Bob Menendez: “Mr. Chairman, we are not taking money from the States, just a particular earmark. Nothing can stop the EPA administrator…”

“Mr. Chairman, we are not taking money from the States, just a particular earmark. Nothing can stop the EPA administrator from using those monies for State programs if that is where they are most needed. What we are doing is what I hear my colleague from the other side suggest that they want, which is more flexibility. We have greater flexibility here. But it is foolish to suggest that, in fact, we are not robbing Peter to pay Paul. And, secondly, it is also from the EPA's own estimate submitted to the Congress, not my words, the Republican-appointed administrator submits to the Congress this information, that, in fact, this is 270 or so full-time employees less than compared to the actual number of inspections done in fiscal year 2000 to the one under this request, we would have 5,000 less inspections, that we would have about 70 some-odd less criminal investigations, that we would have a serious number of decline in civil investigations, over 400 from fiscal year 2000. That is not in any sense justified by saying that there is an increase. There cannot be an increase when we dramatically drop the number of people in the department, when we dramatically drop the number of civil and criminal actions, when we dramatically drop the number of inspections by EPA's own words. So this simply cannot be categorized anywhere, in fact, as an increase.”