Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of this measure, which would direct the Secretary of State to develop a strategy to obtain observer status for Taiwan in the International Criminal Police Organization, also known as INTERPOL. As a…

It would be excellent, Mr. Chairman, to get the EPA to come to actually hear their thoughts on the consequences of H.R. 4715.

Statement submitted by Representative Donald S. Beyer, Jr., Ranking Minority Member, Subcommittee on Oversight, Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, U.S. House of Representatives.

I do hope that if we are the Committee of markup for H.R. 4715 that the EPA has a chance to talk about the implications of 4715 on the people we actually want to enforce the law against, not the racecar drivers.

I think it's unfortunate that we keep making the EPA the bad guy here, especially when they've never enforced this against racecar drivers.

I have been a corporate officer in the private sector. I have been the chief elected officer in the public sector.

OIRA plays a key role in shaping hundreds of important rules such as those that safeguard food supply.

That is not a tenable position, and I can assure you on a bipartisan basis that is going to be the point of view on this committee.

Harry Truman used to have a sign on his desk 'The buck stops here.'

I am actually trying to help you here, Mr. Shelanski, but, you know, you are wiping your hands of this.

Despite the powerful impact this agency has on the lives of all Americans, OIRA operates mostly in the shadows.

I believe it is vital to moving military goods and hardware.

To what extent are you looking at the program--not just today in the capability but what the program needs to provide in the future, understanding the challenges that the industry faces both with capacity that is in the ships but also…

I think yours is a unique situation and one that we want to make sure that you have the tools necessary to defend your systems as well as understanding where the threats are from your customers and also from the industry that you work with.

I think it is extraordinarily important, so definitely an issue we have to talk about.

Do you agree that the 60 Maritime Security Program ships provide USTRANSCOM with assured access to an effective, national defense sealift capability?

We need to have some soul-searching conversations about what--both capacity and capability we need to build for the future.

I think the Jones Act has a tremendous amount of utility, especially in situations as we face potentially with capacity within our sealift ability.