I think it is a critically important piece.

I think these concerns miss the point. We just had a radical, I think, a sweeping reduction in water protections.

Unfortunately, the Supreme Court failed to recognize this link in May of this year when the conservative majority upended more than four decades of agency practice and precedent based on the original intent of the law.

We should think long and hard before eliminating protections for more than half of our wetlands.

I am going to be looking for consensus and implementing a lot of stuff that we have authored and enacted.

Before the Clean Water Act, our Nation's waters were subject to indiscriminate pollution and destruction.

Thanks to champions like Senator Ed Muskie, a Democrat from Maine, ... Congress enacted the Clean Water Act in 1972.

I know we can't pass laws to tell water how to flow.

As a matter of science, we have heard that wetlands and more than a million miles of streams are inextricably linked to downstream water quality.

I do think that we are locked in a circular pattern here, and that one, we need to be more thoughtful in terms of rulemaking.

I think we have been locked in a bit of a cycle and not thinking as creatively as we can in the rulemaking process.