Political Quotes

“I yield myself the balance of my time. Mr. Chairman, here is a partial list of the Federal laws, rules, and regulations that could not be enforced were this bill to become law: The Endangered Species Act; the Migratory Bird Treaty Act; the oil and gas operations in National Park Service units; the oil and gas operations in National Wildlife Refuges; the casing and cementing regulations, such as should have been applied in the Deepwater Horizon case; the wastewater management regulations; the plugging and abandonment regulations, in other words, when pits or wells are abandoned; the best management practices for oil and gas drilling on public lands; the timing limits of when operations could be conducted with the least disruption to wildlife; the protections for sacred sites, historic trails, fisheries, and wetlands; and much more. It has been sold as a states' rights bill that would only block the Bureau of Land Management's fracking rules, but it would strip agencies on Federal lands of the authority to enforce almost every regulation on the books because any State that has any regulation that affects these activities means that none of these regulations could apply, that they would all be superseded by the State regulations. That is what the bill says. As for whether there is any damage done, I would point my friends to this picture. Maybe you have a little trouble seeing it, but, essentially, it shows burning tap water. No, this is not a staged picture.…”