I am grateful for the opportunity to thank Chairwoman Velazquez in person for her co-sponsorship of this legislation.

I think it's incumbent on the administration to commit to the mission of the Environmental Protection Agency, the importance of it--to recommit and restate the importance of it and the importance of science as being the underpinning of the…

I hope that all of you can answer them promptly, and not to editorialize, but in a fashion much more prompt than the current EPA is responding to this committee's questions.

I am particularly pleased to welcome our four former EPA Administrators back to the Energy and Commerce Committee this morning.

Now is the time for a strong and renewed EPA that will protect American communities from the many environmental threats of our time.

This is an important and timely moment, and it is particularly noteworthy to have a hearing in the House with four former EPA Administrators testifying together on the mission of the Agency.

I hope the administration was watching, because all of you were really important voices, and I want to thank you.

In my home state of Colorado... we are seeing the economy shift more and more to recreation and the outdoors.

But how do you do that? Do you assume that it is going to be appropriate for oil and gas, and then look at it?

Sir, excuse me. You are not answering my question.

Sometimes we feel that this Administration, their default view is to issue oil and gas leases, and then to look at the appropriateness later.

But 3 weeks ago, the Administration said in front of the Senate that it was going to go ahead and do oil and gas leasing.

And what are the criteria in the land use planning process?

OK. And the values, what determines what the values are?

anything that your side could do to help us, because it really does help complete the record of these hearings.

We know that mercury emissions can carry enormous public health consequences, as you talked about children and pregnant women.

If the EPA wants to continue to ignore this committee as we perform our oversight responsibilities, that's its choice.

And when an administration--like the one we have today--tries to unravel the protections that we already have, it puts all of us at risk.

The MATS rule is the first time the EPA has successfully protected the public from mercury release from power plants.

I can tell you these standards and the overall lax of enforcement of coal ash, one of the biggest producers, is affecting my district and my family's native island of Puerto Rico.

As of today, the industry has actually spent billions of dollars to come into compliance with these rules and, in fact, that the power industry, what we heard is that they support keeping the rule in place.

It is dumbfounding why we would be rolling back standards to protect children and the general public from mercury and air toxic poisoning when industry isn't even asking for it.

We have one of these communities right in my congressional district, Swansea-Elyria and Globeville, where we actually had to go in and remove mercury from the yards of the homes there.

the administration's proposal, is in fact, injecting more uncertainty at a time when we had standards working that were better protection for the public.

Let me be clear about something. When the EPA fails to enact clean air protections, it's our communities, it's our families and our environment that all pay the price.