Roy Blunt: “I am pleased to work on this with Senator Donnelly. This is an amendment which, as he said, requires that we categorize…”

“I am pleased to work on this with Senator Donnelly. This is an amendment which, as he said, requires that we categorize fuel types and that we say what works for various types of fuel as opposed to setting some standard that makes it impossible for other resources we have to be used. It says that the technology has to be commercially available. We had the Acting EPA Director before the Appropriations Committee earlier this year. I asked the Acting Director: The rule that you are talking about, is this technology available? Can somebody go out and buy this? And the response was something like: Well, parts of it are out there, but nobody has ever quite put it together yet--which, of course, meant that the rule, for the first time ever, set a standard that couldn't possibly be reached. In States such as ours, Missouri and Indiana, where Senator Donnelly and I are from, we are more than 80 percent dependent on coal. Some of our constituents are 100 percent dependent on coal. If you do things that raise their utility bills, families know it and their community knows it. This amendment simply would force the EPA to use common sense when setting standards for any facility. The new source performance standards, based upon emission limits for powerplants, for refineries, for manufacturing facilities, for whatever else they can cover, simply don't meet that commonsense standard.…”