Political Quotes

“5 years ago I spoke at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. I began with a story from our past about our future. It is a familiar story to those of us in Tennessee. President Franklin Roosevelt called the chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee into his office in 1942 and said: Mr. Chairman, I would like to ask you to hide a couple billion dollars in the budget for a secret project to win the war. Senator McKellar replied: Mr. President. I just have one question: Where in Tennessee would you like me to hide it? That place turned out to be Oak Ridge. That was how Tennessee became one of the sites where scientists worked to build the atomic bomb before the Germans. I suggested 5 years ago that we have a new Manhattan Project--really mini-Manhattan Projects for clean energy independence. Last week at Oak Ridge, 5 years after that first speech, I suggested four grand principles to help us chart a competitive energy future for the next 5 years to end our obsession with taxpayer subsidies and strategies for expensive energy and instead focus on doubling government-sponsored research and allowing marketplace solutions to create an abundance of cheap, clean, reliable energy. I would like to renew those comments today on the floor of the Senate. The four grand principles I mentioned were, No. 1, cheaper, not more expensive, energy; No. 2, clean, not just renewable, energy; No. 3, research and development, not government mandates; and No.…”