David Thomas: “I appreciate our colleague bringing us to the floor to talk today about the environment. Certainly, this is Earth Day…”

“I appreciate our colleague bringing us to the floor to talk today about the environment. Certainly, this is Earth Day, and we ought to talk about it. We just have one Earth and one planet. There is more and more of us and we have the same amount of space. Clearly, we will have to pick up after ourselves. I suspect there is no one in this body, and indeed, very few anywhere, who would not agree with that. There are differing views of the best way to do it, of course, to provide a healthy environment. There are questions of who should do it. Should it be left entirely to the central Government, to the Federal Government? Should we take advantage of the State and local expertise? Should there be incentives for the private sector to perform? Those are the kinds of questions that I think we need to be asking. There should be questions about the balance between use and the economy and the environment, and how we have jobs and how we protect the environment at the same time. There is reason to disagree on those kinds of things. There is a question of whether or not there should be congressional oversight of the statutes of laws that have been passed. Many of them--indeed most of them--passed 20 years ago.”