Ed Markey

I welcome your proposal that the oil and gas industry should pay a larger share of the government's costs for inspections and permits following years of lax oversight.

I am struck by two facts from your testimony, Mr. Secretary.

If you increase the cost of producing gasoline, you raise the price of gasoline at the pump.

But instead of increasing production and thereby reducing the deficit, the Administration has proposed to increase the cost of producing American energy by raising a multitude of taxes.

I believe most of us can agree that bigger government does not generally equate to better government.

The people in the Gulf need more than just one token permit. One permit will not put thousands of people back to work.

The money that is used for land acquisitions through the Land and Water Conservation Fund comes from funds paid to the United States by oil companies

Is the Service carrying out similar or better studies today for the Deepwater Horizon disaster?

One of the most powerful arguments made in the course of trying to get a fair settlement from Exxon after the Exxon Valdez spill was an economic study conducted by the State of Alaska.

It does not come from general tax revenues from our struggling families and small businesses, but from extremely profitable oil companies

Can you report that back to the Committee, please?

Reclamation was established as an agency over a century ago.

I hope will intensify your---- and telescope the timeframe that it will take for you to present a final plan to protect against a catastrophic event occurring because we know al-Qaeda is out there.

What the American people want is to see what the agenda is for creation of jobs in our country. That's what has been lacking on the House floor since the Republicans have taken over the House of Representatives. And that's the most…

So this Groundhog Day recitation of how regulations will destroy the economy and jobs has already been shown to be flat-out wrong.

EPA has also issued a rule that ensures that millions of smaller sources of global warming pollution are exempted from a requirement to obtain Clean Air Act permits.

The EPA recently announced that it would only issue its proposal to regulate global warming pollution from refineries and power plants after meeting with business leaders and other stakeholders to solicit their input.

Installing pollution control technologies on power plants could also lead to increases in the efficiency of the facilities and significant cost savings for companies.

I think the larger point is true, that our lives are longer and safer and better because of a regulatory scheme that began to be put in place in 1900.

But obviously that is not necessarily the case. For example, we have heard a lot about how EPA's efforts to regulate global warming pollution will lead to an economic catastrophe but this is just not borne out by the facts.

So we all know what the reality of this hearing is. The Republicans hope that they can use the Regulatory Flexibility Act to turn the United States into a health, environment, safety, and consumer protection regulation-free zone, and the…

Historically speaking, have industries typically overestimated the costs of new regulations?

The disaster as a whole was due to a rather staggering series of errors by the three companies

Now that we have it, it is time to take action to prevent big oil from wreaking havoc on our environment, and that is why I introduced the No New Drilling Act to prevent the expansion of offshore drilling.

Just to note here, BP had 760 OSHA fines--versus one for ExxonMobil--so we can understand that there is something fundamentally wrong here that a company like that was allowed to continue to operate.