Roy Blunt

I urge my colleagues to vote for the issue before us that says we don't want to have this rule. We want to do the right thing, not the wrong thing. I thank the Senator for this time. I yield the floor.

I thank the Senator for this time. I rise in support of this resolution. We have only been able to use the Congressional Review Act successfully one time, and I think that means at some point we need to look at the Congressional Review Act…

I know this week we are talking about, among other things, the Agriculture bill, and I am supportive of moving forward with that bill. Like so many other things in our economy, the more certainty we can create for farming families, for…

I do think there are those things that we can agree on. I am glad to join the three of you and Senator Rubio as one of the cosponsors of this bill that you all crafted and put together. Good energy policy, good tax policy, good regulatory…

I thank the Presiding Officer for the time to speak on the Senate floor. I am supportive of the bill that has come out of the HELP Committee to reauthorize user fees for the Food and Drug Administration. We have tried these user fees in…

reserving the right to object, I appreciate the leader's desire to get this done. I would like to get it done too. In fact, the original Iran sanctions language was drafted in my office when I was in the other body. This is an issue I have…

I think the law even requires it. I think the leader on the other side, the majority leader, has been pretty clear about it. It is bad politics to have a budget, bad politics to tell the American people officially what we are for, bad…

No, we cannot. Last year, for the first time ever, all of the money that came in was less than the money that went out automatically to these programs, where, if you meet the definition for the program, you get the money. It is at 60…

I would like to stay on this. Saying the Budget Control Act is a budget--as Senator Thune mentioned, if that was the budget, why did the President submit one? Nobody believes that is a budget. The Parliamentarian said it was not a budget…

I am embarrassed that we are not serious about this issue. Senator Thune and I served in the House together while the Senator from Alabama was leading in these budget fights in the Senate, and we had a budget every year. We didn't always…

Well, we capped the number of fuels you could have in that same act, so that does have some impact on how many more there could be.

This is the most recent example of the dangers of agency overreach.

One of the things we did in the Energy Policy Act was give you the ability to waive fuel standards under certain difficult situations.

And if this budget request isn't met, you would still do the drinking water study?

I hope the EPA can stop and consider the multitude of rules coming out of the Agency that threaten the economic viability of our country's energy, manufacturing, and agricultural sectors.

We all can agree that cleaning up and protecting our environment are important goals. Yet this must be balanced among economic losses.

So the drinking water study would cost around $14 million?

But can you do that study as the Congress requested you to do?

EPA should not be using taxpayer dollars to impose costly and burdensome regulations that could severely impact jobs, our economy and the cost of everything we do or buy.

On the reform of the Universal Service Fund, Chairman, what are you doing there to deal with the issue of subsidy?

So it doesn't set any obstacle in the way of hydraulic fracturing anywhere it's going on, or did we have to have the drinking water study before certain things could be done?

I worked with Senator Bennet on this amendment. I think it does ensure that communities are not notified a facility is closed without having any opportunity to have input. It provides for advocacy and also gives the post office system some…

I thank my good friend for yielding and for taking consideration of my schedule. I rise to support Judge Brian Wimes as the nominee for the Eastern and Western Districts of Missouri. He spent his entire career working in the public sector…

I wish to talk for a few minutes about Chuck Colson, who was a friend of mine and the founder of Prison Fellowship Ministries. He died on Saturday at 80. Before Chuck Colson was 40, he was counselor to the President of the United States…

I thank my friend and my congressional neighbor. When we were in the House, we represented adjoining districts in Missouri and Oklahoma, and it is good to be serving in the Senate with my friend and to hear his commonsense approach on how…