Political Quotes

“I appreciate the respect. You and the chairman have made a very good argument for my amendment, and I thank you for that. My amendment doesn't do anything that you're not already trying to do. It simply gives some more specific direction to the Department, specifically to seek outside analysis of the alternatives that might be available. Clearly, the Department has not been successful in running this project, and they are not in the process of seeking outside help. They're going to try to do it inside. I think that would be a mistake. There are people out there--there are companies and there are actually researchers outside--who could provide that outside view of what's going on. Secondly, there are other ways of dealing with this problem. This is an aqueous process that's being used there, and it simply isn't working. There are other ways of disposing of the plutonium and of the highly enriched uranium that are proven to work--I discussed this earlier this day--and we need to study whether that can be used at this facility. We're not talking about jobs. We are actually talking about making this facility work and possibly using a different technology, but we really need to have somebody outside take a look at this whole thing. Both you and the ranking member and the chair have adequately explained why my language should be adopted. I thank you for the committee's looking at this thing in a very hard, structured way. It has to be dealt with.”