Did you read the story on page B8 in Friday’s edition? It was about EPA regulations and the costs associated with the potential repeal of these regulations.

We’d understand if you didn’t — it was over 2,000 words and fairly crunchy. If you did read it, you get a gold star! If you didn’t, here’s an excerpt that we wanted to call particular attention to (apologies for the length):

“In 17 of the 20 rules with explicit cost-benefit analyses, AP found that estimated benefits are larger than the costs — and sometimes far larger.

For example, Biden’s proposed power plant rule was designed to save more than $24 billion a year, prevent about 3,700 annual premature deaths and 3 million asthma incidents from fossil fuel-powered plants, according to EPA documents last year and work by the Environmental Protection Network. Under Trump, the EPA’s fact sheet on that rule notes nearly $1 billion in costs but nothing about the far higher estimated benefits.

Another rule the EPA updated last year sets standards for pollution permitted in the air, called National Ambient Air Quality Standards. The update, required by the Clean Air Act, cuts allowable soot particles by 25% to reflect new science on the harms from such pollution. The EPA in Biden’s time calculated the change would annually save as much as $46 billion, 4,500 premature deaths and 800,000 asthma incidents.

But the new EPA fact sheet only mentions the estimated costs of the change — about $614 million — and not benefits estimated at 76 times that amount.”

Let’s start here: unnecessary regulation and red tape should be removed and cleared out. If the remaining three rules do not provide material benefits in human, planetary or fiscal health, they should be deleted or changed.

For those in the middle, that’s a bit more grey of a zone and one which realistically is tied to the ideology of the administration. The Trump admin is notably conservative, so they will prioritize removing regulation and benefitting businesses and industry over marginal climatological or humanitarian gains, and that’s fair. The constant tug-of-war every few years gets a bit tiring, but voters should be rewarded when their party wins with policies that they align with ideologically.

However, for rules such as those cited here by the AP, we see a dangerous opinion that is endemic in today’s business owners and CEOs, reflected and writ large upon our governing agencies: you can’t simply stop spending money and expect the profits to continue to flow.

Admittedly, we are not CEOs. We are reporters, editors and designers — but that brings us into contact with a wide range of people, and most of those people share the everyday knowledge that if you stop paying for maintenance, you will ultimately still pay.

Try abstaining from your car’s oil change out of a misplaced notion of “cutting costs” and see what happens. The cost of an oil change is dramatically less than the cost of a new engine, it turns out.

Fiscal responsibility is about more than cutting costs. It’s also about knowing when, and where, to spend wisely. To invest.

There’s an old adage that you “have to spend money to make money.” It doesn’t seem like this is a popular viewpoint today.

But, for some cases, it’s there in the math. Saving $614 million is not a trivial amount of money — although it is admittedly a drop in the federal budget. But using that $614 million to generate $46 billion should be a no-brainer. At some point, the sheer effectiveness of the benefit should triumph over partisanship or ideological difference. In our book, when someone finds a clear win, they find a clear win — party affiliation doesn’t matter.

It shouldn’t matter.

Regardless, we feel wisdom has become a tragically overlooked trait in our politicians and leaders these days — and it’s not something that’s showing any signs of a resurgence on either side of the aisle.

Likewise, we would caution our readers against putting too much stock in the words of politicians — especially at the national scale. It is far better to follow their actions, especially as a lot of televised news coverage has become increasingly soundbite-driven.

These soundbites — again, on both sides of the aisle — will promise rewards and retribution with sibilant, honeyed words that are ultimately hollow.

Follow the money. Watch the votes and the rule-making processes. These actions paint a far more accurate picture of the impacts of their decisions — decisions that are supposed to be made in our image, yet all too rarely reflect the will of the people.

We — the constituents — send these people to the halls of power, and they are ultimately beholden to us. But this only applies if we pay attention and utilize our own wisdom: if we only check in during election season, we will never have the complete picture of who these people are and what they stand for.

We need people that we can trust to be responsible with our taxpayer dollars — and this means both keeping their hands out of the cookie jar and also making wise investments to benefit us and our descendants.