Floor Statements

Offered By: Mr. Labrador

Amendment No. 203: At the end of the bill (before the short

title), insert the following:

Madam Speaker, I want to briefly speak about the impact the overbearing Environmental Protection Agency has in my district.

I want to begin by relating an anecdote that illustrates the arrogant and tone-deaf attitude the EPA has taken in its attempts to regulate almost everything that moves or breathes in Idaho's First Congressional District.

In the Federal Register, the Environmental Protection Agency announced a public meeting in Boise where my constituents could come and provide oral comments. Relying upon the EPA's notice in the Federal Register, my constituents attended in order to share their thoughts with the EPA, only to be told that oral comments would not be accepted.

My constituents try to do the right thing and play by the rules; but when the EPA writes the rule book in erasable or even invisible ink, my constituents become jaded and distrustful of the EPA, and they come to this body for assistance. They are done being treated unfairly by a Federal bureaucracy that no longer seems to care if it even obeys its own rules. This body must no longer tolerate such actions.

We must also not tolerate the job-killing regulations that the EPA dreams to implement. Even though the current and past administrations have recognized that the Clean Air Act is not appropriate for the regulation of greenhouse gases, the EPA nonetheless has chosen to ignore those findings and treat greenhouse gases as though they endanger the public health and welfare.

The EPA and other Federal agencies led by the White House are also charging ahead with policies, using questionable climate change science under the guise of protecting vulnerable or endangered species, policies that will do very little, if anything, to aid species, but that will most surely empower Federal bureaucrats and environmental lawyers. These policies will further restrict access to our water and land and will further hit our already struggling agriculture and resource-dependent communities.

Finally, the EPA and the National Marine Fisheries Service have ignored the ``best available data'' of farmers as they determine how pesticide registration affects salmon in the Pacific Northwest.

In an era in which the administration's failed fiscal and energy policies

are inflating food prices, the EPA piles on with its procedures that add nothing but uncertainty to the process.