On the recordJune 30, 2021
In my past career, I have served as a senior staffer in the U.S. Senate, under George W. Bush during his administration, as a member of the State legislature, and now as a Member of Congress. It is interesting to me that--and I have never quite understood this, but our friends on the other side of the aisle seem to think that Washington knows best about everything. Our local communities, our States, our local partners, they know what they are doing. Let's give them the flexibility. Let's let them do what they need to do for their communities. Climate change is not a new notion. It has been around for a little while. You have got a lot of States and a lot of folks in private enterprise, in fact, that are incorporating changes, not at the request of Washington, but because that is what they feel like they need to do. We don't need a one-size-fits-all approach for any of this. In fact, a lot of this could have been worked out, had we had a bipartisan open process, but we didn't. Mr. Speaker, that is regrettable. I encourage my colleagues to oppose this amendment, and I reserve the balance of my time.
