Political Quotes

“I appreciate the gentleman's courtesy as I appreciate his leadership. Mr. Chair, there is nothing here in terms of what the administration has done that is ill-considered or reckless. I am sorry that there is opposition to protections that were put in place by the Reagan administration dealing with stream buffers, simple and common sense, which would indeed merit the support by virtually all of our colleagues. We have seen that the last-minute efforts by the Bush administration to circumvent protections for mountaintop removal were rejected by the courts because they did not deal adequately with requirements of the Endangered Species Act. We are still facing the specter of taking the debris from mountaintop removal mining and putting it in our streams and waterways, and we would sentence our States to not be able to put in place more effective and stringent protections if they wanted to but force them to follow this outdated and rejected proposal and wait until 2021 to be able to move forward. Mr. Chairman, this is an expression, I think, of frustration on the part of some of my friends on the other side of the aisle for the fact that they are on the wrong side of history, they are on the wrong side of science, and they are on the wrong side of public opinion; and simply declaring that the administration is out of control or EPA is overreaching or there is a war on coal doesn't make it so.…”