Elijah Cummings: “One of our most important jobs in Congress is to help protect the interests of the American people.”

If we had a House and if we had a Senate that would pass legislation and we had a President that would sign it, this problem which is the subject of this hearing today could be fixed.

I really do think that we are in a moral situation. People are striving to live, trying to breathe the air of our country, trying to be better, trying to be healthy.

We are better than where we are. We are better than this.

It is only recently in the last 50 years or so that many of these laws have changed.