Political Quotes

“Madam President, I have come to the floor this morning to discuss a provision in the Energy and Water appropriations bill that apparently Senator Bingaman has just spoken to. This would require the sale of $500 million worth of oil from our Nation's Strategic Petroleum Reserve or we call it the SPR. I do believe this is an inappropriate use of our limited emergency stockpiles, and I think it would also set a dangerous and an unsustainable precedent for the future. As I understand it, the administration first requested this sale in its fiscal year 2012 budget proposal and justified it by asserting there was an integrity issue in one of the caverns where the SPR oil was stored. We heard this discussion before the Energy Committee some months ago. He asserted the sale was necessary because DOE had to drain the oil in that cavern to perform some repairs that were apparently necessary. The House Appropriations Committee subsequently authorized the sale in its version of the bill which was then released in June. At that point in time, based upon DOE's representation, I guess it was kind of hard not to argue the sale was not justified. But then events took a different course. Several weeks later, as part of a coordinated effort with the IEA to increase global supplies, the President chose to sell about six times more crude from the SPR than the House had originally contemplated.…”