Tom Carper

One of the virtues of a trading system and using market, the highest market forces, to enable us to ratchet down emissions is we give flexibility, in this case to the utilities.

I am going to ask for unanimous consent to enter for the record a number of letters of support for our legislation.

These are significant reductions that the EPA agrees will save more than 215,000 lives over a 15-year period.

That is why we introduced the Clean Air Act Amendments of 2010.

A majority of Americans--more than 186 million people--live in areas where there is enough air pollution to endanger their lives or threaten their health.

If the legislation we are discussing today is enacted, we will do better. Much better.

I'd like to first thank Senators Alexander and Klobuchar for working with me on S. 2995.

One of the great joys of serving here in the U.S. Senate... was working with George Voinovich.

We cannot wait for another 20 years to change our clean air laws and save lives.

Passage of our bill also provides a certainty of predictability that industry in America needs.

Almost 20 years have passed since Congress made significant revisions to the Clean Air Act.

We have tri-partisan support for our legislation, Democrats, Republicans and one Independent from Connecticut.

I want to very much thank Senator Alexander for being my partner in this endeavor now for years.

I believe that the Federal Government has an obligation to work with States to identify what works for a particular facility rather than imposing strict mandates that might hurt, we will say, a company as a whole.

I also understand that there is still considerable debate over inherently safer technologies.

Let me just interrupt you again, if I may. Describe for us in terms that everybody could understand what a desk audit is.

But we are not making enough, as you know, and I feel and I think my colleagues feel there is a certain passion to want to step this up.

Their strategy at CMS and the MEDICs was to use proactive data analysis to identify the problems and prevent them before they occurred.

All right. So that means by the end of next calendar year?

I think we are really still at the starting gate.

Do you need congressional authorization, do you need legislation to allow the recovery audit contractors to work in the Medicare Part D vineyards?

Our hope is it is going to be in the--if we end up taking a sidecar approach in terms of adding to the Senate-passed health care bill, one of the elements of that would be to require that the fraud be reported.

It makes us all better, and I appreciate the ability to be able to participate in this hearing.

What do you need in terms of change in attitude, change in direction, change in regulation, change in legislation?

But, we could say, well, we are getting $600 million, $700 million, that is a pretty good way to measure success.