Jon Kyl: “I congratulate Chairman Pete Domenici and his staff for bringing a comprehensive Energy bill to the Senate floor. It has…”

“I congratulate Chairman Pete Domenici and his staff for bringing a comprehensive Energy bill to the Senate floor. It has many positive features. Unfortunately, on balance, the provisions he was not primarily responsible for, those that came out of the Finance Committee, are far too heavily weighted towards subsidies and mandates and require that I respectfully oppose the bill. Let me first mention some of the good in the bill. This is the part that came out of the Energy Committee. First, on the subject of reliability, since the year 2000, Congress has attempted to pass mandatory reliability standards. For some time it has been known that the voluntary reliability standards that currently exist were not adequate. This point was brought home in August with the blackout that hit New England and the Midwest. We know from the United States-Canada Power Outage System Task Force interim report on the causes of the blackout that First Energy failed to follow at least six voluntary reliability standards. The mandatory reliability standards in this bill will ensure that utilities cannot ignore the responsibility they each owe to maintaining the grid. It will go a long way toward keeping the lights on for millions of Americans.”