Political Quotes

“I thank the gentlelady from California for being a part of this debate today. We had, I believe, this amendment or a similar amendment in committee. We discussed this amendment. As I mentioned, we've had two separate committee hearings on this particular piece of legislation. We had a markup where a number of amendments were offered. A tremendous amount of debate took place, and I believe debate took place on this very amendment. One of the concerns I have with this amendment is the practical impact it would have in what could best be described as a balkanization in the regulation of Federal waters, creating a patchwork quilt, so to speak, of regulations as it applies to the Federal areas in the OCS. The amendment allows States to promulgate any regulation for the OCS as long as it can be deemed no less stringent. This will result in chaotic regulation of Federal waters, many of which may conflict with interstate commerce. But perhaps even more important is the dramatic expansion of State jurisdiction that this amendment would have. And this was also an issue that was discussed back and forth during our markups both at the subcommittee level and at the full committee level, whether or not this would create challenges for the expansion of State jurisdiction. The current law only allows for the delegation of the exact authorities of the administrator and not the flexibility to create the State's own laws to implement the act.…”