Political Quotes

“Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, if I heard right, the previous two amendments were criticized for being overly broad and indiscriminate in the ways that they attacked spending in this particular underlying legislation. Well, I am laser focused. I am laser focused with my amendment. My amendment would restrict funds from going to the EPA's Integrated Risk Information System, or IRIS. That program is supposed to be developing impartial science-based toxicity assessments on chemicals for uniform use within EPA, and if that is what they were doing, I would not be standing before you today. But as I came to know all too well as I worked with former Chairman Lamar Smith and while serving as chairman of the Science, Space, and Technology's Subcommittee on Environment in the last Congress, the reality is different. Over the past decade, IRIS has been repeatedly criticized by the National Academy of Sciences and the Government Accountability Office for its lack of transparency and improper use of scientific methods, which have led to some significantly flawed risk assessments over the years. In fact, GAO first added IRIS to its list of government programs that are highly vulnerable to waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement in 2009. In the decades since, IRIS has made very few steps towards significant improvement.…”