"The Gipper" explains why William Ruckelshaus (just behind him) is his choice to run EPA.

These days, Ronald Reagan is something of a hero to conservatives in Congress who see him as the champion of a smaller government with less taxes and low deficits (as numerous media have reported–the praise he earns on taxes and deficits often ignores the historical facts of his policies. you can read more about that here.)  Many of these modern-day Reagan-worshipers are the same folks who are behind the unprecedented assault on the Environmental Protection Agency, working to slash EPA’s budgets and deprive the agency of its authority to keep our air and water clean, and our nation’s people protected from the pollution hazards that threaten our health.

Since Ronald Reagan is resting in peace, we can’t ask him what he thinks about the present-day assault on the EPA.  But we can pay heed to the views expressed by William Ruckelshaus, the man that President Reagan and President Nixon entrusted to run the  EPA.  Writing in today’s Washington Post along with Christine Todd Whitman, former Republican Governor of New Jersey and former EPA Administrator under George W. Bush, these former cabinet members injected some much-needed nonpartisan perspective on the importance of a strong, science-based EPA into the debate:

Today the agency President Richard Nixon created in response to the public outcry over visible air pollution and flammable rivers is under siege. The Senate is poised to vote on a bill that would, for the first time, “disapprove” of a scientifically based finding, in this case that greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare. This finding was extensively reviewed by officials in the administrations of presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama. It was finalized by the Environmental Protection Agency in response to a 2007 Supreme Court decision that greenhouse gases fit within the Clean Air Act definition of air pollutants.

…

It has taken four decades to put in place the infrastructure to ensure that pollution is controlled through limitations on corporate, municipal and individual conduct. Dismantle that infrastructure today, and a new one would have to be created tomorrow at great expense and at great sacrifice to America’s public health and environment. The American public will not long stand for an end to regulations that have protected their health and quality of life.

You can read the entire op-ed by clicking here.

It’s time to remind EPA’s conservative congressional opponents of the role that Republican predecessors and the professionals they appointed played in building an EPA that has made our environment cleaner and our economy stronger, while improving and protecting public health. CLF is making that easy for constituents of Republican Senators Snowe and Collins in Maine and Scott Brown in Massachusetts–click here to find out more–and spread the word to your friends in other parts of the country.