Judd Gregg: “I rise to praise the Senator from Alaska for bringing this bill forward. This bill has a lot of very important language…”

“I rise to praise the Senator from Alaska for bringing this bill forward. This bill has a lot of very important language in it obviously dealing with our national defense, dealing with our ability to be energy independent. But there are two items I wish to focus on because if this bill fails, if the cloture motion does not occur, they are going to be dramatically impacted. The first is the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program. There has been a lot of grandstanding in the Chamber over the last few months, with Members coming down here and offering proposals for how they were going to fund Low-Income Home Energy Assistance, otherwise known as LIHEAP. Most of those proposals have come forward without any offsets, have added to the deficit and, therefore, have been subject to a 60-vote point of order, and the people offering them knew they were not going to pass, but they wanted to take a position. This is the first bill that will increase LIHEAP, low-income energy assistance, and allow those people who are going to have a very tough winter to be able to pay for their energy costs. This bill has 2 billion additional dollars for low-income energy assistance in it, and it is paid for. It is done in a fiscally responsible way.…”