Joe Cunningham: “I am opposed to my friend's amendment, and he is a friend, he is a good friend. I have not had a chance to speak on the…”

“I am opposed to my friend's amendment, and he is a friend, he is a good friend. I have not had a chance to speak on the floor, but I thought this fit right in line with environmental justice. When many of us came in 1990, the Clean Air Act came up. And I remember Mr. Daschle, who is no longer with the other body, standing up and talking about how good MTBEs were. None of us knew. I saw a special that showed how bad MTBEs are, and that they are poisoning our waters in many communities. They should be removed. But when the Government asks any industry to do its bidding, and it does that, then I think that the government should protect that individual, whatever the company is, because it did what the government told it to do. Now, I think what we should do with this is push forward, help with the cleanup, and fight and do everything we can to get MTBEs out of our system and out of our groundwater. The gentleman from California (Mr. Pombo) did that in 1996, and my colleagues on the other side fought that tooth, hook and nail. I was the cosponsor of the bill. When you talk about justice, let us look at why we ended up with it, where we are, and let us work together to get rid of this stuff. The Acting CHAIRMAN. The gentleman from Florida (Mr. Hastings) has 30 seconds remaining, and the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Barton) has 2 minutes remaining.”