Political Quotes

“As we have discussed, the legal authorization for the collection of fees from pesticide manufacturers soon expires. The expiration of the so-called maintenance fee authorization will mean that EPA will face a significant funding shortfall as it attempts to meet important FQPA pesticide protections for children. EPA is far behind the schedule we set for them in that unanimously adopted law. This means that the important FQPA provisions we wrote 5 years ago to protect children from the dangers posed by toxic pesticides are still not being fully implemented. At a Senate Environment and Public Works Committee hearing on EPA's proposed budget, EPA Administrator Whitman testified that she supported these important protections. She has taken additional steps during her tenure which demonstrate her support in concrete ways. At the hearing, the Administrator recognized that the shortfall I've mentioned above would cause a reduction of 200 EPA employees dedicated to making sure our pesticide standards protect kids. She promised that those reductions would absolutely not occur. To her credit, Administrator Whitman testified that this shortfall would not be realized because she pledged to complete the so-called tolerance fee rule proposed during the Clinton administration. The administration to its credit also took this position in its budget. The tolerance rule would provide roughly $51 million in fees to support and accelerate FQPA work. That was an important statement.…”