I want to say a word of kindness about my friend, the chairman of the committee, and the chairman of the subcommittee. They are fine people, and I am very fond of them and respect them.

I do not respect the output, however, of the committee on this matter. Where are the hearings? Where is the record? Where are the facts to support this? Where is there anything other than supposition? Where are the statistics? Where is the testimony of the Department of Energy? Where are the comments of the Environmental Protection Agency? Where are the requests of the industry that this matter be considered or that this legislation should be brought up or that it is good legislation in the public interest?

None of this is available. This is not the way in which the House should legislate on an important matter. This is the way that perhaps a high school class in emulating the way the Congress should function would be conducted. Even at that time, I think it would be a significant embarrassment.

Here are some facts. First of all, domestic refining capacity has been increasing; although the number of refining establishments has declined. This is a very interesting thing, but there is no information in the hearing record. Indeed, there is no hearing record on this matter. The bill which we have before us today has not been subject to even the most basic congressional review. There have been, as I have said, no hearings on the matter either in the committee or the subcommittee, and we certainly have no idea of what this bill will do, whether it will do anything or whether it will do nothing.

In point of fact, there are substantive changes in the legislation of the Clean Air Act. There are substantive changes of other statutes which are under the jurisdiction of the Committee on Energy and Commerce and the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure.

It is fair to note something else should be observed about this legislation. The bill will change the forum. Instead of having the matter considered by EPA, where traditionally it has been done and where the procedures have been fair and have been based on the expertise of the agency, all of the sudden it is going to be moved to the Department of Energy. This leaves, in my mind, an inference that those who are so anxious to have this movement take place are deliberately seeking to stack the forum, to change the forum from one which has been honest and fair and which has served the public interest to perhaps a more slippery and dishonest forum in which the matter can be considered in a way which best suits a preconceived intention.

So we have, first of all, no record; but we have a very curious change in procedure and forum which raises questions as to the integrity, not just of the process here, but the process which will be taking place as the matter goes forward.

Now, one of the interesting things is H.R. 4517 turns the Secretary of Energy into an environmental czar. It does this. It usurps the authority of State officials who are charged with protecting public health. The Secretary of Energy controls the procedures for obtaining State and Federal environmental permits, controls the timelines for reviewing and granting permit applications, controls the creation of environmental review documents that are the basis of the decisions which will be made. The Department of Energy is given the authority to override a State Governor's decision to deny permits for public health reasons.

My good friends, the States righters over here, are diligently stomping on the rights of the States to protect their citizens and to make judgments which might be best in conformity with the wishes and attitude of the people in the area and the elected officials of the State. It deliberately tramples upon a longstanding and successful way whereby the Federal Government has delegated responsibilities to these matters to the States and that the States were to carry forward these activities of permitting under the rules and traditions which we have long understood and which the people of the States not only understand but which they know is closest to the people.

The proposal then would move the principal responsibility to a new forum on the basis of no record, and it should be noted that the National Conference of State Legislatures, the Environmental Council of States, and the Association of Local Air Pollution Control Officials, among others, oppose this legislation.

One nice and comforting thing about it is that the red faces on the other side of the aisle about a bad piece of legislation will probably be of short duration because the Senate will never consider a piece of legislation as outrageous as this.