John Sarbanes

Most recommendations to cripple the process try to limit public notice and comments and are undemocratic.

It is my hope that Chairman Blackburn and the Committee staff for the majority can work with us to avoid this shortsightedness and avoid unnecessary problems for the future.

The NEPA processes save money, time, lives, historic sites, endangered species, and public lands.

I would like the committee to appreciate why NEPA is so important.

I agree with just about everything that my colleague just finished saying and I hope... we are kind of reaching the end of our tether.

So that, to me, is a powerful analogy and, frankly, where it gets my head, just to send a shudder through the panel here today, is to the idea of regulation approaching a kind of utility regulation when you come--when it comes to drugs…

I hope that you will bring some real attention to these conflicts as we move forward.

Despite the fact that as Oklahoma attorney general you sued the EPA challenging the Bay TMDLs previously, you also pledged with Senator Cardin that you would support the federal government's role in Chesapeake Bay partnership.

I am mentioning it because it really makes a lot of Americans anxious when you consider the conflicts of interest that this suggests.

The Democracy Reform Task Force, which I am privileged to chair, has been monitoring the Administration's progress with respect to draining the swamp.

Now we have pushed back against that, but that is hardly a follow-through on the pledge that you made to Senator Cardin.

Do you agree that as EPA administrator your job is to protect public health and the environment by serving the public interest and not wealthy special interests?

I want to ask you, sir, if my mother was a heroin addict, would I have done the same thing?

I want to echo Congressman Cummings' concern about making sure that naloxone is available in a way that it should be.

What we need to talk about is capacity and what is the capacity of the infrastructure to reach how many people.

The challenges of Puerto Rico are very different than the challenges in Houston and Florida.

A lot of the motivation for the Affordable Care Act was to begin to kind of turn our healthcare system towards prevention.

Let's talk about PREPA's governance.

However, a Federal mandate to include microgrids in a new energy model for Puerto Rico will certainly help.

The actual death toll not of Hurricane Maria, but of Hurricane PREPA has not been properly disclosed by the government of Puerto Rico.

Nobody denies the challenges of repairing the collapsed energy grid of Puerto Rico, but I submit to you that most of the challenges to turn the lights back on in Puerto Rico are neither natural nor geographic. They are manmade.

The Federal Government needs to step up and take charge to expedite power restoration efforts.

It needs to change now.

The truth is that, taken together, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands are currently experiencing the largest blackout in American history.

I want answers and so do many of my colleagues on both sides of the aisle.