The Administration has major concerns with these two bills. They are a clear attempt to roll back public health protections.

I just ask it as a statement of incredulity.

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

These bills do not simply give EPA more time to finalize more rules. Rather, they would prohibit EPA from finalizing replacement rules prior to at least as early as March 2013 at best.

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…

the can-do Nation that sent a man to the moon in under 10 years just can't do it when it comes to cleaning up air pollution using commercially available technologies that already are on the shelf today.

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

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.

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.

the benefits to mercury were not calculated. The benefits to particulate matter so outweighed the costs that it wasn't worth the effort, frankly.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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?

I must say that we've heard comments on the floor and in committee on this bill that it's going to allow us to become less dependent, maybe not even dependent at all, on Saudi Arabia; that we'll be able to be self-sufficient and have lower…

I am pleased at this time to yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Connolly).

And Members of this House, climate change is real. We're experiencing its effects. According to The Washington Post, almost 2,000 high temperature records have been broken in towns and cities across America since the start of the month…

I am pleased at this time to yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Johnson).

I yield myself an additional 30 seconds. If you think the project has merit, let it be approved on the merits, not rushed to judgment without public comment. Cutting the public out of the process and ramming this through will only increase…

And my colleagues, I rise in strong opposition to this bill. I hope the press and the American people are paying attention to what's going on on the House floor. I know the news is all about raising the debt ceiling and all the cuts or…

I am pleased that we have once again come together on a bipartisan basis to move forward with these bills.

In my view, surge capacity, the ability of our healthcare system to respond to mass casualty emergencies and biosurveillance deserve special attention.