Ed Markey: “I was listening to this discussion, and it occurred to me that if we just go back over the last 6 years, that is from…”

“I was listening to this discussion, and it occurred to me that if we just go back over the last 6 years, that is from the moment of which the Republican party took over the United States Congress, there has not been a discussion about what more can be done for the environment. The real issue was how can we do less? I mean, their goal was to turn EPA from standing for the Environmental Protection Agency into Ever Polluters Ally. I mean they wanted to change Superfund so we played the polluters, rather than the polluters playing the American people for spoiling our natural resources. And now as we hit this campaign year, the year 2000, GOP it used to stand for Grand Old Party; but now it stands for the Gas and Oil Party. They do not propose to first ensure that we have more efficient society, that we bring out the waste that exists within the United States and the world in terms of our consumption of oil. Their first idea is let us go to the most pristine part of the entire country, the Arctic natural refuge area and to begin drilling, even though they still have not even begun to tap all the rest of Alaska in terms of its oil production capacity. It is a ruse, in other words.…”