The Republican jobs plan: stop environmental regulations

[Cali_Democrat]

The Republican jobs plan: stop environmental regulations
By Stephen Stromberg

In the 2010 midterm elections Republicans ran on a platform of repeal and replace — cancel President Obama’s signature health-care law, and replace it with a GOP plan. After taking the House, the Republican majority passed a repeal of the health-care law, but they haven’t unified behind a proposal to replace it. The status quo before the law, critics rightly point out, is hardly an alternative. The GOP can attack what it doesn’t like, but can it govern?

Now, Republicans have outlined a jobs agenda that mainly consists of eviscerating federal regulations they don’t like, with a particular focus on rules designed to protect the environment. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) released a memorandum to GOP lawmakers on Monday that targets the ten most “job-destroying” regulations in the federal register. Seven of them are rules the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is on track to impose.

But what’s the GOP alternative to EPA restrictions on mercury, acid gases, ozone and greenhouse emissions? Cantor’s memo only talks about delaying and weakening proposed rules, not some different approach to environmental protection. Maybe we just don’t need any more of that?

There are undoubted costs to environmental regulations. But there are also large benefits. Cantor’s document just doesn’t mention any. A recent Office of Management and Budget review found that existing EPA regulations, particularly those dealing with the air, are among the costliest to comply with — but also among the most valuable, with benefits often vastly exceeding costs, dollar for dollar. In fact, part of the reason the price of environmental regulation is known is that EPA must run rigorous cost-benefit analyses on its rules before finalizing them. That’s how it reckons that every dollar spent on some of the measures Cantor is targeting — those cutting cross-state particulate and ozone pollution — will result in $30 in economic benefits from employees taking fewer sick days, a lower incidence of many chronic illnesses, and fewer early deaths. And let’s not even get into climate change.

Read more...http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/post/the-republican-jobs-plan-stop-environmental-regulations/2011/08/29/gIQA6NjznJ_blog.html

Anyone who is familiar with Cantor's memo knows that the GOP has absolutely no jobs plan to speak of. The only thing they mention is reducing regulations and taxes which is obviously a directive from their corporate overlords.

The GOP may not play ball when it comes to Obama's jobs agenda, but that doesn't prevent Obama from calling them our for their bullshit. They got nothing. Nada. Zilch. Zero.

Obama should bludgeon them for this pathetic jobs plan.

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-yEiZxNhrmIM/TlCBHwNm7PI/AAAAAAAANdI/R4A4t_l-55c/s1600/gop+jobs+plan.jpg

[Turbineguy]

1. The repub way to lower unemployment

is to kill people.

[Divine Discontent]

2. Yep, everywhere you turn, you hear the GOP talking heads & pols saying we need to "free up" the laws

and regulations on the corporations so they can destroy, err.. produce more. Their solution is always no taxes on the rich and corporations and no pollution and work condition regulations.


http://www.cafepress.com/barackobama12

[Cali_Democrat]

3. Yep.

That's all they believe in. It's time to call them out.

[quaker bill]

4. We had plenty of jobs

and a growing economy with all the current regulations in place. Then Bush* was selected.

[Enthusiast]

5. But we must ignore that now.

Apparently.