Barbara Boxer

It is time we invest in America.

I just have to say that while no one agrees with everything in that budget--I certainly don't--the basis of the budget is critical, and this is the basis of the budget: The President is addressing the deficit in a very responsible…

I would urge you to use your good judgment.

I think it is particularly important in the arena of changing climate that we understand the implications and the effects of a changing climate system on fish and wildlife resources.

Your dedication to this, your willingness to work with all of us, I think it shines through.

It is no great shock to know that we do disagree on the issue of climate change.

Will science lead you? Will you tell us what the science shows you?

We shouldn't be weakening our country's environmental defenses.

This is someone who is very smart, and he gets it. But he also was willing to listen to all sides.

I can think of no better person to fill this critical post at a time when our Nation continues to face threats to our national security.

The American people do not want to be exposed to chemicals linked to cancer, leaning disabilities or infertility.

I want to focus a moment on the disease with which I have direct personal experience, cancer.

It is our responsibility to protect the health and safety of our people, all of us. This is our job.

I think the group should welcome it, and I think there are some that do.

I can tell you that the worst thing we can do for our economy and for everything else is to ignore these issues.

I think that the arguments you raised are absolutely appropriate. But I honestly think we have answers to them.

I also find it disturbing that not one emerging contaminant has been regulated since 1996.

I believe that in the 1996 law, the Safe Drinking Water Act, the rewrite of the Water Act, what Congress wanted to happen was for the EPA to begin to move on these emerging contaminants.

They want the water safe.

Well, let's just set aside for a minute any kind of prejudices on who should act.

Why should a person in California be safer from chromium VI than he is in any other State? It is not right.

I don't like unfunded mandates, and I never have. I want to fund these issues.

I don't think that is the kind of answer that the American people expect when they are presented with a new contaminant that we know science is saying is probably more dangerous than we originally believed it to be.

So we are looking at a major problem here.

The EPA had the responsibility to make an endangerment finding. That was under the law.