Diana DeGette

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.

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

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

Why they would ever consider weakening a rule that protects babies' brains is senseless, and this must be called out for what it is.

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.

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

The Obama administration determined that it was, quote, 'appropriate and necessary' under the Clean Air Act to limit how much mercury coal power plants could emit each year.

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.

Today, we take a look at the Trump administration's ill-conceived and, to me, frankly, mind-boggling effort to undermine the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's rule that limits mercury emissions from our Nation's coal power plants.

Having laws and rules in place is really important but so is enforcing those laws and rules.

If we would regulate that, if we would tax that, we could get a lot of money back into our coffers, wouldn't you agree?

I think it is one that the cloud that is being created right now by the Trump administration, in terms of non-responsiveness to the Majority in this House, I think is escalating.

Answering congressional inquiries is not a matter of the President's--or, for that matter, a Secretary's--personal discretion.

You have systematically eliminated all of the factors that led to the 'Not Warranted' finding on Greater sage-grouse.

Is your purpose to establish valid existing rights on these lands, in order to complicate conservation under a future administration?

With the thousands of leases, already let, yet to be developed, what is the purpose in these sales?

You don't know. Well, a billion cubic feet...

But are the other states doing that, too?

Would you agree that when methane gas is released into the atmosphere it is a powerful global warming pollutant, which is 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide in the short run?

We are asking you to take climate change into effect when deciding these leases.

What direction, exactly, is it you think you need from Congress?

I was a little bit perplexed when you said that to make land management decisions, with climate change taken into account, that you needed direction from Congress.

Your Department makes land management decisions every day over the land that you supervise.