On the recordJune 20, 2012
Today, this House takes up the cynically named Domestic Energy and Jobs Act, which is the latest Republican installment in their mad dash to allow polluters to dump garbage and poison into our air and water. If I had more time I would point out that this bill would gut the Clean Air Act, which was signed into law in the early 1970s by a Republican President before that party abandoned the value that we should be stewards of our environment. I would talk about my daughter, who suffers from asthma. That asthma, and the asthma of millions of other young people, will get worse if this bill becomes law. I would point out that the idea that this is about jobs is baloney. And I would cite the Bureau of Labor Statistics studies in 2010 that said that one-third of 1 percent of jobs and layoffs were because of government regulation. Instead, I have a question. What happened to personal responsibility? What happened to the idea that we clean up our own mess? Madam Speaker, why are we asking the entire American public to pay the cost of polluting our air and water? That, I don't understand. ____________________
