Barbara Boxer: “the way my colleague and friend has drafted his amendment is very dangerous to the process because he wants to say if…”

“the way my colleague and friend has drafted his amendment is very dangerous to the process because he wants to say if, in the rulemaking where we will define the waters of the United States, if they even so much as refer to the guidance that has been put forward, the draft guidance, there will be no rule. The problem of not having a rule is we leave in place chaos. States cannot go ahead and handle this themselves. Local governments cannot. Under the law, according to all the rules of the Court and everybody else, we have to have a definition. No one I know wants to classify a ditch or a puddle as a water of the United States. That is always brought up, but that is just a red herring. We need to make sure we have a Clean Water Act that protects the people, protects their drinking water, and makes sure they are safe when they swim in a lake. If we do not move forward with a rule, at the end of the day this amendment will not allow that to happen, and we are in chaos. It does not protect our people from arsenic, from lead, from whatever objects there may be in a body of water. So I hope we will reject this. I thank my friend for offering it, but I think it is misguided. I yield the floor.”