Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of the HONEST Act. As a cosponsor of this legislation and a member of the Science, Space, and Technology Committee, I am very pleased to see this bill come to the House floor. I represent the congressional district with the highest concentration of petrochemical, manufacturing, and refining facilities than any other district in the entire Nation. This means that thousands of my constituents have been or are currently employed by these industries. In fact, years ago, I spent some time as a worker in one of these very factories. With this in mind, you can understand why pushing for reform, transparency, and accountability within the EPA would be very important to me because so many of my constituents' livelihoods are affected by costly and burdensome regulations from the EPA. My constituents want to make sure that the EPA's actions, particularly those based on secret science, do not cost them their jobs or their livelihood. Time and again, the EPA has issued extensive regulations without ever showing the science to back up their claims to justify these regulations. It is like they have a little black box over there. They don't let anyone else look into it, and they just say: Trust us, we have got good science backing up our claims. I say, if your science is so good, then don't hide it in your little black box. Show us your data. The HONEST Act simply requires the EPA to open their little black box to public scrutiny.…”