Republicans Forget Their Green on St. Patrick’s Day

The GOP must have forgotten that today is St. Patrick’s Day, a day where people are encouraged to sport green, or risk being pinched. They chose today to push many of their extremist policies that would be devastating to our beautiful environment in Montana.

On the Senate floor, Sen. Chas Vincent’s bill that would essentially demolish the Montana Environmental Policy Act (MEPA) was given initial approval. This bill would gut environmental protections that have helped to maintain our quality environment for years. If this bill becomes law, it would be much harder for Montanans to hold polluters accountable for the damage they do.

The Senate Energy and Telecommunications committee heard two bills that would hurt Montana land, water and air. The first, seeks to strip the Environmental Protection Agency of the ability to impact greenhouse gas emissions. This policy was put in place after Republican obstruction in the federal government  prohibited meaningful environmental protections to be passed.

The second bill would rollback the clean air act and mercury rules. If these extremist Republicans successfully pass this law, corporate polluters would be free to release 700 pounds of mercury into our air. This would not only hurt our environment, but would have huge negative impacts on the health of all Montanans.

Finally, the Senate Judiciary committee heard Rep. Kennedy’s bill that seeks a constitutional referendum amending our right to a clean and healthful environment. Kennedy seeks to forever alter our state constitution by stating that our environment must be economically productive. This would not only be devastating for our environment, it would likely cost taxpayers thousands of dollars in legal challenges to the bill.

With all of these anti-green bills the Republicans must have received a lot of pinches today from Montanans.