Bill Johnson

I, too, thank my colleague from Pennsylvania for those eloquent remarks on a very, very important subject. I know he has a lot of other things he could be doing tonight, but this is important to him, and I appreciate him being here to…

Absolutely. Absolutely. You hear some of those in opposition to using fossil fuels talking about how they would allocate taxpayer funds to retrain people in those communities like coal production communities. Well, my question is, where…

I thank my colleague very much for his passion on this issue. He understands it. As a current businessowner, he understands how important this is.

I am an IT guy, Chairman Wheeler, and I have been doing implementations for a long time.

Suffice it to say the move didn't go as smoothly as we were told it would.

Are you going to provide the information?

Did you guys have that in your consideration?

If DOE doesn't soon reverse its decision, we are about to add to the price tag of that D&D work...

When states become implementers of federal policy and then they end up getting bullied by the federal government, if you do this, then X, Y, or Z will happen, that's not the role of the federal government to say that we're going to cut off…

I'm a big fan of space exploration. I grew up in the age of the Apollo Moon race.

A conversation is not going to put food on the table, clothes on the kids, pay for school supplies.

It is incomprehensible that an agency in the United States Federal Government would do that to its own people.

You're asking States to prematurely retire and replace existing plants with new energy infrastructure, and then claim this as a net benefit for jobs and economic growth.

I certainly understand it because every time a new Government regulation by the EPA comes out, new offices are stood up, employees are hired, and the Washington bureaucracy grows ad nauseam.

The logic that seems to be applied to coal regions of the country where we've got communities of 1,000, 1,500 people that are all coal miners, and such, that they can just plant seeds like a seasonal garden and all of a sudden industries…

I'm incensed and I think the American people are incensed, and I'm certain that the people that I represent in Eastern and Southeastern Ohio are incensed at the logic that's being used by the EPA as it addresses the concerns around…

You got to pass it before you know what's in it. You got to define it before you do the analysis.

I think that they obviously made some adjustments in the final rule, and I think as I made it brief in my remarks today, we still have many of those questions remain and there are certain new ones too.

This is unacceptable, to think and ask the people of southern Ohio to wait another 30 years to trickle this process along.

I think the Department of Energy has a responsibility, as does Congress, to work together to figure out a formula.

I agree this is a very, very important topic and I appreciate our panel being here with us today.

Were they adequately prepared?

Was the EPA prepared to properly respond to an environmental event of this magnitude?

EPA did not release videos of the incident for over a month after the spill, a month.

I am proud to be on your team. Mr. McKINLEY. We have a host of other folks here to address the issue. We have got this chart up. Eventually, we are going to get to that in the next part of it. But what we are talking about here is here are…