Political Quotes

“Mr. President, if my colleague will yield. As Senator Casey leaves, I thought his point about longest night and every day that follows will be brighter, and some of the provisions that Senator Barrasso and I, along with John Neely Kennedy, have included in the Nation's major budget piece of legislation ensure that it will be brighter. One of the pieces of legislation, as Senator Barrasso knows, deals with the phasedown of HFCs, hydrofluorocarbons. They are 1,000 times worse for climate change than carbon dioxide. Under the legislation that we have offered, it will phase down their utilization over the next 15 years by 85 percent. What is that worth? It is worth a half a degree Celsius--just this one thing, just this one provision. A lot of people on this planet think the biggest challenge that we face on this planet right now, an existential threat, is the fact that our planet is getting warmer and that we need to do something about it. In this legislation, we do take a big bite out of it. And my hope is what it will be is that it will serve as a source of encouragement for other Democrats and Republicans, maybe an Independent or two, to take other steps as we come back into the new year with the new administration and make further progress. One of the great things that I love about our HFC legislation-- thanks, colleague. One of the great things, Mr. Chairman, that I love about our HFC legislation is that it shows that you can do good things for our planet and create jobs.…”