Henry Waxman

As Congressman Waxman indicated, there is at least 100 gigawatts of excess capacity above the existing capacity.

Each year, this rule will prevent up to 34,000 premature deaths.

The benefits of this rule sharply exceed the costs by as much as 13 to one.

The rules under assault today will improve the health of millions of Americans.

The second rule, EPA's cross-state air pollution rule, is also a tremendous victory for public health.

The first rule, the mercury and air toxics rule, will prevent up to 17,000 premature deaths each year.

This Republican House has been the most anti-environment in history.

In closing, I urge you not to weaken the Clean Air Act so profoundly and cause so much preventable premature deaths, asthma attacks and mercury poisoning.

I hope you will not vote for these bills, but if members have already decided to do so, I respectfully appeal to your sense of honesty and decency to do at least this: please explain clearly to your constituents, to the church…

Let me emphasize in the strongest possible terms that these bills are not mere '15-month delays of the rules as EPA itself has requested' as some have cast this legislation.

Cement. Well, I am glad that the Republicans can hear that. Cement is a greater threat because we have heard so much concern about light bulbs from them this year and mercury.

What is the greater public health threat, the tons of mercury coming out of cement kilns that are being sent right up into the atmosphere or light bulbs?

The cement rule that we are debating here today alone would reduce mercury emissions, which the Republicans really care about, by 16,600 pounds per year.

I don't know about you all but this is an epidemic in our country, the rates of asthma and heart disease.

In fact, the bill eliminates any deadline for action, allowing indefinite delay.

I just ask it as a statement of incredulity.

We believe there would be job growth. We believe that they are manageable, that they are cost-effective and the technology is available to be installed.

I don't know where he got that figure, but do you have any idea of that could be accurate?

Our country is struggling, and to say that the environmental rules are responsible, how could that be if these rules have not yet been in effect?

The intent of these two pieces of legislation is not really to delay these rules but to kill them off altogether

If that is the legacy the Republicans want, it is a legacy I want no part of.

EPA asked the court to allow them until April 2012 to issue the boiler rules.

The bills we consider today would block and indefinitely delay EPA's efforts to make good on a 40-year-old promise to the American people that toxic air pollutants will be controlled.

Cancer, birth defects, brain damage--we have long known that toxic air pollutants such as mercury, arsenic, dioxin, lead, and PCBs can cause these serious health effects.

You must base your regulations on the science, and you have to get your figures on the impacts based on a peer-review process.