Who stands up for you in Washington? It's not Erik Paulsen. Erik Paulsen recently voted in favor of the the Transparency in Regulatory Analysis of Impacts on the Nation Act proudly called the TRAIN Act by Republicans. The bill delays standards under the Clean Air Act and makes it harder for the Environmental Protection Agency to enforce those standards.
Don Shelby notes that the Clean Air Act is considered one of the most cost-effective laws every passed in the United States. "While costing relatively little, it has saved billions of dollars in health care costs due to respiratory and heart diseases. The Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) most recent report concludes that by 2020, implementation costs of the act will have reached $65 billion while the benefits in health care savings, not to mention lives saved, will reach $2 trillion." The Economic Policy Institute estimates that the Clean Air Act saved 160,000 lives in 2010 alone and 1.8 million since 1990.
Read Shelby's MinnPost article: Children's health and Republican efforts to lift restrictions on air pollutants.
The MiddleClass.org writes that "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." Republicans' claim that the Environmental Protection Agency’s proposed actions to protect public health would be “job-killing” is contrary to the facts. Highly polluting coal is in fact more expensive as an energy source than wind and natural gas. In addition, far less of the costs paid for coal go to pay workers.
JOBS PER MEGAWATT
University of California, Berkeley
