The “single greatest roll-back of Clean Air Act protections in history” passed the U.S. House today on a largely party-line 249 to 169 vote (roll call). Iowa’s Leonard Boswell was one of 19 House Democrats to vote with most Republicans in favor of this bill. Details are below.

The Transparency in Regulatory Analysis of Impacts on the Nation Act of 2011, better known as the TRAIN Act, requires “analyses of the cumulative and incremental impacts of certain rules and actions of the Environmental Protection Agency.” That sounds innocuous, but the goal is to undermine the EPA’s ability to regulate pollutants under the Clean Air Act.

The measure would block health safeguards already issued by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and prevent imminent mercury standards from being adopted.

The law would impose a mandatory minimum delay of between 15 and 19 months and eliminate any statutory deadlines for EPA to reissue those standards in the future.

Click here for the full text of the TRAIN Act (H.R. 2401). Many environmental organizations denounced the legislation. The Sierra Club’s Executive Director Michael Brune called the bill “the most dangerous attack on clean air since the law was enacted by President Nixon 40 years ago.”

“House Leadership claims that the costs of basic pollution protections, protections that Americans have relied on for 40 years, are too high. But their passage today of the so-called TRAIN Act will cost 34,000 lives. That’s 34,000 people – fathers, mothers, neighbors, friends and children – who could be saved by protections against dangerous pollution and who the majority of the U.S. House has identified as collateral damage for their pro-polluter agenda. In addition to these initial, unnecessary deaths, the TRAIN Act will result in 25,000 more lives lost each year that it delays critical protections against pollution.

“Sacrificing tens of thousands of American lives will not create more jobs. Allowing corporations to dump toxic pollution into the air our children and our families breathe will not help the economy recover. Burdening the American people with billions of dollars in health bills will not lead to economic growth.

“A healthy economy begins with healthy people. The Sierra Club thanks President Obama for his vow to veto this bill and we urge the Senate to reject the House’s reckless attack on American values and clean air.”

About that veto threat: to my knowledge, the president himself has not vowed to veto the TRAIN Act. Rather, the Office of Management and Budget released a statement of administration policy this week, saying the president’s advisors would recommend a veto.

“The Administration strongly opposes H.R. 2401, which would block two landmark public health regulations under the Clean Air Act and require the preparation of costly, unnecessary, and redundant reports,” the OMB stated. “While the Administration strongly supports careful analysis of the economic effects of regulation, the approach taken in H.R. 2401 would slow or undermine important public health protections.”

“H.R. 2401 would undermine this progress by blocking EPA’s ability to move forward with two long overdue Clean Air Act rules – the Mercury and Air Toxics Standard and the Cross-State Air Pollution Rule – to reduce harmful air pollution that threatens public health, especially the health of the most vulnerable populations, including children and seniors.”

The EPA estimates that these two rules alone will yield hundreds of billions of dollars in net benefits each year. H.R. 2401 would block these rules and indefinitely delay these public health and economic benefits.

I would feel more confident if the president delivered that message directly. I question Obama’s commitment to air quality after he blocked the EPA from issuing new smog standards. That gesture to conservative business interests will harm public health.

The roll call shows that only four House Republicans voted against the TRAIN Act. Iowa’s Tom Latham (IA-04) and Steve King (IA-05) were with the majority seeking to handcuff the EPA. Bruce Braley (IA-01) and Dave Loebsack (IA-02) were among the 169 House Democrats who rejected this horrendous bill.

I doubt the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee will make noise about today’s vote, because 19 House Democrats also voted for the TRAIN Act. Five of them are in the DCCC’s “Frontline” program for vulnerable incumbents: Leonard Boswell (IA-03), Ben Chandler (KY-06), Mark Critz (PA-12), Jim Matheson (UT-02), and Mike McIntyre (NC-07). This bill will probably die in the U.S. Senate, but something very similar could pass both chambers of Congress after the 2012 elections. As in Iowa, professional Democrats at the national level say little and do less for the environment.

I will update this post if I see any public comments about the TRAIN Act from the Iowa representatives in Congress. Boswell never sent out a press release on his vote in July for a bill undermining the Clean Water Act.

My hunch is that deep down, Boswell understands the TRAIN Act is bad legislation. Yesterday he voted against the resolution on bringing the bill to the House floor, and today he voted for the motion to recommit the bill with instructions (a procedural move usually intended to derail legislation). Political considerations may lie behind his vote for the bill. Facing a tough re-election battle against Latham in the new IA-03, Boswell may not want to open himself up to false attacks over the EPA’s so-called “job-killing regulations.”

Share any relevant thoughts in this thread.

P.S.- To my knowledge, the TRAIN Act would not affect the EPA’s recent instruction to the Iowa Department of Natural Resources regarding small particulate pollution.