Political Quotes

“I thank the chairman for his leadership on this issue. Mr. Chairman, if you have been listening to this debate thus far, you would believe that we are only talking about mountaintop mining. Well, I want to assure you the bill that I support that is on the floor today is also trying to protect non-mountaintop mining because the rules that have been proposed by the Obama administration apply to all coal miners. They apply to non-mountaintop mining as well, including mining in my State of Wyoming and the mining that can occur in the State of Montana, to my north, that has enormous undeveloped coal reserves. My State of Wyoming has been the number one coal-producing State in this Nation since 1986, for 30 years. The reclamation of those mines is state of the art. If you go to the top of the tipples at those mines and look around, you cannot tell, if you are an untrained eye, whether the land has been mined and reclaimed or undisturbed and un-mined. It is because the quality of reclamation that is required by the State of Wyoming is so state of the art that the water is clean, the land is reclaimed, the wildlife returns. In fact, the wildlife prefers to graze on the land that has been reclaimed, as opposed to the land that has not been mined. States have proven that they can regulate and return properties to a condition that Americans can be proud of and know that we will be safe. Yet, the States have been shut out of this regulatory process.…”