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Floor Speech

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Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I am here to back the nomination of Lee Zeldin of New York to be Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, so my vote will be yes in a few hours from now when we vote on that nomination.

The EPA plays a very important regulatory role in the United States. Not only does it regulate pollution, like many Americans already know, but it also regulates many areas that impact Americans every day.

As many farmers in Iowa know, the previous administration's EPA put out a regulation that would overregulate what we know in this town as waters of the United States or, as the leader just put it, WOTUS. This would have regulated 96 percent of the land in the State of Iowa, and that would subject that land to Federal water regulations. It would almost be impossible to do regular farming operations without wondering whether you were violating some regulation. That is what the leader just said. This regulation is not common sense.

The EPA also oversees issues critical to agriculture, such as the approval and labeling of pesticides and other important tools for farmers.

The EPA also oversees the renewable fuel standard and protects its integrity. The renewable fuel standard provides an important framework for biofuels, which benefits farmers by sustaining an additional market for their commodities.

Besides, biofuels, or in Iowa because we are No. 1 in the production of ethanol, we like to say it is good for agriculture; it is good for good-paying jobs in rural America that we would never have without the ethanol industry; it is good for the environment because it is clean- burning; it is good for our national security--less reliance upon foreign sources of energy. There is everything about biofuels that is good, good, good. There is not a negative that you can come up with about them.

In our meeting earlier this month in my office--Mr. Zeldin came there--I impressed upon him the far-reaching impact that his Agency has over the lives of farmers and all Americans.

Mr. Zeldin assured me that he would be responsive to Congress and that he would provide ample time to provide transparency and market stability before regulations from his Agency are promulgated. Mr. Zeldin's assurance about making decisions on time is important because previously the required volume obligations dealing with biofuels and the small refinery exemptions have not been finalized in time to make the RVOs whole. This leads to less ethanol blending, which goes against President Trump's commitment to farmers and the ethanol industry, which Mr. Zeldin assured me that he supports. For the sake of Iowa farmers, I am hopeful that Mr. Zeldin stays true to his word.

Just in case you wonder whether or not we have anything to fear from EPA in agriculture, I want to give you a little history that is now history, but it just shows you how, in this town, which I call an island surrounded by reality--the real America is outside of this island here--a few years ago, they were going to promote a rule that you would say is just unbelievable. You have to be telling us a story. They wouldn't be proposing this rule.

It was called the fugitive dust rule. OK. The theory of the fugitive dust rule from EPA is that if you are farming and you create dust in the normal operations that go into a farming operation--plowing, disking, planting, spraying, whatever it might be, combining the harvest--that you are supposed to keep that dust within your property lines.

Now, that is what EPA tried to promulgate. In fact, I think one time we thought we had it killed, and a couple of years later, it came up again. Now I think it is dead forever because it doesn't meet the commonsense test that a farmer working his fields can keep the dust within his property lines.

So I tried to explain it to EPA Administrators this way in regard to the harvesting of soybeans, which leaves a lot of dust. I said that when soybeans are 13 percent moisture, it is very necessary that you very quickly harvest them because 13 percent is the most ideal time with that amount of moisture in soybeans.

Do you know, to these Administrators, only God determines when the wind blows, and whether the wind is blowing or not, your soybeans are 13 percent, you have to get in there and combine them and not worry about where the dust goes, and you have about 2 weeks during the harvest season to accomplish the same goal.

But, no kidding, that is what EPA was trying to do to agriculture a few years ago.

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