Political Quotes

“Mr. Chairman, in closing, let me just say that at the direction of the Republican leadership, this House has approved a remarkable series of anti-environmental bills in this Congress. While conservation bills languish and are stalled in Congress, we have seen time and time again House Republicans vote to deregulate mining, make drilling on public lands less safe, prevent Federal regulation of fracking, open virtually the entire coast of the United States to unsafe drilling offshore, give away precious public lands, override State and local water laws, and just yesterday, weaken existing limits on dumping coal mining waste in streams and rivers. In the last 6 years, 7.4 million acres of public lands have been leased for oil and gas drilling; only 2.9 million protected for the future legacy and conservation, for the future use of the public and this Nation. That imbalance is directly the responsibility of a lack of action by this Congress. Each of these measures were not only poor public policy, but also poor use of our time. They were, thankfully, dead on arrival in the Senate. This bill, H.R. 1459, is simply another bill in this series of deeply flawed proposals, and it will rightly suffer an identical fate. With that, I yield back the balance of my time.”