Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. LaMalfa), the sponsor of the CRA. Mr. LaMALFA. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me time. I appreciate the opportunity to present and to carry this Congressional Review Act that is, indeed, trying to keep some reality involved in the listing of species, as well as the overall operations of government and forming of regulations. Mr. Speaker, in support of H.J. Res. 78, we want to block the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's misguided decision to list the San Francisco Bay-Delta population of the longfin smelt as being endangered. What we have is actual evidence. Former director of Stanford's Center of Conservation Biology wrote a piece on this listing, including these highlights: The Fish and Wildlife Service abandoned its allegiance to using the best available scientific information. The proposed listing ignores salient information gaps and shrugs off technical peer-reviewed criticisms that go to the heart of the argument for listing the species. To list this species, the Fish and Wildlife Service employed unreliable data, presented results from analyses that cannot be justified, and made troubling predictions for the fate of the fish that are built on flawed assumptions akin to a house of cards. The Fish and Wildlife Service used piecemeal data to try and establish population trends and size of this using detection methods not even designed for longfin smelt to justify its action.…”