I’d like to take this opportunity to thank my congressman, Steve Scalise, and the rest of Louisiana’s GOP congressional delegation for courageously joining President Donald Trump in addressing a problem that has been ignored far too long:

Our air and water have become entirely too clean.

Since taking over Capitol Hill three months ago, they have begun making America great again by starting to repeal environmental regulations like the Clean Power Plan, car mileage standards, power plant emissions, methane leaks from oil and gas wells and a new rule protecting wetlands and water quality.

Three former officials decry report that agency faces 42 percent cut

Without their attention, the steady slide to cleaner, healthier air and water forced on Americans by the federal government for almost 50 years would continue unabated.

The problems they address are clear — too clear.

When I step outside and take a deep breath these days I don’t feel anything going into my lungs. Hell, it’s almost like there’s nothing there but air!

When I was coming up, you often knew you were breathing because the air had some weight, some meat to it. There were times when you could feel it coming in and out of your lungs. Breathing was man’s work. It was exercise.

And it had some flavor! On lucky days it could be redolent with the essence of the oil refineries along the river, paper mills across the lake, power generators — even tires burning in landfills.  If you knew your chemistry you could almost recite the periodic table from the hints left by the air moving through your nose toward your lungs.

I remember early mornings in the marsh chasing specks when I could look back toward the Big Easy and see a beautiful brown slick floating over the city.

Yes, that was patriotic air, because it carried the particles of Louisiana and America at work. The sky was filled with the evidence of jobs being created, dividends being paid to stockholders and big bonuses going to CEOs.

Our water has been suffering a similar, cleansing fate.  When you chug 12 ounces from the kitchen faucet these days you don’t taste anything! How do I know where this stuff comes from if it doesn’t have any flavors?

And now you can see clear through it – like there’s nothing there but water!

In the good old days, if you put a filled glass on the counter and returned an hour later, there might be a little lagniappe on the bottom. And if you left a bowl filled with it overnight, there could be a nice circle around the waterline the next morning, like a bathtub ring. These were testimonials that someone, somewhere was making more money. You could actually taste their profits mounting.

Those glorious days started changing around 1970 when a previous generation of Republicans in Congress and their GOP president didn’t have the courage of today’s heroes.  They threw their business supporters under the bus by joining with the leftist Democrats to pass the Clean Air and Clean Water acts.

Since then the character of our air and water — even our people — has changed.

Peer-reviewed studies published by the National Institutes of Health show that over the past 45 years the levels of six major air pollutants have been reduced by nearly 70 percent.  Hundreds of thousands of lives were saved, improving work productivity, reducing health costs and extending life expectancy. And these changes haven’t just been forced on adults. This federal intrusion actually saved the lives of the unborn — future citizens who didn’t even have a chance to say, “Don’t mess with my water and air!”

Last year alone this prissy air we now breathe saved 160,000 lives, a figure that is expected to top 230,000 annually by 2020. (Of course, that comes from a report by the Environmental Protection Agency. Thanks to President Trump, we won’t have to worry about getting that kind of sad news in the future. He’s proposed cutting the EPA budget by 31 percent — including a 40-percent drop in research and reporting.)

We’ve been making our water fit for sissies, too. Before the Clean Water Act only one third of the nation’s waters were considered “safe to drink or swim” by the do-gooders. Now two-thirds of them pose no real challenge. So sad!

All this was happening while the nation’s gross domestic product increased by 256 percent, America continued to be the world’s largest, most successful economy and the stock market soared to record high profits along with those companies forced to reduce pumping poisons into the air and water.

Because of that we’ve got a population so pampered by the Nanny State that many people have never known what it means to fight for air to breathe and water to swallow! They’ve been almost completely robbed of the freedom to go mano-a-carcinogen with chemical big boys like lead, mercury, carbon monoxide, nitrogen dioxide and sulfur dioxide.

They’ve cleaned our air and water so much, these days you practically have to move into a low-income minority neighborhood next to a chemical plant to feel the air you breath and taste something in the water.

And the Clean Power Plan would have made things even worse. Research showed it would prevent as many as 17,000 premature deaths and 11,000 heart attacks each year!

Well, happy days are about the return.

For years GOP Congress people — including Louisiana’s delegation — have been passing resolutions and bills to amend or repeal a lot of this Nanny State clean air and water stuff. They’ve been trying to rob us of the freedom to get sick and die early, painful deaths and to watch our children suffer the same glorious fates. But the Democratic enemies of industry and freedom in Congress and the White House always blocked them.

Well, the election of President Trump has changed all that.

Now the long ignored demands by real Americans for more poisons in our air and water will finally be heard.

Our long national nightmare of progressively cleaner air and water leading to better health and longer lives may finally come to an end.

And that’s why we sent them to Washington!

Wasn’t it?