Political Quotes

“There are so many pieces to this puzzle. You've talked about the research; you've talked about the support of new businesses, particularly in the clean energy sector. As we discuss those things, I keep thinking about what is happening, I think very unfortunately, in this debate. It's a political year, and we've got our elections. We have the election of the President and the Senate, all of those things are up, and so we take issues, and we may take a specific problem and drive that problem to the point of destroying other good programs that are under way. This is happening right now. The Solyndra case, three times on the floor today I heard the word Solyndra come up. This was a problem, this was a company that was supported by a loan guarantee, and it failed. It largely failed because of China's policy of dumping--dumping on to the American market underpriced solar cells. That's why the company failed. Now we have the opportunity to deal with this; but before I get to how we can deal with that China problem, I want to just ask my Republican colleagues to be very, very careful as they drive this political issue because they may succeed in making this a big political issue for this country; but by doing so, they may cause America to turn its attention away from renewable energy--the very issue you raised, Mr. Tonko. We have to have energy security, and renewable energy of all kinds is going to be part of that. So we must be very careful.…”