Environmental Strategy of GOP: 'Too Dirty to Fail'

House Republicans claim that to create jobs, we need to loosen environmental regulations. To that end, they’ve “averaged roughly a vote every day” in session to weaken the rules—and have already cut back the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, and other laws, writes EPA chief Lisa Jackson in the Los Angeles Times. “This pseudo jobs plan to protect polluters might well be called ‘too dirty to fail,’” she writes.

This policy tries to convince Americans that they must choose between their health and the economy,” but that’s a false choice—and one that genuinely endangers Americans. “No credible economist links our current economic crisis—or any economic crisis—to tough clean-air and clean-water standards.” In fact, saving our planet will create jobs, writes Jackson. What's more, the environment affects red and blue states and shouldn’t be politicized, she adds. In the New York Times, Paul Krugman echoes the EPA administrator, labeling the GOP the “party of pollution.” (More Lisa Jackson stories.)