Political Quotes

“I'm pleased to yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. McClintock), the chairman of the subcommittee dealing with this legislation on the Natural Resources Committee. Mr. McCLINTOCK. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding. Mr. Chairman, the so-called streamlining that the Bureau has pledged to do and has done has produced no new projects for reasons that were made very clear to our Subcommittee on Water and Power by numerous witnesses. NEPA is at the heart of the problem. As the chairman said, the Bureau of Reclamation operates 47,000 miles of pipelines and canals that have already undergone extensive environmental review. By installing small generators in the existing pipelines, we could add the equivalent generating capacity of major hydroelectric dams, meaning millions of dollars of new revenue to the government, millions of watts of new, clean, cheap electricity, and all the jobs these projects would produce. The gentlelady has said that she supports the objective and is willing to do everything that she can to help except by getting government out of the way. The Federal bureaucracy has made it cost prohibitive for people to install these small generators in these existing canals and pipelines. Rather, they force them to conduct crushingly expensive environmental reviews, navigate time-consuming bureaucratic mazes, pay exorbitant administrative fees, and risk the uncertainties of endless internal review and external litigation.…”