Sheldon Whitehouse

I know that during our process, our staff worked enormously hard, and the Senator's has been at this for a longer time than just that intense period of negotiation where we moved the bill in our section, so I defer to the Senator to make…

While we have the floor and until Senator Vitter comes, might it be a good time to say a kind word about our staffs?

People have been talking about modular nuclear reactors for decades. So far, not a single one has ever been approved by the NRC.

Thanks very much, Chairman, and thank you for yours and Ranking Member Murray's continued initiative and effort in this area.

If you're really doing health information exchange through a public facility that brings in all comers and isn't picked off by a particular private sector company to emphasize its own business, if it's truly across the board, then, really…

Madam Secretary, is it a novelty for there to be lively, even intense disagreements, in the internal agency deliberations?

The conversation on this has been largely preposterous.

Every pollutant regulation receives opposition. Every time, every member.

It is very regrettable, because I think the Clean Water Rule has been very effective.

Are there any activities that you can identify, any at all, that were exempt from permitting requirements before this final rule?

There is zero concern from the other side of the aisle about what any of that is costing.

Industry frequently talks about the costs of a rule. And when they measure the rule, they talk exclusively about the cost to themselves...

We are a downwind State, Ms. McCabe. It is our oceans that are acidifying because of carbon dioxide...

Industry has a long history of muddling the science and manufacturing false data and exaggerating regulatory costs.

The junior Senator from Florida tells us, 'Despite 17 years of dramatic increases in carbon production by humans, surface temperatures [on] the earth have stabilized.'

The junior Senator from Texas proclaims that 'satellite data demonstrate for the last seventeen years, there's been zero warming. None whatsoever.'

We have Senators who deny that anything is happening, who say it is a hoax.

The denial comes in many guises, but, like a compass, all the denial points in the same direction: whatever helps the fossil fuel industry keep polluting.

It is very real. We shouldn't kid ourselves. And it is an urgent challenge for our country and our world.

Consequences will likely be long-lived and are already widespread across Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah.

I share the frustration of my colleagues on both sides of the aisle with this situation.

What we will not hear from our Republican colleagues is that, according to the GAO, there are 161,000 abandoned hard rock mine sites in 12 western States and Alaska.

The Gold King Mine Spill is and will continue to be an environmental nightmare for Colorado and other western States.

Thank you to Chairman Collins and Co-Chairman Warren for the hearing today.

This is really important, and we have to get this right, and there's nothing really partisan about it.