Joe Barton

I first want to take a little victory lap this morning. The college presidents announced yesterday we are going to have a non-BCS football playoff in college football, and I can take a little bit of credit because back when I was chairman…

I think we have got the answer to what to do about our deficit. We will just do a special tax on Chairman Waxman's rich people in his district.

Unfortunately, in the last few years, we have not been able to give NIH those sorts of additional resources.

The NIH is the gold star for medical research in the world.

So, on average, these small increases in average global temperature, which is called the greenhouse gas effect or climate change, from a health standpoint on average would be good not bad.

I would prefer that we explicitly exempt them by statute.

I believe that in the next Congress, if not in this Congress, we ought to have a real debate on this committee about greenhouse gases as applied to the Clean Air Act.

I was here in the Congress on this committee when we passed the Clean Air Act amendments in the early 1990s.

I do not believe that a temperature difference of somewhere between 6 thousandths and 15 thousandths of a degree centigrade is going to make one iota of difference in any individual's health on this planet between now and the year 2100.

I certainly think somebody going to work in a solar factory that didn't exist... I would say that would be a green job.

Do we have an agreed-upon definition of what a green job is?

Barton really made a good point about this, is that if we are going to be looking at these renewable energy programs and alternative energy as job creators, we really should kind of nail down the types of jobs.

At some point in time it has to be a job that is sustainable in the marketplace with either no government assistance or minimal government assistance.

We have strong environmental laws. We expected those laws to be enforced strongly. We expect them also to be enforced fairly.

He had a preconceived mindset, viewed himself more as an executioner than as a fair umpire.

We expect President Obama and his appointees to enforce those rules in an even and fair-handed fashion.

Why would we not make that network operational? ... If you just sit on it, it can't be used.

I have great respect for Mississippi, and when I am told that their network... has almost all been spent and it is almost ready to go.

I strongly support both of these bills. You know, obviously they are subject to tweaking and being improved, but I think the concept in both bills is noble and I hope that the subcommittee moves them, the full committee moves them, and…

I think it is timely that these two bills, especially the first bill, H.R. 4273, have been put into play

Could we invite those people to the United States and have them pay their dime to come see us since we are the experts?

We have all seen the reports in the last several months about some of these abuses of public funds...

HHS has a huge mission, admittedly, but their answer to ever problem is to create more bureaucracy.

A trillion dollars is so much money that we can't even get our hands on it.

This Administration has indicated that the increased tax will have little to no negative effect on medical innovation in the United States. That just begs credulity, Mr. Chairman.