Political Quotes

“Madam Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time. Madam Speaker, I will just stress that my Republican colleagues like to wrongfully assert that California standards set the vehicle emission policy for the whole of the United States, and it just demonstrates an inaccurate understanding of the Clean Air Act. So let me just close by explaining this. Through section 209 of the Clean Air Act, Congress provided the EPA the ability to grant California Federal preemption waivers to set more protective vehicle emissions standards to address the compelling need to reduce air pollution in that State. The resolutions at issue today are about one State's Clean Air Act waivers, California, not the entirety of the United States. Other States do have the flexibility to voluntarily adopt California standards in whole or in part, modify the standards to their specific needs, or just not adopt the standards entirely. As I have mentioned, most of the speakers on the Republican side, their States haven't adopted the standards at all. If your State doesn't want to follow California, you don't have to. Each State is allowed to decide what works best for them, but today's resolution threatens that choice and is basically an affront to States' rights. Now, just last week, the American Lung Association issued its annual ``State of the Air'' report, which shows that nearly half of all Americans breathe unhealthy levels of air pollution.…”