32 percent of the manufacturing jobs in the United States have been lost--32 percent, 42,000 factories have closed.

Over the years, regulations have helped keep our drinking water clean, they have ensured our food is more sanitary and labeled more accurately, and they have led to dramatic improvements in workplace health and safety.

Facing challenges is hard. The bigger the challenge, the harder it is to face it because facing a significant challenge always involves risk, always involves a little uncertainty, always involves effort, always involves cost, always…

Can we find a way to permit major projects at a cost that is not extraordinarily prohibitive?

But the serial permitting is as bad as serial killing. It is a form of serial killing, I guess.

Capital goes where it can earn a return and where there is a reasonable certainty of that return.

Regulations have a cost, and not all regulations are created equal.

I think this is a very important Subcommittee, and you are doing extremely important work.

We do not have the luxury of being able to impose regulations that are going to impose unnecessary costs on businesses in this country.

Projects should be judged on their merits and not on who wins protracted legal battles.

Permitting is generally too costly and the process is too lengthy.

clearly it is not healthy for democracy to have that amount of money sloshing around in the system.

Joe Sewall, David Huber, Harry Richardson, Hoddy Hildreth, and Sherry Huber--those names mean nothing in this Chamber, but they meant everything in Maine in the 1970s. They were the parents of the environmental movement in our State. What…

I have experienced--and I have also been a board member of large companies and small companies, particularly in the financial services field, so I have seen how regulation right now, I think, is far overburdening small community banks and…

nobody in this body, at least nobody that I know, and certainly not me, wants to gut regulation or wants to shortcut environmental review.

We are having to let go loan officers to hire compliance officers.

I think an inherently dangerous system for democracy, and it has become even more so in the last few years.

Principle Number 1 is we live in a competitive world.

I would like to cosponsor that bill.

I believe it is critical that we seek a better understanding of the regulatory process.

I want to have the toughest environmental standards in the Nation and the most timely, predictable, and user-friendly process.

I'd like to engage you to do a similar study of the entire U.S. Government.

I do not want our current deterrent to be Maginot Line of the 21st century that does not deal with existing threats.

I think that is the key, that intelligence is our first line of defense in this new world.

Your people are an essential part of that.