Heidi Alexander: “I wish to congratulate the Senator from Arkansas for his very clear explanation of what we are about here. The United…”

“I wish to congratulate the Senator from Arkansas for his very clear explanation of what we are about here. The United States produces 25 percent of all the wealth in the world every year. In order to do that, we use about 20 to 25 percent of all of the electricity in the world. We need low-cost, reliable, large amounts of clean electricity and we need for coal to have a secure part of the future of our clean energy mix. I have said for years, we know what to do about sulfur, nitrogen, mercury, and the hazardous pollutants. We have the pollution control equipment to capture all of those. We can make the coal clean, except for carbon, so let's put that over here on the side for a minute. We can make the coal clean and we should do it. We should have done it in a law over the last few years. We have had 15 Senators equally divided on both sides of the aisle trying to pass a law. We couldn't get it done so we defaulted to the EPA, so now they have had to do the rule. But the Congress amended the Clean Air Act in 1990 we told EPA to write this rule. In the law, it listed the pollutants that have to be controlled. In 2005, President Bush tried to write this rule but a Federal Court threw it out and in 2008 said to the EPA, you have to do it, the way the law says to do it. So Congress has told them to do it, the courts have told them to do it, and now they have done it according to the law.…”