Sheldon Whitehouse

I think, frankly, that is an unfair comment when people make that because the polluting industries have basically got Congress locked down.

We need the EPA to be defending us against the coal plants that are downwind that have dodged regulation for years.

I thank the Presiding Officer. If there is no further business regarding these treaties, I yield the floor. ____________________

Do you agree that there is at least a moral choice being made when we discount harm to future--there is something selfish about discounting that because we are not going to be around for it.

In some of the hypotheticals as scientists look forward, there is a credible view that in the out-years there are really actually potentially catastrophic effects, are there not?

And we are not exactly certain how this unprecedented change to our atmosphere and oceans is going to work out entirely, are we?

And then similarly, in Figure 6, there is a cost- benefit curve on the difference between an optimal climate policy cost and benefit...

So a farmer in Siberia will do better as things get warmer up there. Africa, Asia, places like that, will suffer a great deal. Correct?

I do not believe that there is any rational distinction between student loan debt and other kinds of debt.

The social cost of these environmental externalities--carbon--are very, very large.

You do not end up with a net-zero benefit to the economy. You end up with a positive for the economy because of how you have shifted the tax burden.

We also tax work, income, earnings.

Well, thank you very much. I am afraid in the same way that concern about the debt seems to vanish in front of the tax benefits for special interests, concern about properly operating markets is going to vanish in the face of the subsidies…

Did you mean to imply that, or am I reading that wrong?

This has been a very useful discussion. I thank the Chairman and the Ranking Member for holding it.

If you tax things that are, quote, ``bad,'' that means you have more revenue which you can then use to reduce the taxes on things that are good.

I do not think we do very well in government anywhere is the prototyping function.

You might actually find value in it as a screener of really bad ideas that nobody would put money behind.

We run the most disgracefully wasteful health care system in the world, probably by a factor of 50 percent, maybe more.

And they may very well be jobless because they lost their job in the recession involuntarily.

Let me say for the record that I know EPA employees and I have known EPA employees over the years, and the effort to tar all EPA employees with the misconduct of one criminal I think is reprehensible.

Your Tier 3 motor vehicle rule, for instance, will prevent as many as 2,000 premature deaths and 30,000 respiratory illnesses in children every year.

You exercise one of the most important responsibilities of the Federal Government, to protect human health and the environment.

I am sorry that that combination of features no longer seems possible in Washington.

It is unfortunate that, because of cuts, funding for Clean Water and Drinking Water State revolving funds had to be reduced by 30 percent and 17 percent, respectively.