Yesterday, The Hill published an opinion piece by Center for Progressive Reform President Rena Steinzor entitled, “Regulatory backlog threatens health and the environment.”
According to Steinzor:
Opponents of regulation also seek to undermine the very legitimacy of agency rulemaking by fostering public hostility toward government and belittling life-saving regulation as “red tape.” What results is the gross politicization of the regulatory process, resulting in long delays and weaker rules, as measured in lives and health. For example, the cost of the recent eight-month delay of the EPA’s ozone rule is projected to be somewhere between 1,000 and 2,867 premature deaths. The simple truth is that cries of “over-regulation” from industry and its allies in Congress are hooey. Having lost pitched battles in Congress over adoption of various environmental, health, and safety laws, they’re simply re-litigating their case, hoping to undermine the rules that breathe life into laws they opposed in the first place. More broadly, they’re trying to intimidate the administration from aggressively pursuing the only course that congressional gridlock leaves open to it to address climate change, air pollution, water pollution, unsafe working conditions, and more. We can only hope the administration doesn’t fall for it.
