Senate Republicans are pelting a noncontroversial small business aid bill with a variety of awful amendments that have nothing to do with small business. The amendments leave no stone unturned, attacking environmental and consumer protections, health care, and a wide range of government programs that impact Americans’ everyday lives.

Last week, President Obama quietly issued a memo titled, “Administrative Flexibility, Lower Costs, and Better Results for State, Local, and Tribal Governments.” The memo directs the Office of Management and Budget to work with state and local entities to identify “unnecessary administrative, regulatory, and legislative burdens” in order to achieve “better outcomes at lower cost.”

Today, a House panel will consider a bill that would create radical and damaging changes to the regulatory process and would undermine safeguards critical to our health, welfare, environment, and economy.

Ever since Rep. Fred Upton (R-MI) took the chairmanship of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, he has engaged in a fully fledged war against the Clean Air Act. No matter that 69% of Americans want EPA to do more and that cost-benefit analysis (the tool that has been the darling of the GOP for decades) consistently shows that the Clean Air Act pays for itself 30 times over every year.