LETTER: Federal government has important role to play
Here are a few questions for those who believe that we’d all be better off if we do away with regulations that are supposedly stifling small business and the economy. Should we cut funding, eliminate protective agencies and turn regulations over to individual states? This will get “Big Government” off our back, right? Consider:
•Did individual states conceive and build the Interstate Highway system?
•Did they create and fund Social Security and Medicare?
•How about our military, national parks, the postal service?
•Do states stop or reduce organized crime or other criminal activity that crosses state lines?
•Did they create the ARPANET, the technical forerunner of the internet?
States did not do these things, the federal government did. Did these initiatives, paid for by us, stifle the economy or did they produce more jobs while improving our well being and that of our children?
Of course, states do what they can to improve the lives of their residents and cooperate with bordering states, but they do not have the resources to finance projects beyond their borders. That is why we empower our federal government representatives to draft laws and create agencies charged with enforcing laws that protect citizens of all 50 states.
Nonetheless, these agencies and laws created because they were needed to protect our air, water, and the lives of our citizens have been weakened by President Trump’s executive orders or face impending budget cuts. Below are examples of threatened agencies and regulations and why they were created.
Prior to enactment of Medicare and Medicaid passed under President Johnson in 1965, elderly people were needlessly suffering and dying because they could not afford health care. And because people in the 1960s smelled and felt the effects of pollution, then in 1969 saw with their own eyes that the polluted, oil slicked surface of the Cuyahoga River in Ohio was on fire, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was created in 1970 during the Nixon Administration to monitor pollution and provide ongoing protections. The creation of the EPA was followed by the 1970 Clean Air Act and 1972 Clean Water Act also passed under President Nixon.
Yet, even though states are struggling to meet their obligations partly because they receive less federal funding, the Trump budget will weaken, cut or eliminate many more laws and agencies and shift more responsibility for protections and enforcement onto states who often don’t have the technical ability or resources to do the work of national agencies.
So how for example are poor people in West Virginia and other rural states helped when the Appalachian Regulatory Commission, an agency that promotes infrastructure repair and development in rural and often poor communities, is on the chopping block?
Whose health is improved by a 20 percent reduction in The National Institutes of Health that funds scientific research on diseases such as Ebola, cancer and supports programs to train doctors?
How does allowing coal companies, by rescinding regulations, to pollute air with mercury, arsenic and other toxic gases from power plants or allowing coal extraction through mountain top removal in places like West Virginia where slag is then dumped or washed into 2,000 miles of streams that provide drinking water help West Virginians or anyone? And remember that pollution does not stop at state borders: just as air and water easily passes from one state to another, so pollution in one state can easily affect its neighbors and beyond.
And just as dangerous, these cuts will curtail states’ ability to respond to emergencies such as the Flint, Michigan water contamination, chemical leaks or spills or ongoing cleanup of asbestos and other pollutants, especially if the 30 pecent cut in Superfund program for clean-up of known toxic sites is approved, while the scheduled 13 percent cut in Department of Transportation funding will cut much needed repairs of our nation’s crumbling roads and bridges.
The Trump Administration’s plan to reduce or remove protections because they supposedly cost jobs or cost too much needlessly risks our health and our homes. If we want to protect ourselves and our children and their children through many generations, I suggest we ask: are short term quarterly and yearly financial growth and savings for some worth the long term consequences of axing the agencies charged with enforcing laws that protect our air, water, land and health?