Rick Santorum: Endangered Species Act is "poorly crafted legislation"

Rick Santorum described the Endangered Species Act as an example of "very broadly worded legislation that allow regulators to run amok" while responding to a question at the December 3, 2011 Huckabee Presidential Forum, which aired on Fox News:

Pam Bondi, Florida Attorney General: Senator, in Florida it’s been very frustrating because -- as you’ve probably heard – I’ve had to sue the EPA to stop them from imposing absolutely unsustainable water standards on my state, and it would be devastating to businesses in Florida.

The Obama administration, they have pursued numerous environmental policies that affect all of us in different ways that would impose staggering costs on the American people. 

What principles would you follow in deciding whether to approve any environmental regulations? 

Rick Santorum: Well, I would say this.

What we have seen is a radical environmental policy put forth by this administration, but it’s based upon some very poorly crafted legislation that is place right now.

You know, you have an Endangered Species Act, which is at the heart of the problems that we’ve dealt with in Pennsylvania. 

Look at the Central Valley of California. 

And we’ve seen these policies because you have poorly drafted – not poorly drafted, deliberately draft – pieces of legislation that are overly broad.

The former Senator from Pennsylvania and 2012 Republican presidential candidate also made it clear that he'd like to see the Endangered Species Act rewritten:   

Rick Santorum: What I believe we need to do -- and I’ve made this a proposal on the road – we have reauthorizations of all these acts that come forward. And a lot of the cases, they just straight reauthorize them because you can’t, you can’t – they don’t want to refight the war again.

But what I’ll say as President is, “I won’t enforce an Act. I won’t sign a straight reauthorization, and just won’t continue to enforce an Act that hasn’t been reauthorized.” 

We will force the Congress to go back and take these very broadly worded statutes that allow regulators to run amok and we will fix them and have Congress make the decisions as to what the laws are, not the regulators.

Santorum’s comments came just three days before today's hearing - "The Endangered Species Act: How Litigation is Costing Jobs and Impeding True Recovery Efforts" - held by Republicans in control of the U.S. House of Representatives Natural Resources Committee.

According to the Center for Biological Diversity, the Endangered Species Act has been a great success, as evidenced by the fact that “99.9 percent of species protected by the Act have been kept from extinction, and where measured, 93 percent of protected species are moving towards recovery.”

Watch video of Santorum's remarks starting at 18:25: