Republicans have never been able to show that environmental regulations are actually job killers. But as Politico reports, Scott Pruitt’s moves to destroy the EPA certainly are costing some jobs.
President Donald Trump’s proposed cutbacks to the Environmental Protection Agency may include the closure of the agency’s regional office in Chicago, a move that could undermine the agency’s ability to monitor pollution in the Great Lakes and curtail its ability to implement enforcement actions against coal-fired power plant owners in the six-state region. …
Under the administration’s plan, 3,000 EPA employees nationwide would lose their jobs. Closing the Chicago office, and eliminating its 1,000 positions, would help accomplish that goal.
Of course, by Republican measures, those EPA employees working to make sure Americans have clean water, clean air, and decent living conditions aren’t doing real jobs. And by extension the people those EPA workers rent homes from, and buy groceries from, and support in a hundred other ways, don’t have real jobs. Neither do the people that those people support. Only ignoring the environment and the public good can create a real job.
The Chicago office supports the Great Lakes region, an area also under assault in Trump’s budget through other cuts. As reported by the The Detroit News.
Trump’s budget plan would slash the Environmental Protection Agency’s budget by nearly a third, including reductions for the agency’s enforcement and compliance office and ending the $300 million-a-year Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, among other regional efforts.
The Great Lakes Restoration Initiative is a program put in place as a bipartisan effort to protect the Great Lakes from invasive species and preserve the quality of the lakes and surrounding habit. It’s not just a matter of protecting fish, birds, and wildlife. It’s a matter of supporting fishing jobs, tourism jobs, and the water supply and quality of life for millions of people. That includes those in Flint, whose water supply is directly threatened by the cuts to the EPA.
Rep. Dan Kildee (D-MI), whose congressional district includes the city of Flint, called reports of the proposed closure of EPA’s Chicago [office] a “misguided” move that would jeopardize federal resources to help Flint recover from its water crisis.
Trump’s budget director, Mick Mulvaney, said that decisions had been based on whether you could ask “a single mom in Detroit to pay for these programs.” Apparently those single moms aren’t concerned about the health of their children.