Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I believe there is a pending amendment, which hopefully we will vote on, called the McConnell amendment. It basically takes away from the Environmental Protection Agency the authority to regulate greenhouse gases. The Environmental Protection Agency gets this power from a Supreme Court decision that said they had the authority to do so. That decision was about 2 or 3 years ago. It came about 16 or 17 years after the 1990 Clean Air Act was passed. Those of us who were around here and debated and worked on the Clean Air Act of 1990 don't remember any discussion about EPA under that legislation having the authority to regulate greenhouse gases, but obviously the Supreme Court read the law differently than we intended. The Environmental Protection Agency was told it could regulate greenhouse gases. The Environmental Protection Agency did not have to do that, but I suppose they are like regulators, generally. Some ask: Why do cows moo? Why do pigs squeal? And why do regulators regulate? Because regulators know how to regulate, and that is all they know how to do. So they are going to issue a regulation if they think they have the authority. The situation is this: If we don't take away the authority--and in a sense overturn the Supreme Court case--EPA is going to put us in a position of being economically uncompetitive with the rest of the world, particularly in manufacturing.…”