Providing for Consideration of H.R. 5078, Waters of the United States Regulatory Overreach Protection Act of 2014, and Providing for Consideration of H. Res 644, Disapproval of the Administration's Failure to Notify Congress Before Releasing Individuals from Guantanamo Bay

Floor Speech

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Mr. CONNOLLY. I thank my good friend from Florida.

I listened to my friend from Utah and I heard him make reference to fact that he thought he might be spending some time in purgatory. I just want him to know that I rise in support of him. I want to help him expiate whatever transgressions he has committed and lessen that time in purgatory by opposing this rule. I think that is how we ought to begin.

Madam Speaker, here we go again. Should it surprise any of us that the most antienvironmental House majority is once again engaging in science suppression and denial simply because they don't like the findings and where they take us?

Apparently, the narrative is environmental regulations and rulemaking can only be abuse. My friend from Utah used that word. That is the choice: ``Do you like being abused or not?'' And I find that not only something I have to reject, but I don't think that is, in fact, the choice we face at all.

I think environmental regulation, since we adopted rigorous standards in 1970 under the Richard Nixon administration, a Republican President, actually has served the American public, by and large, very well, the story my friend from Utah tells about the farmer, the sugar beet farmer, notwithstanding.

There may be anecdotes that are compelling and where, indeed, Federal regulators abuse their authority. That does not characterize rulemaking, and it can't serve as a substitute for protecting, not abusing, the American public and its environmental safety.

We have all grown accustomed to repeated efforts here on the floor to gut important environmental safeguards that protect public health.

All told, my friends on the other side of the aisle have had something like 200 votes to block action to address climate change, to halt efforts to reduce air and water pollution, to undermine protections for public lands, coastal areas, and the ecology. The bill that will be before us if this rule passes is more of the same.

What really should alarm the American public is the House majority's effort to suppress and openly reject science. They have done it in denying climate change. They have done it in opposing commonsense protections against mercury, lead, and arsenic. And today they want to throw out the scientific findings of the proposed clean waterways rule and prohibit them from being used moving forward.

Where does that end?

This know-nothing kind of approach fails the public we are sworn to protect and serve and again abandons the model of environmental leadership going back to the Republican days of Teddy Roosevelt.

The SPEAKER pro tempore. The time of the gentleman has expired.

Mr. HASTINGS of Florida. Madam Speaker, I yield the gentleman an additional 1 minute.

Mr. CONNOLLY. I thank my friend.

We, as elected officials, have to recognize the valuable role science must play in making good public policy--not anecdotes, science. I think Neil deGrasse Tyson said it best when he said: ``The good thing about science is that it's true whether you believe in it or not.''

Let's have science inform our public policymaking and our legislation. I urge my colleagues to reject this rule and the underlying repeat legislation.

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