Douglas Alexander: “Mr. President, I rise in favor of the Alexander-Kyl amendment No. 4429, which we hope is a helpful amendment to the…”

“Mr. President, I rise in favor of the Alexander-Kyl amendment No. 4429, which we hope is a helpful amendment to the Ensign-Cantwell amendment. Let me try to say this in two different ways. If you care about climate change, here is what our amendment will do. It will extend from 1 year to 2 the production tax credit for all qualified renewable sources of electricity. In other words, these emerging renewable energies, which have the capacity to work 24 hours a day, would have 2 years, as well as wind. Second, it would mean that wind would not get all the money but that some others would have more time to respond to the incentives we are creating with these tax credits. Let me use a story to illustrate. Let's say a family has several children. One of them older. Dad calls a meeting and says: I have $3 billion extra, which is the amount of money we are talking about for the Ensign-Cantwell amendment. Let's give it to the overgrown son who is still living at home who has gotten most of the allowance money for the last 16 years. Let's give him another year. Mom, who is a little wiser, says: It is nice for you to want to give an allowance to the children, but what about all these other children-- open-loop biomass and small irrigation power and landfill gas and trash combustion.”