Pete Domenici: “You have a bill and you work on it, and Senators quickly run down and say, my gosh, this isn't going to help my State.…”

“You have a bill and you work on it, and Senators quickly run down and say, my gosh, this isn't going to help my State. But you cannot fix them all. So you proceed. They lose most of the time, but they never give up. On and on. That is all right. But it ends. I would like the bill to get called up. I would like us to vote on it. I would like the American people to know the contents of the bill. I have given you some today, and I hope what we will do each day this week and next week will bring down six or eight of the major policies, big ones. In this country, you cannot build new electric lines in certain places. You end up with what is called gridlock. You come this far and you run into a State on the other side that says you cannot get any right-of-way under any circumstance unless the people agree. They are not agreeing. Why should they? They don't want a pipeline, but America needs it--or an electric line. You know what we did in this bill, what I did as chairman? I got the majority, including Republicans, to agree you go about your business trying to get that done. But after a period of time, if you cannot, and it is found to be in the best interest of America, FERC will condemn you on it. We haven't gotten too much guff on it. A lot of people say, don't get the Federal Government involved. Who is going to do that? If we come up to that line, OK, if you want more electricity, where are you going to get it? That is a lot of places. It is fixed in this bill.”