John Sarbanes: “One of the things that the American Rescue Plan did was it built, as we know, on the Affordable Care Act in significant…”

I hope that today's hearing is the first step in continuing that legacy of strong bipartisan support for the Chesapeake Bay in this Congress.

This bill takes important steps to support the ongoing restoration of the Chesapeake Bay by reauthorizing NOAA's Chesapeake Bay Office and authorizing the agency's long-running Bay Watershed Education and Training, or B-WET Grant program.

But these are dramatic changes that can bring us to a new place and, I think, have given many people a sense of hope instead of despair in the face of what we are seeing with a warming planet.

It is important to be clear that EPA's proposed standards are reasonable, performance-based emissions standards and constitute neither a national electric vehicle mandate nor an internal combustion ban.