Eric Swalwell: “It has been an honor to be in this Chamber and listen to the debate that's going on. My colleagues on the other side…”

“It has been an honor to be in this Chamber and listen to the debate that's going on. My colleagues on the other side, their bill seeks to reduce the role that the Environmental Protection Agency would play. I hear words and phrases like ``an unelected body that makes decisions in the night for no one to see or hear.'' But, Mr. Chairman, it is not an unelected body. We have elections in our country, and we had a Presidential election; and elections have consequences. The EPA is an arm of the administration, an arm of a President who was elected with a commanding victory this past November. And to hear that this is an unelected body and work being done in the dead of night for no one else to know about is just not the case. I urge my colleagues on the other side--I was a prosecutor. We would have a trial. I would pick a jury. We would put on evidence. I would give a closing argument. The jury would deliberate, and then we would all accept the verdict. We had the same thing for over a year. We had Presidential debate after debate, TV ads that we were all tired of. Now we have a President who was reelected and an agency that the President is charged with administrating. And it really does disturb me, Mr. Chairman, to think that these agencies shouldn't have any teeth or enforcement to protect our children and the future.…”