On the recordApril 6, 2011
I rise in opposition to my good friend, Mr. Markey's, amendment. He must think EPA stands for ``Energy Punishment Agency'' as opposed to ``Environmental Protection Agency.'' EPA's role is not to regulate the oil and gas industry. It's not to set an oil import fee. It's not to set quotas. It's to protect the environment. And the bill before us today does that. It restricts the Clean Air Act to its original intention, which is to regulate the criteria pollutants for which it was intended when it was passed in the early 1990s. We are trying to segregate greenhouse gases from regulation under the Clean Air Act. That's all this bill does. It's not affecting fuel efficiency standards that NHTSA regulates and will continue to regulate. It doesn't have anything to do with that. We are simply saying that greenhouse gases should not be regulated under the existing Clean Air Act. We disagree with the Supreme Court decision that gave the EPA the authority to make a decision, and we definitely disagree with the endangerment finding, which I think was fatally flawed. We can do a lot on decreasing oil imports both by supply increases in the United States and letting the market operate in an efficient fashion. We don't need the EPA to have some sort of a stranglehold on oil production in the United States of America.
