Darrell Issa: “I rise today in total opposition to the absence of fair play that we see here on the floor today. In America, in the…”

“I rise today in total opposition to the absence of fair play that we see here on the floor today. In America, in the America I grew up in, we set goals, we set standards when necessary; but we do not tell people how to achieve those goals. When we tell people in America how to achieve goals, we cut down on innovation; we cut down on the ability for Americans to look at a problem and a hurdle and accomplish it. There was no predetermination in America that we would go to the Moon in a three-man capsule. When, in the heart of World War II, we set our determination to develop a nuclear weapon, we did not do it easily; and we did not do it with a blueprint that said, you will do it only this way. As a matter of fact, we reached two solutions and used both. America has a long tradition of setting a goal and asking the business community and hard-working entrepreneurs to innovate to find solutions. Here today, in this debate, all California is asking for, and ultimately every American, is the ability to free up private enterprise to find solutions, solutions that hopefully do a better job to meet the higher standards that California has set for clean air; to retain the important clean-water standards we are not able to retain today because we are forced to use MTBE, that has been found to be a carcinogen and has been found to pollute the water of California.”