This legislation is a key element of the conservative assault against government regulations intended to keep corporations from endangering public health and the planet for the sake of profit. The supposed premise behind this bill, that the Environmental Protection Agency’s proposed actions to protect public health would be “job-killing,” or that the costs would exceed the benefits, is not borne out by the facts.

The Natural Resource Defense Council opposed H.R. 2401 for two main reasons. First, the bill would block the implementation of two critical Clean Air Act standards for power plants, one that limits mercury and other air toxic pollution, and another that curbs smog and soot pollution that crosses state lines. Second, the legislation would add a new panel that would review EPA standards, creating more bureaucracy and red tape caused that would tie the hands of EPA’s health and scientific professionals and prevent them from doing their job to protect public health.

The chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., has said that the TRAIN Act’s obstruction of EPA’s work in setting new health standards would delay life-saving protections.  

The NRDC has estimated that if this bill becomes law up to 25,300 additional lives would be lost due to smog, soot, and toxic air pollution. There would also be more than 11,000 heart attacks, more than 120,000 asthma attacks and over 12,200 more hospital and emergency room visits.

The National Association of Clean Air Agencies (NACAA) in a statement wrote that it is concerned that the TRAIN Act will create regulatory delays that could lead to thousands of premature deaths, remove important regulatory tools upon which states and localities depend, impose additional costs on government as well as small businesses, create regulatory uncertainty, cause jobs losses and de-fund an important and cost-effective air pollution control program.

The Economic Policy Institute released a March 2011 report reviewing the overall impact of government regulations on job creation and economic growth, and found that, based on congressionally mandated reviews done by the Office of Management and Budget and the EPA, “over the past several decades the benefits of regulations have consistently and significantly exceeded their costs.” With specific reference to the EPA’s Clean Air Act actions, EPI noted that the ratio of the value of social benefits from Clean Air Act mandates to compliance costs was 25-to-1 in 2010. The benefits in 2010 included an estimated 160,000 lives saved, 13 million additional days of work and productivity because workers were healthier, and 3.2 million additional school days attended because students were healthier. Altogether, the Clean Air Act amendments of 1990 are believed to have saved roughly 1.8 million lives.

The report also notes that anti-pollution regulations have created whole new industries as well as thousands of jobs researching, manufacturing and installing technology required for compliance. Regulations, and the innovations they spawn, often spark changes that increase productivity and over time lower the cost of regulatory compliance.

The bottom line: The benefits of EPA regulations have historically far outstripped the costs, and the right-wing rhetoric of “job killing” just doesn’t hold up under scrutiny. On the other hand, the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is a graphic example of the consequences of lax environmental regulation and enforcement.  

The middle class is not served by legislation that would allow corporations to evade accountability for the damage that they do to public health and would obstruct action to prevent that damage. Yet, under the guise of protecting “job creators,” that is what the TRAIN Act would do.