Political Quotes

“In response to Senator Dorgan regarding his amendment which covers powerplant operator training, the amendment establishes, as he has noted, a national center to address the need for training and educational activities of operators of electric generator plants. I think we would all agree we can improve this even though operators have been trained in the past. But I want to emphasize the amendment would improve the training of the operators and their ability to do their job safely and efficiently. Therefore, I have no objection to the amendment. My only concern is we have some norm that is reasonable in the training, but I want to assure the Senator we will accept the amendment in the spirit of moving along on the energy bill. I want to comment on several aspects of amendments which we are going to be taking up very soon. There are a couple of points I want to address specifically. One is the Akaka Hawaii oil study which makes technical changes to the study language which is contained in section 1702 of the original Daschle bill. It requires the Department of Energy to assess the economic implications for Hawaii of its dependence on oil as a resource for most of its energy needs. I remind my colleagues the oil that Hawaii receives comes from Alaska. It comes in U.S. ships because the Jones Act mandates the carriage of commodities between two American ports has to be on a U.S. vessel.”