Steven Holt: “I am pleased to yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. DeFazio), the ranking minority member of the Resources…”

“I am pleased to yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. DeFazio), the ranking minority member of the Resources Committee. Mr. DeFAZIO. I appreciate the gentleman's statement and leadership. What are we doing here today? We are going to take a rule established by Ronald Reagan, the first modest attempt to protect water quality, stream quality, forests, and other environmental values in cases of strip mining mountaintop removal. So the Republicans today are going to overrule the judgment of Ronald Reagan, preempt him with a rule that basically says it is okay to blow the top off a mountain, dump it into a stream, and it doesn't affect water quality because the stream doesn't exist anymore. Except there is a little problem. The water does still leach through all the toxic soils and it does cause problems downstream. But let's not worry about that too much. Secondly, they are going to preempt states rights. Hey, the party of states' rights. They are all for local control. They hate those one- size-fits-all Federal rules, don't they? No, not today. We are going to impose a Bush administration midnight rule which a court found to be laughable in terms of its compliance with Federal law. They are going to impose that on all the States of the United States of America as the law of the land.…”