I rise in opposition to the amendment offered by the Senator from Utah. Why is this an important amendment vote? Just listen to this. More than 1,000 listed species, 77 percent of all listed species, including the polar bear, the Florida…

last week, people across this country celebrated National Wildlife Refuge Week--and rightfully so. National Wildlife Refuges are one of the crown jewels of our Federal public lands network. These refuges provide essential habitat for some…

Let us find a way so that the thing that I do not want to end up with is saying we are going to treat the legislative branch employees differently than every other Federal employee.

I think we have over half the people in this country get their health insurance through large group plans.

in celebration of National Wildlife Refuge Week, Senator Barrasso and I introduced legislation just prior to the recent recess to reauthorize the National Wildlife Refuge System's volunteer and partnerships program. I want to share with…

I think eventually we will have to move to a road user charge, the kind of thing they are doing in Oregon on a small scale.

I have felt, for a long time, those who use our roads, highways, and bridges should help pay for them.

It would not give us all the money we need to do roads, highways, and bridges, but it would give us a whole lot more than we have today.

Thank you for your willingness to share him with the people of our country.

These decisions that we are going to make, that you would make, if confirmed, are really life and death decisions.

The tobacco industry has manipulated and obfuscated scientific research into the dangers of smoking for decades.

But we can do better than that. EPA needs to do better than that. They need to show us more progress, and when we do we will be happy to move these nominations forward. I don't think that is asking too much.

People won't remember what you said. People may not remember what you do or did. They will always remember how you made them feel.

You have heard these chemicals now mentioned by my colleagues--alachlor and acetochlor. They are banned in the European Union.

I just don't see why you can't just say I would recuse myself. I don't get it.

When I apply the 'right thing to do' test to this, the idea that I represented industry combating EPA on a particular substance, and later on I am going to have the opportunity, as part of the EPA leadership team, to determine whether or…

The air is poisoned, asthma rates, lead poisoning rates, the water is poisoned because corporations, pressing their hand and their power and their money, have been able to poison communities to the extent that you have autism rates, birth…

You have been leading the fight against EPA's air standards, so it is unclear to me how you are appropriate to serve in the position to enforce those standards.

I think he is a good person, but he is not, in my judgment, a good choice for this particular job.

Virtually every major clean air regulation that you helped to craft during the Bush administration has been thrown out, I am told, thrown out by Federal courts.

Let me just say the idea that we are 9 months into a new Administration, an Administration that has proposed deep cuts in the budget for EPA, deep cuts to the number of people who work there, deep cuts to the programmatic support of clean…

I have said more than a few times if the shoe were on the other foot, and we had a Democrat in the White House, and we had a Democrat majority in the House and the Senate, and the Republicans on this Committee or any committee were trying…

I regret to say that my second concern with our nominees today before us is the nomination of Bill Wehrum.

I would imagine that somebody would be nominated that has a track record of standing up for those vulnerable people in our nation.

They are afraid. And they represent a lot of other people as well.