It's a good day to be a Democrat. On Friday, Democrats in the United States House of Representatives, over the vigorous objection of House Republicans, voted to reinstate Bill Clinton's tough standard, and repudiate Duh-bya's much weaker standard, for the amount of arsenic that will be allowable in our tap (drinking) water.
Only fifteen months until the Democratic landslide of 2002.
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The current standard for arsenic in tap water is 50 parts per billion (ppb). That standard was adopted in 1943, a primitive time when measurements were computed on slide rules, documents were produced on typewriters, copies were made with carbon paper and people relied on something called a bible for information about the origins of the universe. The world has now moved way past those antiquated instruments.
The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) has determined that the current standard for arsenic in tap water is way too high. Exposure to that much arsenic in drinking water can cause bladder, lung and skin cancer in one out of every hundred people in America. That's 10,000 times the level of risk allowed for carcinogens in food. The NAS recommended a level of 10 ppb. President Clinton ordered that the safety level recommended by the NAS, 10 ppb, would be the new standard for the United States, to be implemented in several years to give municipal water systems time to convert to the safer standard.
When Duh-bya snuck into the White House as imposter President, one of his first acts was to go to bat for polluters. Duh-bya wanted more arsenic in our drinking water -- much more. Duh-bya ordered that the amount of arsenic in our drinking water be doubled, from 10 ppb to 20 ppb.
The question you might ask is this: A drop of from 50 ppb to 10 ppb seems dramatic. Is Duh-bya's standard of 20 ppb more reasonable? The answer is an unambiguous "No." President Clinton didn't come up with the 10 ppb figure out of the blue. It was recommended by the best scientific minds in America, based on safety, not politics. This same standard of 10 ppb has already been adopted by both the World Health Organization and the European Union, so 10 ppb is the norm for safety around the world, not some extreme figure dreamed up by Bill Clinton.
On Friday, 198 Democrats voted to reinstate the safer, 10 ppb standard, while 182 Republicans voted to retain the unsafe 20 ppb standard. 19 Republicans and one independent joined the Dems in voting for less water pollution, while just 6 Dems and one independent voted for more pollution in your drinking water.
House Appropriations Committee spokesman John Scofield whimpered that the 218 to 189 vote had very little to do with the environment and everything to do with sticking a finger in the eye of the president. Not quite, Johnny. The vote had everything to do with the environment and stopping the president from sticking his own finger in his eye.
Actually, it's a good thing that we Democrats reinstated the lower standard for arsenic in water, because next year in November, the Republicans are going to get soaked.
We wouldn't want them to end up getting cancer from all that arsenic, would we?
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