The House is poised to increase the “death ceiling” even as the debt ceiling debate stalls

As sustainability is more and more in the forefront of everyone's thoughts I thought this was an interesting read.

As yet another sign of how far the Congress is taking the country off track, keep an eye on how Congress fills the time while the debt ceiling debate stalls. To fill the time, the House of Representatives is busy adopting riders on the Interior Appropriations bill.  Many of these riders explicitly defund or deauthorize the government’s ability to protect the public from dangerous pollution. The irony of all this has been recognized memorably by Rep. Ed Markey, who notes that “while the DEBT ceiling remains frozen, the DEATH ceiling is being raised” by these anti-environment appropriations riders.

These riders are legislative provisions that are far too extreme to pass Congress on their own merits, but not too extreme to offer during this legislative wilding in the House. Together, these riders undermine decades of progress protecting our nation’s environmental heritage. They threaten the air we breathe and the water we drink.

Read the rest of the article here.