On the recordOctober 21, 2015
I rise in strong support of the Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act. Over 2 years ago, I sat down with now the late Senator Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey in an attempt to find compromise and to work together on updating the drastically outdated Toxic Substances Control Act. Updating this law was a long-time goal and passion of Frank's. It was a real goal of mine, although we came at it from very different directions, at least initially. I am saddened Frank isn't here with us to see it finally being brought up for consideration on the floor of the Senate. We worked closely together and forged a significant, productive, positive bipartisan compromise--the sort of work we don't see often enough in the Senate or the Congress itself, but we got it done here, and it is a strong, positive compromise in substance as well. After Frank's passing, Senator Tom Udall stepped in to help preserve Frank's legacy and continued working with me to move this reform forward. We have done that consistently over months and months, working on issue after issue, detail after detail, to produce a strong result. I am very proud of the substance of this result because it achieves two very important goals: On the one hand, we certainly protect health and safety and give the EPA the proper authorities to do that with regard to chemicals in commerce.…
