Douglas Alexander: “I salute Senator Hagel for his leadership and his contribution on this issue. I am glad to be here with my colleague…”

“I salute Senator Hagel for his leadership and his contribution on this issue. I am glad to be here with my colleague, Senator Craig, who is one of the Senate's real authorities on energy. We have had some trouble passing an energy bill in the Senate. We are having some trouble passing a clean air bill in the Senate. If we are being logical--which is hard for a Senate to be--we would set clean air objectives and pass a clean energy bill to help reach that objective, do it at once, and give ourselves a low cost, reliable supply of energy, less dependent on the rest of the world, and do it in a way that is environmentally sound. That is our objective. We have different approaches on this, but Senator Hagel has put his emphasis today exactly where it needs to be. The United States of America is a country that has about a third of all the GDP in the world. We have 5 to 6 percent of the people and a third of all the money is one way to put it. How did we get that money? How did we get our position? The National Academy of Sciences says that since World War II, half our new jobs have come from advances in science and technology. There are other countries in the world--a growing number of countries--that have great capacity for science and technology. Some of the greatest scientists and engineers who have worked in this country have come from other countries in the world.”