We’ve been over the regulatory loopholes that worsened the Freedom Industries chemical spill in West Virginia, but Speaker of the House John Boehner says we actually have too many regulations.
“We have enough regulations on the books. What the administration ought to be doing is their jobs,” Boehner said at a weekly press conference on Capitol Hill.
While Boehner said that somebody ought to be held accountable for the failure in oversight, the Speaker explained his party was focused on eliminating “cumbersome, over-the-top” regulations that were “costing the American people jobs.”
I’ll tell you what costs Americans jobs — having restaurants and businesses shut down for a week because they can’t use their water because a chemical just spilled from a storage site that was last inspected when George H.W. Bush was president.
Over the weekend state officials said the chemicals located at the Freedom Industries storage facility weren’t classified as a “hazardous substance” and thus weren’t subject to closer scrutiny.
The good news is local lawmakers don’t necessarily agree with John Boehner and there is an immense amount of pressure on them to ensure that this doesn’t happen again.