If Congress has a reasonable frame of logic for why the Obama administration’s historic mercury poisoning safeguards need to be rolled back, and why they feel it’s necessary to include a provision preventing the EPA from ever taking this issue up again, I think it’s high time they let us in on it. Because from this angle, it looks like nothing more than pandering to special interests- specifically the coal lobby- in a blatant attempt to cancel out not only one of President Obama’s most important accomplishments, but to undermine the powers of the Environmental Protection Agency, a notable thorn in Congressional Republicans’ sides, by preventing the agency from even attempting to replace the nixed standards in the future.

Which raises an even more pressing concern: how can Congress prevent their successors from ever disagreeing with them?

To me, that rings unconstitutional. After all, even the Supreme Court can overturn past decisions. So the thought that Congress may start decreeing that once an issue is closed, it’s closed for good, is terrifying. Especially since this is easily the worst possible session of Congress to give the last say on what to order for lunch, much less whether mercury levels in our nation’s air need to be regulated.

This is a dangerous precedent that’s being set here, and the issue it’s attached to isn’t trivial by any means, either. Furthermore, despite it’s appearances, this is not a partisan problem. The only thing tipping the scales towards the Democrats in this particular case is that environmental issues tend to land in their wheelhouse, and conservatives have a historical beef with the EPA. If the issue was healthcare, and Democrats had tried to use the same tactic to insure that once the Affordable Care Act passed it could never be questioned again, it wouldn’t be any less destructive to the process- good legislation or not.

Opposing this latest Act of Congress’s two-ring circus makes twice as much sense- no one wants to have to breathe mercury, and no one wants to have to live with any of the other increasingly asinine decisions of the 112th Session for the rest of their lives, either. Hopefully tomorrow’s Senate vote will kill this ridiculous repeal of important regulations, and the notion of having the “final say” on an issue will die with it.

[CNN] Keep safeguards to end mercury poisoning

Elle Macpherson says it has taken decades to finally get clean-air protections from mercury in place. We can’t let Congress overturn them.