Lisa Murkowski

Is the Agency looking at an extension to give the community more time to meet the new standards before this penalty phase begins in 2016?

Senator Murkowski, I hope that you or your staff will have the time to look into this regulation.

We're not going to start with Alaska.

This will be, of course, the first of many opportunities to sit down and work together on issues that are clearly important to our Nation.

I think her point is well taken as your analysis has to be very nuanced, sophisticated, and factually based on both the cost side and the benefit side.

I appreciate that you have included these funds at a time, as the chairman has noted, of very, very tight budgets.

I appreciate your leadership within the Department.

But I think you can see the problem here.

You can understand how the public feels when they just feel that there is this barrage of regulations coming at them.

So very important this morning, and I appreciate your leadership in this oversight role.

I do have some concerns over a number of rulemakings that the EPA is working on, and their impact on the national economy.

I received your response on Monday the 20th.

It's a big problem all through the Eastern United States.

The EPA is using what they consider to be some overly optimistic forecasts that overstate the benefits of regulation and understates their cost.

We talk a lot around here about cost benefit analysis at times of declining budget. It is important.

The State Department's latest review of the Keystone pipeline project contains 'insufficient information' on several fronts

I think it is important to really understand in fairness how we have arrived at these analyses

How do we accurately reflect the costs and the benefits?

I would like your assurance that you will work with us on issues that may not be that big in terms of your Agency's perspective, but for this community and for this small business, it is everything because it is this regulation that could…

I would like to pick up a subject that we have had a lot of discussion on here in this Appropriations subcommittee with our colleagues from the EPA, and that is the situation in the community of Fairbanks, Alaska with the particulate…

Well, if you can encourage that shortly is sooner rather than later, as you know, fishing season is coming fast upon us.

But we want to work with your staff to see if this is the final answer.

The people of Fairbanks, it is not a short winter up there. It is a long, cold, dark, winter and, again, when you don't have many alternatives, you are looking for some assistance.

If you are looking to develop anything and the threat exists that your permit that has been issued could be retroactively pulled from underneath you, it injects a level of uncertainty in just about anything going forward.

I have to tell you, I am concerned about what we have seen coming out of the Circuit Court here.