President Obama has once again caved in to the destructive desires of congressional Republicans and big business. Yesterday he announced that his administration’s plans to tighten tighten up the law in regards to the Environmental Protection Agency’s plan for air quality standards for the ozone.

Obama asked EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson to withdraw the draft of the Ozone National Ambient Air Quality Standards plan. The reason he gave? To reduce regulatory burdens in light of the rough shape of the American economy and that it would cost billions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of jobs.

“Work is already under way to update a 2006 review of the science that will result in the reconsideration of the ozone standard in 2013,” he said in a statement. “Ultimately, I did not support asking state and local governments to begin implementing a new standard that will soon be reconsidered.”

As a sidenote, to placate the people that voted for him, he also mentioned that in the future he would “vigorously oppose efforts to weaken EPA’s authority under the Clean Air Act or dismantle the progress we have made.”

According to the EPA, the law changes they were proposing could have saved over $100 billion in healthcare costs and prevented up to 12,000 premature deaths from heart and lung diseases caused by the environment.