Lisa Murkowski

Far-sighted investment in LWCF is one that will permanently pay dividends to the American people.

The President's budget request includes full funding of LWCF in fiscal year 2012.

It is right and wise to reinvest proceeds from offshore drilling receipts in the protection of natural resources.

There you have it. Madam President, I appreciate the indulgence of the majority leader. Again I send my warmest well wishes to John Baker and his team. I will be greeting the mushers in Nome on Sunday at the mushers banquet, and I can't…

Mukluk Telegraph is what he would call it. It was a way to convey birthday greetings to people in the next village. It was a way to say: I made it back from hunting camp safely. It is a way of communication. People do not often recognize…

I, too, will take an opportunity to plug public radio because the majority leader heard the piece on NPR, but in my home State and in many of the villages we are talking about where these teams will go through on their way to Nome, it…

Because it would appear that when you look to those countries around the world that seem to be leading when it comes to the clean energy investment, they also appear to be leading in the category of subsidies as well.

We're at a time when we are looking at budgets. We're pretty quick to pick winners and losers through the budgetary process.

We should start doing that.

The real question is is how effective, how efficient are they really in the process that we're all trying to advance?

From the investment side of things I know one of the things that I hear as I'm talking to folks is you don't give us any level of predictability with the subsidies that are out there.

I think it's hard when you pick up the phone and you call an agency and there's no one there on Friday to answer the phone.

We want to have fair labor standards. We insist on those. We want to have environmental compliance. We insist on that.

We think about it more not just in terms of rare Earths, but also in terms of strategic minerals.

I think we need to keep that in mind.

We can and we should work with China wherever possible to make progress on our energy challenges.

It's become popular, particularly when focused on energy policy to say that we're falling behind China in sort of a clean energy race. I guess I would challenge that.

I appreciate the comments.

Typically it comes from either South America or China.

I think it plays into what we're talking about here in terms of the--how we lower the costs.

I think that that's just one tool in the tool box. I would argue we need a broader set of tools.

I think a decision has to be made to support an environmentally acceptable way for greater production in the United States.

They're using that as basically an energy weapon, if you will.

We're causing it ourselves.

Two weeks ago we conducted a hearing in this subcommittee on the impact that the failure to complete a fiscal year 2011 Defense Appropriations Bill is having on our military services.