In a recent opinion article, Sen. Olympia Snowe made it clear that she opposes business regulations that she considers “outdated and ineffective” and burdensome.

Whatever her motivation may be, Snowe is actually trying to do away with many of the environmental and worker safety regulations that Americans have come to rely on over the years.

The senator’s legislation would, in effect, force federal regulatory agencies to waste increasingly scarce resources conducting a never-ending series of reviews instead of simply enforcing the laws that protect our environment, workers and public health.

Her amendment is based on the false assumption that regulation has no benefit to society, that it imposes only costs, with which we would all be better off without.

This assumption is terribly off mark — ask the miners who survived the blast last year at the Upper Big Branch Mine in West Virginia , or the rig workers who lived through the Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.

We have regulations and health and safety standards for a reason: to protect the American worker, the consumer and our environment and to safeguard the health and welfare of all Americans.

Sen. Snowe’s legislation would actually harm American families by discouraging federal regulatory agencies from actually doing their jobs.

And that we simply cannot allow.