John Sarbanes: “The schedule ground down. It did not intensify. And over the last 10 days we have only had 1 day of hearings.”

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.

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.

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.

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.