Secret Science Reform Act of 2015

Floor Speech

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Mr. Chairman, I thank our chairman for his leadership on this very important bill.

I think it is highly appropriate that we ask our colleagues on the other side of the aisle to actually read the bill. If they did, they would find out that it prevents the EPA from releasing any confidential information. It prevents the EPA from releasing any confidential information. The idea that you are using or that somebody on this floor would use confidential information, they are hiding behind that in an effort to hide the actual science.

My children are in elementary school. They are required to show their work. If they don't show their work, their integrity could be questioned, which would be appropriate, by the way. Mr. Chairman, is it too much to ask for the EPA to follow the same guidelines I give my children in elementary school? Show your work. We need to see it. This is an Agency, as the chairman noted, that is funded by taxpayers at a level of $8 billion a year. This is also an Agency that promulgates rules that cost the economy hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars every year, as well.

In my home State of Oklahoma, in Tulsa, Oklahoma, with the Clean Power Plan going forward and now new regulations on ozone, we are looking at the cost of electricity going up. We are looking at the cost of doing business going up.

By the way, when the cost of electricity goes up, it doesn't hurt me; it hurts the poor. This is a war on the poor. If we are going to punish poor people in my district, I would like to see the science behind it. I think it is perfectly appropriate that we have perfect transparency as it relates to the science behind the EPA.

The Secret Science Reform Act is a very simple bill. It simply makes the EPA show its work, as my children do in elementary school. It is not truly sound science unless the results can be replicated, and this bill would allow others to test the results and to challenge the assumptions of the EPA.

If we are truly for good science, for sound science, we must pass this bill. I encourage my colleagues to vote for it.

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