Joe Barton: “Mr. Chairman, never have so many fine fellows from California been so wrong. It is good to have the California…”

“Mr. Chairman, never have so many fine fellows from California been so wrong. It is good to have the California delegation unified for a change on the floor, but it would be better if they were unified on something that was actually a step in the right direction. To my left I have a chart that is developed by the EPA that shows the baseline under the Clean Air Act passed in 1990 for the minimum air quality standard. There is about an 18 percent improvement based on the quality of 1990. The blue bar shows those States, those cities, that have decided to meet the standard by adding MTBE to their gasoline. You can see that on average they have almost doubled their air quality. The red bar shows the areas which have chosen to meet the air quality standard by adding ethanol. On average, they have improved it about 10 percent more than the minimum. It is true we can meet the minimum air quality standard without using either MTBE, the blue bars, or ethanol, the red bars, but just barely. Just barely. Mr. Chairman, if we adopt the Cox-Waxman amendment, the air is going to get dirtier in California. I do not think that is the intent, but that is the effect of it. The Clean Air Act has actually worked. More oxygen in gasoline means that it burns cleaner. Do we really want to revoke that? I think not. I hope we vote against the amendment.”