Tom Coburn: “Mr. Chairman, I had contemplated, among others, in a bipartisan fashion offering an amendment to this title of this…”

“Mr. Chairman, I had contemplated, among others, in a bipartisan fashion offering an amendment to this title of this bill, and have decided not to do so but wanted to take this time to talk about the recently issued regulations by EPA on clean air and particulate matter in particular. Having been involved with this since the first proposed standards were issued, I have made it my concentrated goal to know everything I could know and to read the scientific studies that have been put forth in regard to these regulations. The claim is that these regulations are put forward on the basis that is the charge for the EPA to use the best available science. Well, in fact, that is not the case. The EPA has done what I think is an unconscionable wrong to this country. And what has exactly happened, Mr. Chairman, is we have taken a planned change in the air regulations and have gone to try and find science to support it. The EPA claims that there are 67 studies that support their new regulations, and that claim is absolutely false. There are five studies, and it is generous to say that these are studies, but there are five different collections of data that monitor fine particulate matter. Only two of those actually measure 2.5 micron size particles. The rest are extrapolated data. It is like a physician telling a woman she is going to have a boy child, a male child, because she has had three children before, all of which were females.”