Patricia Schroeder: “Mr. Chairman, I rise in passionate support of the Towns amendment. I think everybody ought to be for this amendment, if…”

“Mr. Chairman, I rise in passionate support of the Towns amendment. I think everybody ought to be for this amendment, if they believe that water flows and wind blows. Now, no one has proved to me that water does not flow and wind does not blow. And I do not know anywhere where it honors State boundaries. And I must say, for Members saying, oh, wow, but we would not want the big heavy Federal Government to come in and tell States and localities what to do, let us just think about that in another context. States and localities are all citizens together under this great republic. That flag behind me has a star for each of those States. And I hope that star means each State is trying to be a good citizen. Now, if we turned it and put it into a family context and we said, this country is also made up of many families and some families do not want to take care of their families, we would not want to have a Federal mandate to do that. What are we talking about? Everybody is supposed to be a good citizen. And this bill is saying, look, we are not going to give excuses to States and localities to pollute. And then what happens is, someone says, well it just costs too much to clean it all up. You throw up your hands. It would be like child support enforcement.…”