David Schweikert: “At the end of my opening remarks, I will enter into the Record an exchange of letters between the chairmen of the…”

“At the end of my opening remarks, I will enter into the Record an exchange of letters between the chairmen of the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology and the Committee on Energy and Commerce. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I continue to be stunned at some of the hyperbolic language that seems to be moving around this piece of legislation. Transparency, it is an incredibly powerful concept and a fairly simple one in this aspect: if you are going to make public policy, do it by public data and public data for the concept of refinement and creation of public policy. Is there anyone in this body when we all ran for office that did not commit to transparency? Well, H.R. 4012 is part of that commitment. If you have faith in our higher learning institutions, if you have faith in the American people, this data belongs to them. Partially, one side belief I have is, as the crowd has the opportunity to analyze and collect and look at data, whether they be from the right, the left, or just academic, we will end up with finer- crafted solutions. How would any of us know if the EPA has set optimal rule sets? Well, one of the ways you discover this is by having lots of voices in the mix. This bill keeps that commitment, and I have no idea why my brothers and sisters on the left seem to be trying to shut down that commitment to transparency. With that, Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.…”