Political Quotes

“Mr. Chairman, I offer this amendment in defense of agricultural producers across our Nation who are facing the heavy hand of EPA regulations. The EPA's Spill Prevention, Control, and Countermeasure rule for on- farm fuel storage requires farmers and ranchers to make costly infrastructure improvements to their oil storage facilities to reduce the possibility of an oil spill. These regulations fail to take into account the relative risk of oil spills on farms, and they do not factor in the simple fact that family farmers are already careful stewards of our land and water. No one has more at stake in the health of their land than those who work on the ground from which they derive their livelihoods. The USDA itself discovered little evidence of oil spills on farms and determined in a recent study that more than 99 percent of farmers have never experienced a spill. To require that all of our producers make a significant investment to prevent such an unlikely event seems out of touch with reality and disregards the already overwhelming number of safeguards our farmers already employ. My amendment would restrict the EPA's ability to enforce SPCC regulations on farms so that farmers and ranchers can go about their business of producing food and fiber without having to worry about unnecessary compliance costs and red tape. On three separate occasions, the House unanimously passed my bipartisan legislation, the FUELS Act, which rolled back these same SPCC regulations on farms.…”