Political Quotes

“What we have to realize here is that this is an effort to be fair. The language in the bill calls for a study by the National Academy of Sciences. I repeat. We have not asked them to find in any certain way. Whatever they come up with is what we will go along with. I think that we owe the American people an honest debate about the current regulations for hard rock mining and all the disasters that have gone on in the past. There are a number of Superfund sites. That is one reason Superfund was passed--because of environmental degradation that had taken place in the years gone by. Mining was part of that. We are not part of that anymore. I think that is good. We owe the American people an honest debate about the current regulations of hard rock mining. We owe them the opportunity to know about mining, and for the first time the truth about the environmental practices employed by modern-day mining--not what went on 30 years, 40 years, 50 years, or 100 years ago. We owe the tens of thousands of Americans who make a living at mining--or some occupation that relies on mining--to know that certainly their jobs will be there when they show up in the morning. I say to everyone within the sound of my voice mining affects more than the people that go down in the Earth or into the open pits. It affects more than them because we have industries all over America that rely on mining. These huge trucks that haul the ore out of the open pit operations cost over $2 million.”