Political Quotes

“I yield myself the balance of my time. Mr. Speaker, you have to ask: How do they come up with this great idea to put this bill on the House floor today under the suspension of the rules? This calendar is usually put in place for noncontroversial bills. But this is a controversial bill. In fact, it's a bill that never had a single hearing in the Energy and Commerce Committee, which has jurisdiction. Not only would it eliminate national standards, it would bar any State standards, taking away longstanding State authority to improve efficiency in the absence of Federal action. And we should have cleaned up the drafting of this bill that eliminates all efficiency standards for fluorescent lighting. I oppose this bill, first of all, on procedural grounds. We shouldn't adopt legislation with significant impacts without a single hearing or markup to understand what it does. But I strongly oppose this BULB Act on substance. It would undermine job growth, strand investments that have been made to make sure that we meet these new standards, waste $12 billion a year on unnecessary electricity bills, and increase pollution. I don't think my colleagues on the other side of the aisle would come to the floor and say: Why are we requiring new cars to meet tighter emissions standards or tighter pollution standards? Let the public be able to choose the old ones that polluted more.…”