On the recordJune 19, 2012
I thank Senator Boxer for her leadership in resisting these attempts to be able to permit companies to continue to pollute the air, a risk to our children, and marshaling the forces to say no to this. I feel this may be a lesson I learned when I was in business school at Columbia: If we spend money here, we might save it there. But if we don't spend it, we are liable to lose something--a child, the child's ability to function. What kind of a proposition are we looking at? This isn't an accounting exercise. We are talking about the well-being of our children. I will say, we may have disagreements between our sides, but I believe Republicans care as much about their kids on their side as we do on ours. But in this debate, they would say they have to take care of the power companies and permit them to emit poisonous ingredients into the air. So I think the sentence would be more completely said: Rather than take advantage of protecting our children, we would rather continue the profit buildup. It is preposterous when we think about it. We have to continue the standards for powerplants that emit mercury pollution, which is brain poison for our children. We have to make sure we don't relinquish and permit this contagious material to continue to be put into the air.…
