On the recordMarch 10, 2014
I share the Senator's sense of hope about our ability to come together as a country, crises after crises, generation after generation, and we come here to do the right thing. I know this from the history my parents and grandparents have talked to me about-- whether it was against an external threat of fascism, and how folks pulled together, from victory gardens and conserving, to people who stormed beaches in Normandy. I know for the civil rights movement we came together as a Nation and overcame those people who were trying to deny equal rights and equal opportunity in this country. It is those past victories which fuel my hopes about the present. We as a Nation have already set limits for arsenic, mercury, lead, and other types of pollution. We have already done that and said if a private company is going to spew this filth into our climate, they are going to have to face limitations and take responsibility for those actions. In other words, they are going to have to internalize the costs and not externalize them, not put the burden on people. Again, I have seen this in countless cities across America where, when we didn't do that, people were still paying the price in the money we spent here in the Federal Government for brownfield remediation and public tax dollars paying for the cleanup of land often in urban spaces which other people dirtied up. So it is just common sense not to allow polluters to release unlimited amounts of pollutants in the air.
