Cory Gardner: “I come to the floor today to speak on the nomination of Scott Pruitt to be Administrator of the Environmental Protection…”

“I come to the floor today to speak on the nomination of Scott Pruitt to be Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, whom I intend to support. Over the past several weeks, we heard a number of Senators come to the floor hour after hour, 24-hour sessions through the night--1 o'clock, 2 o'clock, 3 o'clock, 4 o'clock--in the morning and beyond, to complain about this nominee or that nominee, to express their concern about this nominee or that nominee. In fact, many times I think the only reason there is opposition to a nominee is that they disagree with a nominee because it wasn't Hillary Clinton who made the nomination. We have heard countless people come to the floor today to talk about their opposition to the Trump administration EPA. I have a picture on the floor that shows the Obama EPA. This is a river in Colorado, enjoyed by thousands of people each and every summer. This is a picture of that same river under the Obama EPA. This was caused by 800,000 pounds of mineral and other waste going into the river because of a mishandled EPA project. This wasn't Scott Pruitt. This wasn't Donald Trump. This was the Obama EPA that did this. I only wish that my colleagues who have come to the floor for the past several hours had shown similar outrage when the Obama EPA did this to Colorado-- inflicted this kind of damage on people in Southwestern Colorado in the Gold King Mine spill. You want to talk about protecting States?…”