Sheldon Whitehouse

I would like to join Chairman Capito in thanking our witnesses for being here today to discuss four bills that my Republican colleagues argue will aid specific industries stifled by burdensome, costly regulations.

If this is designed to create a back door for street registered vehicles to violate the Clean Air Act, then we are going to have a problem.

Was your participation in the preparation for the Perry request, if we call it that, is that a fair enough description?

I think it is something of a significant situation if the CEO of a regulated industry is saying he has given his regulator a 3-page plan.

There is another voice from Texas that has a rather different view of Ms. Hartnett White.

Mr. Wheeler, there has been a recent request by Secretary Perry to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to provide certain regulatory favors, to provide regulatory priority to, among other things, coal plants.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

In conclusion, is it fair to say that the measure we are about to vote on will indisputably have the effect of shifting enormous power from consumers to corporations that engage in high-volume but low- dollar fraud?

It is a very different thing to be allowed to speak after a vote has been taken than to have the opportunity to try to convince your colleagues before the vote is taken.

Extracting monopoly rents isn't viewed by any economist as being legitimate economic behavior, is it?

Shouldn't there be some place in government where it is clear that once a monopoly exists, and there's no doubt about that, and it's clear that monopoly rent extraction is being done, nothing related to market pricing.

We've seen circumstances recently in which a drug manufacturer has an effected monopoly with respect to one or more of their products.

Let me ask the panel to focus on a very specific issue, which is the question of monopoly.

Rhode Island is looking at 9 to 12 feet of vertical sea level rise by the end of the century if we continue to do nothing here in Congress.

I hope that we can get assurances from you that in your administration of highway grants, you will protect the integrity of the process and not allow political calls to be made and political threats to be made to influence that process.

I think in the long run, if you find this becomes politicized, you will find support for the program dramatically decreasing.

We have seen a rather unseemly spectacle recently which was a member of the Cabinet telling a Senator that they would be punished in grants and in programs in their home State for voting the wrong way on a completely unrelated matter.

I just want to see it more of a national model.

We need to fix this.

It is bonkers that a mom and a dad may not know that a 22-year-old or 24-year-old child has been in and out of the emergency room for overdose.

You've got to catch them.

We shouldn't have to wait around for that.

It is ridiculous for somebody to be able to go from Woonsocket to Attleboro and have it not picked up across the Rhode Island-Massachusetts border.

And will you provide the materials to us so we can engage in that oversight?

I hope that these questions and the independent role of this Committee to do oversight is not something that is going to be overrun in the pursuit of getting these nominees in place.