Jim Inhofe

Thank you, Madam Chair, for scheduling this Oversight Hearing on Disease Clusters and Environmental Health, and in particular children's health.

Efforts to improve Depot Maintenance processes are continuing within the Department.

A comprehensive strategy involving the DLA, depots, the Global Logistics Support Center (GLSC), U.S. Transportation Command (TRANSCOM), and other stakeholders being worked concurrently.

The efficiency strategy for depot maintenance is planned to have virtually no impact on parts availability.

I think the average American would be surprised and disappointed to know that the Department does not currently have fully auditable statements, and does not expect to have them until 2017.

In a time of turmoil and uncertainty around the world, we must be clear about the true effects of reduced military spending in critical readiness areas proposed under the guise of efficiencies.

I am also concerned that many efficiencies actually defer expenditures critical to our military readiness, which increases risk to our military forces and to our national security.

Substantial savings will not be realized until the Department commits to spend only what is absolutely essential for the warfighter and critical Department functions.

We should not fund additional projects that did not make the cut the first time.

I think the recent EPA study clearly showed biases in this area and I am quite surprised...

It was originally designed, though, to go after what I refer to, and were referred to at that time, as the six real pollutants, and it had nothing to do with CO2.

Greenhouse gases are a global problem, they are a problem which the United States can only have a minuscule effect on through actions that we take within our own borders.

One thing, and I also mentioned this yesterday on the floor of the Senate, is that I was praising the Clean Air Act and the amendments to the Clean Air Act, how successful they have been, how they have reduced pollutants.

A regulatory approach to regulating greenhouse gas emissions would cost six times as much as the cap and trade approach that Congress has already rejected.

I have joined him on his bill that is going to require the EPA or a new commission made up of the Secretaries of Energy...

I believe, and so do many other economists, that imposing, that using the Clean Air Act toolkit to regulate greenhouse gases would impose unnecessary costs and would have next to no health benefits for the United States.

I applaud Senator Inhofe for introducing the Energy Tax Prevention Act of 2011 to preclude EPA from using the Clean Air Act to regulate greenhouse gases.

I would only mention, and ask if you disagree with this segment of the unions, in terms of the boiler MACT up to 800,000 jobs at risk.

The tools in the EPA toolkit are so limited that what they do is produce highly burdensome regulations in the particular areas that EPA can work with and do nothing in other areas.

That would take away the jurisdiction of the Environmental Protection Agency in the regulation of greenhouse gases.

These are the kinds of problems that can only be fixed by Congress.

I commend Senator Inhofe for introducing the CARE Act to require a review of the total costs of major EPA regulations.

There is a cost to what EPA is doing--and it will be borne in east-central Ohio and in communities just like it across the heartland.

As someone who has been considered many times in the ranking system as the most conservative member of the U.S. Senate, I have always said that in some areas I am a pretty big spender, national defense, infrastructure, something that we…

When in fact it has been a huge success.