Maurice Hinchey

I want to express my appreciation for this committee and the leadership of Norm Dicks for providing the funding that we need and that you are using so effectively.

I want to just thank you for all the things that you have done and all the progress that you are making, especially the renewed focus on the original mission of the agency to protect human health and the natural environment.

The one that passed yesterday in the Senate, that is going to generate a significant amount of money for this economy.

The sort of deregulation of the financial industry, which began back in the mid-1990s and which generated that Wall Street bailout was one of the major problems that we had to deal with

The war in Iraq, which had no justification whatsoever and which has cost us huge amounts of money.

We have right now the greatest concentration of wealth in the wealthiest 1 percent of the people of this country since 1929.

This is a country that needs to focus attention on the internal needs and therefore the creation of jobs.

The loss of that money over this long period of time. The prescription drug plan and I mentioned the war in Iraq and all of those things are the issues that we are dealing with

That jobs bill is going to stimulate a lot of economic growth through the creation of jobs.

Nothing should be too big to fail.

The unemployment rate itself in this country is now up above 10 percent.

We allowed it to happen intentionally because there was a great interest on the part of some people to make as much money as possible.

A lot of that has to do with the sharp decline in the economy which had to do, in large measure, with the manipulation of commercial and investment banking.

This country is dealing with one of the most difficult and damaging economic circumstances that it has experienced over the course of our history.

The actions that have been taken indicate that there is a substantial amount of effectiveness.

This increase in the unemployment rate to 10.2 percent... is the highest we've had since the 1980s.

The main cause of the economic recession that we have been experiencing was the deregulation of the banking industry.

That is too big to fail safely. That is what we have got to avoid. That is what we have got to get rid of.

We now have a set of circumstances that if you look at the top 1 percent, you have the same amount of wealth in the hands of the top 1 percent, the wealthiest 1 percent of the people, that you did in 1928 and 1929, right now.

Unless this situation is corrected, as it was done in 1933 in the context of the Great Depression...

As it continues, all of these banks, which are so important in communities, particularly small communities all over the country, it is going to have a very negative effect on the economic conditions there in those areas.

If you don't mind, one of the issues that was brought up was the issue of education and how potentially the expansion of wilderness land is going to have a negative impact on education...

Thank you very much for that. And I think that what we are trying to focus on here is some of the misunderstanding that is generating opposition to the kinds of things that are trying to be done on behalf of the people of the State of Utah.

The circumstances of the lands that are overseen by the Federal Government in this country comes about as a result of the fact that the states were not interested in them.

The land that we are trying to designate holds less than a few days worth of oil and a few weeks worth of gas.