Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentlelady for her comments. I would say that the 10,000-gallon threshold that we have described here is actually taken right from the EPA. Up to 2005, they were perfectly comfortable with the 10,000-gallon threshold, so we are basically saying that we definitely want to work with the EPA and use the thresholds that they see as viable or that they did see up to that point. The other thing is that, in agriculture, it is not a one-size-fits- all type of a scenario, where there are different scales of production and different levels of production. Economies of scale are certainly better equipped and use lots more fuel on their farm, and so we are trying to implement some guidelines that do respect the financial resources as well as the size of the operation. And, again, there is no empirical evidence that there have been any kind of spills that would warrant this level of regulation for farmers and certainly not to the degree that 1,320 gallons calls for, and that would catch up virtually every farmer in the United States. What we are trying to do is to implement some common sense into this in a way that even the EPA has already agreed to in past rules; so I just would, again, urge my colleagues to join me in supporting this important legislation. This will be, I believe, in total, the sixth time that we will have passed this out of the House. Again, I think this is good commonsense legislation. I urge my colleagues to join in supporting H.R.…”