Political Quotes

“Despite nearly universal calls for increased clarity and certainty from certain stakeholders, my colleagues have made it a priority to halt the current clean water rulemaking and to force agencies to go back to the drawing board and start the process all over again, before the public will ever even see the final product. After over a year of public outreach on a scale unprecedented in the history of the Clean Water Act, as well as countless congressional hearings, the agencies have submitted a revised clean water protection rule to the Office of Management and Budget for final interagency review, which is the last step before the revised final rule would be released to the general public later this spring. This, in fact, is the basis of my amendment. You see, Mr. Chairman, to be fair, several of my constituents have expressed similar concerns with the substance of the proposed rule. In fact, Maryland farmers have visited with me on more than one occasion, and I have heard those concerns, and that is why I have pressed the agency witnesses who appeared before our subcommittees on several critical areas. Indeed, in testimony to the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, the heads of both the Army Corps of Engineers and the Environmental Protection Agency have identified several specific areas where the proposed rulemaking may have lacked specificity and where the agencies have committed to clarifying changes in the final rule to address these areas.…”