Political Quotes

“when this bill came out of the committee, I thought we had an agreement where there would be an offset and a payment of the bill. Unfortunately, that did not occur, so consequently I will be voting against this legislation because it doesn't do what it says it is going to do. Very frankly, this is funny money, and the schools won't be, as we want them to be, funded, and that is unfortunate. But I am also going to talk about a lot of the statements on the floor, and my good friend from Oregon has to understand that I do watch the debate. There were some statements made that I think were incorrect, in fact I know, not think, about ANWR and about PET4 and about independence. There has been no oil shipped overseas from Alaska. It all goes to the West Coast, at one time through the Panama Canal, through a pipeline, for American consumption, all 17 billion barrels of oil. And if we were to open ANWR or the Chukchi Sea it would go to the United States. It wouldn't go overseas to China or Japan. We could make sure of that as we vote for it on this House floor, as we did when we had the Trans-Alaska Pipeline. I think it is important that the American public recognize that we do have a supply problem.”