Political Quotes

“I would like to start out by saying that we are prepared to accept the amendment. I know that all of us here take pipeline safety very seriously, and certainly since my chairmanship of the Energy and Commerce Committee, we put safety at the forefront of our efforts to modernize our pipeline infrastructure. We passed two major bills that President Obama signed, and I think there may have been maybe a single Member that opposed that legislation over the years, but we care a lot about that. In the last Congress, we passed the PIPES Act and the FAST Act. Again, major bipartisan initiatives that Mr. Pallone and I worked out that got to President Obama's desk. Each of these two bills took important steps to update our laws to protect against emerging physical attacks as well as cyber attacks, threats to the grid, in our energy delivery systems, including pipelines. We know that multiple Federal and State agencies have a role to play and an opportunity to lead with that expertise. While the Department of Energy is the lead sector-specific agency for cybersecurity and for the energy sector, the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, PHMSA, is responsible for administrating minimum pipeline safety standards, and the TSA, the Transportation Security Administration, does monitor threats to our transportation sector. I think that is where the gentleman from Massachusetts is coming from with this amendment.…”