Political Quotes

“Mr. Chairman, the amendment is twice as bad as the bill because it decreases by $50 million the threshold, which means more and more regulations would have to go through this cumbersome process and really stifle regulations and rules, and that's what this is about. The Speaker said that the job of this Congress is not to pass legislation but to repeal legislation. That's what these bills are about. They're not to improve the lives of Americans by having more safety and more protection but, rather, to defeat proposals that may come from the EPA, which are to protect the air and the water and our Earth, as well as to protect other areas of safety, whether it's automobiles or airplanes or trains or trucks or whatever. The fact is that this would make it almost impossible to pass a rule or a regulation, and it would allow one House the ability to kill a regulation. This is a House that doesn't have the expertise within it, which has been said by some of the Members in their saying they didn't know how big to build a dam or whatever. That's why we have government people who study and do research and promulgate rules and regulations-- to protect us--and it's done in a nonpolitical environment. If you bring it to this environment, you're going to have lobbyists coming up, trying to kill things that affect their industries. This is a yo-yo bill: you are on your own. That's what they're saying basically, that we don't want protections for consumers or protections for citizens.…”