Political Quotes

“I know there are a lot of people that are offering amendments, so I will try to move very quickly here. This amendment would simply prohibit funds from going to the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy, or ARPA-E. There is ARPA-Defense, there is ARPA other stuff, there is ARPA-E. This is what we are trying to do is prohibit funding from going to ARPA-E, or energy. ARPA-E is currently set to receive about $100 million in this appropriation bill. The most compelling argument given to defund ARPA-E is found on its own Web site, which states that it was established ``to focus on creative, out-of-the-box transformational energy research that industry by itself cannot or will not support due to its high risk, but where success would provide dramatic benefits.'' It is this kind of, I guess, out-of-the-box thinking that has gotten us into this deficit that we're running, about $1.6 trillion. We are broke. We are borrowing 41 cents on every dollar that we spend, yet still we find within our budget reason to find $100 million to fund energy research in private companies that others won't fund because it's too risky. Now, we're not talking about products for defense for which there is no commercial application; we're talking about private sector research that could reap a windfall for some private company, and has in a number of other areas.…”