Chris Van Hollen: “with the resolution on the floor today, our Republican colleagues are beginning their effort to roll back critical…”

“with the resolution on the floor today, our Republican colleagues are beginning their effort to roll back critical health, safety, and environmental safeguards that the Obama administration put in place. The tool that they are using, the Congressional Review Act, is a particularly blunt instrument. The Congressional Review Act allows the majority to rush a resolution of disapproval through the Senate with limited debate and only a limited opportunity for Americans to see what Congress is doing. But a resolution of disapproval under the Congressional Review Act does not just send a rule back to the drawing board. Instead, the resolution repeals the rule and prohibits the Agency from ever proposing anything like it again. An analysis in the Washington Law Review reported that it is ``conceivable that any subsequent attempt to regulate in any way whatsoever in the same broad topical area would be barred.'' The rule before us today, the stream protection rule, deals with how waste from surface mining, also called ``mountaintop mining,'' is handled. The rule prevents this waste from being dumped near streams. The waste from these mining operations includes toxic pollutants like lead and arsenic. And these pollutants can cause serious health problems in surrounding communities. A 2008 study in the Journal of the North American Benthological Society found that 98 percent of streams downstream from mountaintop mining operations were damaged.…”