EDITORIAL: Beware the budget riders

Register Guard warns of further congressional attacks on key environmental safeguards.

House Republicans attack environmental regulations

Republicans in the House of Representatives are trying cut a broad swath through environmental regulations, stuffing an appropriations bill with proposals that would undo clean air and water protections stretching back to President Richard Nixon.

Several of these damaging proposals already have been noted in this space, including one that would clear the way for new uranium mining near Grand Canyon National Park. But the list continues to grow — with at least 39 provisions to date aimed at significantly curtailing environmental regulations.

Recent additions include a proposal that would restrict the Department of Interior’s ability to regulate mountaintop-removal mining and language that would limit the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to monitor greenhouse gas emissions.

Republicans also are proposing across-the-board cuts in the budgets of federal environmental agencies. The EPA is the primary target, with a proposed budget cut of $1.5 billion, nearly 18 percent, which comes on top of a cut of $1.6 billion in the current fiscal year. The funding bill also would put a one-year hold on any new air and water regulations.

Increasingly, House Republicans are using the budget process as their main tactic for scaling back environmental protections. They were emboldened by their success earlier this year when GOP lawmakers inserted riders into a budget bill that stripped endangered species protection from wolves in five Western states and that cut funding for an Interior Department program that designated public lands eligible for wilderness protection.

Tea party Republicans are the primary force behind this unprecedented attack on environmental agencies and regulations. Many ran for office promising to hamstring the EPA — in particular its efforts to regulate carbon dioxide, the primary greenhouse cause linked to global warming.

Inspired by the tea party, an aggressive new GOP majority in the House is intent on undoing years of progress on conservation. Ironically, much of that progress has Republican origins. GOP lawmakers should remember that the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act of the 1970s had strong support from both parties. President Nixon created the EPA and signed into the law the Endangered Species Act, exhorting Congress in 1973 to protect America’s “irreplaceable heritage.”

The most egregious of the Republican proposals have little chance of passing in the Democratic-controlled Senate. But some may slip through, and President Obama should veto the Interior appropriations bill if it contains damaging provisions.

Obama so far has failed to live up to the expectations of environmentalists; his April decision to sign a budget bill containing the anti-­environmental riders inserted by House Republicans was disappointing.

Earlier this month, Obama threatened to veto the Interior appropriations bill because of policy riders that the White House said would leave the EPA “unable to implement its core mission of protecting human health and the environment.”

It was an encouraging sign from a president who has been too eager to avoid battles over environmental protection as the 2012 election nears, fearing that Republicans will accuse him of damaging the economy.

Obama should heed the recent advice of former Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt, who urged Obama to follow the example of President Clinton on environmental issues. After the crushing 1994 Republican takeover of Congress, Clinton championed conservation issues and vowed to veto any and all anti-environmental legislation. Clinton’s hard-nosed stance was popular with American voters, who polls show still strongly support conservation, despite concerns about the economy and unemployment.

GOP lawmakers are making an unprecedented push to unravel environmental protections. Democrats in Congress — and Obama — should make sure Republicans don’t succeed.