Political Quotes

“I want to start talking about science and jurisdiction and why it is important to go through regular order. We just heard my colleagues talk about PFAS or PFOS or PFOA, three different things that mean three different things. What my colleagues have done is lumped them all into one category. If you eliminate one class of chemicals, you take the F-16 and you ground it. You have got Ethernet cables, fiber channel assemblies, round cable assemblies, shielded twisted pair, EMI. This is a National Defense Authorization bill, and the Rules Committee has allowed an amendment on the National Defense Authorization bill that would ground the F-16s without doing due justice to science and the committees of jurisdiction. There are a couple of other problems with the en bloc amendment. Again, this amendment requires action on all PFAS, all of it. There may be 3,000 to 5,000 different permutations of this chemical. All these substances are not alike. Also, EPA has said it knows little of the PFAS class and only has a valid tool to really identify 18 out of the 3,000 to 5,000 formulations. If EPA can only identify right now 18, how do you identify 1,500 permutations of this chemical? Second, the amendment skirts scientific risk criteria and dismisses expert administration review, especially the provisions banning PFAS in MREs--we heard that--and containers.…”