Political Quotes

“Let me thank the chairman very much. I definitely support cooperation between the Federal Government and the State government. That is absolutely the best partnership and one that I encourage. Having been a member of the local city council of my own city of Houston, I also know that unfunded mandates are very much difficult to overcome. But I argue vigorously against the underlying legislation because it does equate to undermining the health of Americans. We need clean water, not dirty water. So this amendment strikes the entire legislation that causes us to ignore a partnership that has been established between the EPA, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System, which is a State system. And to my count, some 47 States have initially gotten into the system and have worked to ensure that they have clean water. Why do I suggest that this is a very challenging approach to take that the underlying legislation has? Because it prevents the EPA from taking actions to revise outdated State water quality standards. It makes a State the final arbiter of whether an NPDES permit, a license for better water quality, is in fact to be implemented so that one State may do something that impacts negatively on another State. These are the people we're concerned about: a working nurse and a healthy baby, or we are concerned about a gentleman by the name of Mr.…”