Jon Runyan Should Call Jim Saxton

Back in 1995, conservative Republicans controlled the House and launched an all-out assault on all things progressive, including the 1972 Clean Water Act. To his everlasting credit, Republican Jim Saxton, then representing NJ3, fought hard and successfully against his own leadership's efforts to weaken federal clean-water protections.

Today, conservative Republicans again control the House and they're replaying their attack on the Clean Water Act. But Third District residents no longer have an advocate with the courage to stand up to the anti-regulatory jihadists in his own party.

NJ3's freshman Republican Jon Runyan this week voted with the House majority to pass H.R. 2018, a bill giving states primacy over the federal government in clean-water regulation. That's bad, because rivers, streams, and aquifers don't recognize man-made boundaries.

Like Saxton, former NY Republican Representative Sherwood Boehlert bucked his House leaders in 1995 to protect clean-water rules. He recently wrote that H.R. 2018, is bad news for good, clean water.

This isn't just a theoretical conclusion. Prior to the enactment of the Clean Water Act of 1972, we had clean water laws on the books, but they weren't very effective because the federal government had little authority. We have more drinkable, fishable and swimmable waters today, in part because we finally had a clean water law that didn't let states just flush their wastes downstream or do whatever their local companies found most convenient.

Safe to say that the Dem-controlled Senate will never sign off on this legislation, so debating and passing the bill amounted to just another GOP-led exercise in wasting time, part of their "Fiddling while Rome Burns" governing strategy.