Darrell Issa: “The gentlewoman spoke quickly, and I know she had a lot of important information there. Some of it simply was wrong. One…”

“The gentlewoman spoke quickly, and I know she had a lot of important information there. Some of it simply was wrong. One of them is that she touched on environmental cleanup. Very clearly, nothing in this legislation would limit the cleanup related to the wrongdoing or the damage. Not so. A third party could be hired to do the cleanup. Additionally, nothing stops a settlement from requiring a company to have counseling or other mitigation. It simply stops the Department of Justice from picking a charity of its choosing to go do it. Now what I would really like the gentlewoman--who may not be on the floor any longer--to understand is that the Department of Justice has grant authority and does multiple grants every single month of the year to some of the very same groups under its authority that these settlements are going toward. Congress has allowed it a certain amount of money to provide grants for general harm. Additionally, every year, Congress allocates hundreds of millions of dollars to some of the very same groups and efforts the gentlewoman knows that we are talking about. So, although her speech was quick, the thing that she said that may have misled some people here in the Chamber I think needs to be corrected. Direct harm will be mitigated. It can be done by anyone. A company can agree and be forced under supervision to mitigate and to hire people to help in that effort.…”