Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague, the gentleman from Oklahoma (Mr. Lucas) for yielding. Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of my bill, H.R. 342, the Cost- Sharing Accountability Act. Mr. Speaker, research and development grants in the field of energy administered by the Department of Energy play a critical role in innovation and energy research in the United States. The administration and awarding of those grants is governed by the Energy Policy Act of 2005. Among other things, that act requires the DOE to impose a cost share on the recipients of those grants. That cost share can be as low as 20 percent in the case of research and development grants, or as high as 50 percent in the case of commercialization and demonstration grants. The purpose of this cost share is simple. It is to ensure that the grant recipients also have some skin in the game when it comes to ensuring the success of the grants and the projects that they are bidding on and demonstrating. Several months ago, the Investigations and Oversight Subcommittee of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology held an oversight hearing in which we investigated the occasions on which the Department of Energy had waived those cost-sharing requirements on grants that it had awarded. The DOE has the statutory ability to waive those cost shares under the appropriate circumstances. We wanted to make sure that that authority was being exercised judiciously.…”