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…

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

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

I think bipartisanship is very important for a reform that will be sustainable.

Let us find out what is working and let us do more of it.

We need to flip. So you are saying we need to flip either the House or the Senate to get real, true tax reform?

I am delighted to be holding this hearing; it is an important one for all of us, whether we are from the great northwest or a little State on the east coast.

while the Senator from Massachusetts is still with us on the floor and in other ways as well, I just want to say a couple of things. One, good for the Senator. He just said a mouthful, and he said what needs to be said. What he said is…

I understand that the Forest Service has authority, I think explicit authority, to use categorical exclusions up to, what is it, 3,000 acres now?

It just seems peculiar.

First of all, welcome one and all, colleagues. It is great to see you back here, and thank you for all the good work that you continue to do with your life.

I would love to have them have more resources and more tools to use that existing exemption, as opposed to going further for something they really don't need yet.

I was in Wyoming last weekend, Camden, Wyoming. It is a little town just south of Dover, Delaware.

According to the Forest Service's NEPA handbook, the agency has, I don't know, 30, 40, maybe 35 categorical exclusions at its disposal.

Mark Twain once said, "It ain't so much what people do not know that bothers me, it's what they know for sure that just ain't so."

the budget deficit would be reduced in the first 10 years by $130 billion and the second 10 years by $1 trillion.

Before we go ahead and pull the rug out from the States--we need to hit the pause button.

The idea of simply doing this, the legislation that is before us today, and not stabilizing the exchanges, which are eminently stabilizable, eminently so, is a big mistake.

That is actually an ad hominem attack, which I think is actually beneath the dignity of this body.

We are making major, major reductions in the Medicaid program.

We did not have 1 day of hearings. We had, as I recall, 97 hearings, roundtables, and walk-throughs on health care reform--97.

If we all came together, I know we could get there.

A lot of them are self-inflicted wounds, if you do not mind my saying so.

What have you heard that just ain't so?

We did it in early 1981 with tax cuts for the higher-income people; it did not work.