According to TPM, the sticking point in the budget stalemate is not a number of billions cut from the overall budget, but funding for family planning, not to mention preventing the EPA and other agencies from protecting the nation's natural health.
According to OMB Watch, the GOP has attached riders restricting everything from funding of White House officials on global warming, health, and the automobile industry, to restricting Federal lunch programs, wetlands preservation, stewardship conservation, and, of course, the regulation of greenhouse gases.
The GOP in the House has already voted to prevent the EPA from regulating soot, cement emissions in Texas, the oil industry in Alaska, not to mention the restoration of the San Joaquin River, Endangered Species Act provisions in the Delta, coal ash, mountaintop removal, all are prohibited, as well as overfishing protection programs administered by NOAA, and, as they say in advertising, much much more. Boy will this keep the lawyers busy, should it pass, in any form.
All this despite countless polls showing that protecting the environment is popular with the public.
Some have taken to calling GOP's crusade against the EPA the Dirty Air Act.
Amazing to me the eagerness with which the Republican party throws their complete and total support to polluting. Guess I'm still not cynical enough for this century.
Kit Stolz 