Republicans mocked President Obama’s speech this week on economic recovery, but don’t expect any alternative jobs proposal from them. They’re too busy holding our gasping economy over a cliff, threatening to let go unless his health care law is defunded.

This is their only answer to our unemployment crisis: Cut spending, at any cost. Our deficit is already on a steep decline, yet House Republicans are gleefully pushing massive new cuts on the social, regulatory and environmental programs that make up a relatively small sliver of our federal budget.

It’s an effort to torpedo the president’s agenda. But what would the impact be? Consider their assault on our environment.

House Republicans intend to slash the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's budget by as much as a third. This is to reduce the effect on other budgets, such as the military's — where we still spend billions on unnecessary weapon systems.

As a result, EPA staffing would shrink to the levels of the early 1990s, hobbling the agency’s ability to enforce the laws and update standards against pollution. In New Jersey, this cut would choke off the flow of federal money that supports upgrades to our antiquated sewer systems by as much as 80 percent, and our drinking water infrastructure by 60 percent, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council.

These are dollars that could be used to fix the old pipes that pour tens of billions of gallons of raw sewage into our rivers every year.

The EPA cut would totally eliminate federal funding to clean up our roughly 10,000 brownfields. Failing to remediate these former industrial sites, many of which are in urban areas, would cripple the revitalization of our cities.

That’s not all. Republicans also threw in some dirty policies: They blocked the EPA from enforcing the rules on lead paint, or doing virtually anything on climate change, including setting new controls on carbon emissions from power plants. They prevented the federal government from allowing any more toxic substances to be added to the list of dangerous materials, as the late Sen. Frank Lautenberg tried to do in his quest for chemical safety.

They’ve also slashed the president’s funding request for renewable energy programs by 72 percent — even though if we don’t invest in these new energy sources, other countries will jump ahead of us in harnessing solar and wind power. We will be stuck importing from them, and exporting jobs.

To balance the budget by dicing domestic spending on the environment, infrastructure and research is extremely short-sighted. For fear of leaving our children with any debt, we will instead leave them with trillions of dollars in inadequate roads and water, transit and electrical grid systems. With dirty rivers and smoggy air.

The environment was once a bipartisan issue, but these extremists who’ve hijacked the House have a blind spot when it comes to setting basic standards to protect people from air and water pollution and toxic chemicals. They view this as wasteful, rather than necessary spending.

Their severe cuts will meet resistance from saner minds in the Senate. If lawmakers can’t reach a compromise, though, there will be no money to fund the government come Oct. 1.

We’ve gone over the cliff with them before. Let’s hope we won’t have to do it again.

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