Thomas R. Carper: “The Clean Water Act has lofty goals, and then it has some nonregulatory programs, and some regulatory programs.”

For too long, the seats have not been filled, and not been filled properly.

If I had known--as you know, the breadth of the issues that we cover in this Committee are enormous. It is impossible for any of us to fully master each of them.

You and our colleagues have heard me invoke in this room more times than I can count the Golden Rule: Treat other people the way I want to be treated.

Given how important this obviously is, my only regret is that we didn't have an opportunity to talk about it 24 hours ago.