was established in 1970 after President Nixon’s Advisory Council on Executive Organization advised him to create it. There have been relentless attacks on the EPA. The Republicans have voted to block the EPA’s ability to regulate toxic mercury and other toxins from power plants, incinerators, cement plants, and mining. They also have stopped action to address climate change, because, as Congressman Frank Guinta told the Raymond Tea Party, the federal government has no role to play in stopping global warming. They voted to cut funding for climate science. The Republicans voted to strip the EPA of authority to protect wetlands. The list goes on and on.
 
As the Sierra Club wrote, “We are not talking about a slight difference in opinion. We are talking about handing our government over to extremists who deny the existence of climate change, who want to get rid of safeguards protecting our land, water and species from destructive drilling and mining, and who want to outright abolish the Environmental Protection Agency.” This deserves a serious conversation before we all go to the polls in November.

The DCCC has no interest in helping elect progressives like Carol Shea-Porter. That's the only thing Blue America does.