Would anyone want to eliminate a regulation requiring hard-hats?
EPA regulations require all major industries to install the best practicable treatment for wastewater, before discharge into the waters of the U.S.
We could and do argue about the level of treatment required, trying to measure the costs against the benefits of each regulation.
Doubtful, but in this case the link between the costs (measurable) and the benefits (the health of our population) is not as easy to see.
More importantly, they have forgotten that every major Federal regulation (cost over $100 million per year) must have a detailed cost-benefit analysis before adoption.
Here is a good example: the mercury and air toxics rule.
EPA’s cost-benefit analysis estimates that for every dollar of cost, there will be around four to nine dollars of health benefits.
Plus, the rule may create over 40,000 short-term construction jobs, and 8,000 long-term jobs at the power plants.
(4) Taking $5 million and multiplying by 11,000 premature deaths gives a figure of $55 billion a year as the worth of the lives saved.
If Trump abandons the MATS rule, will he be saving jobs or killing people?