Political Quotes

“my friend from Arkansas has stated there has been a fine distinction point raised. That fine distinction point is the Constitution of the United States. I think that is something that we should be concerned about. This country has been in existence for more than 200 years, and this body has been in existence for more than 200 years. I think if we are anything of significance, which I believe we are, we are a country that is bound by the constitutional dictates set up by our Founding Fathers. The constitutional point of order lies. Now, I also think, prior to voting on this, that we have to understand that much of what the Senator from Arkansas says, throwing these numbers around, talking about 30-second spots, these are a figment of someone's imagination. You cannot get out of here and talk about billions of dollars in cleanup and all the problems caused by mining. The fact of the matter is that with rare, rare exception, all of the cases he has talked about are cases involving mines that have long since been depleted, old mines where we had no reclamation laws, we had no environmental laws. That is why the Superfund is attempting to go clean them up. Under modern day reclamation and mining in the Western United States, we have good laws. He talks about leach mining, where you lay down a plastic pad and what if it leaks. Well, it doesn't leak. We have stringent controls that guarantees that.”