Political Quotes

“I do apologize to my friend from California for coming late and kind of disrupting what was planned to be a closing, but this is an important debate, and my colleague from California and I have crossed sabers many times on these issues. I don't question his commitment to the environment and the regs and rules and the like. As he knows, I'm from southern Illinois. I'm from an area that was devastated in the jobs issue and during the 1992 Clean Air Act, and I'm from an area of the country that still is not being all it can be based upon the excessive rules and regulations that come out of Washington, D.C. The TRAIN Act is really a first step to help us ask a simple question: Shouldn't we, as an interagency process, shouldn't we at least ask the basic question of what effect is this going to have on jobs and what effect will it have on our competitiveness worldwide? It is really a basic debate. It's a good one to have. I applaud the chairman for bringing this to the floor. We need an up-or-down vote because, as much as we want clean air, we would like jobs. They're not exclusionary. We can do both. We have the cleanest environment that anyone has seen in decades in this country, and it is attributed to the work that past Congresses have done. But the difference is this, that in today's environment--well, let's go back. Three decades ago, when you wanted to clean up 50 percent of the emissions, you could make the capital investments and you could do it.…”