Cliff Stearns: “let me just comment briefly, and I think the gentleman from Massachusetts will understand that last year, September 30…”

“let me just comment briefly, and I think the gentleman from Massachusetts will understand that last year, September 30, 1999, we passed and sent to the President our Energy Conservation Policy Act. It was on the day that it expired. So we, with great alacrity and interest, submitted it to the President; and I think the gentleman from Massachusetts realized what the President did, he did not sign it. In fact, he waited 5 days. So the fact that this expires is not a major crisis, and I think he realizes that from the President himself not signing it when we gave it to him last year. To answer the gentleman from Michigan as to the point about the Department of Energy, the Department of Energy had nothing to do with the cost per gallon of energy either going from 72 under the Carter administration, the Democrat administration, down to 25 and lower; and now it is going up, notwithstanding the fact we give billions and billions and billions of dollars every day. Even the Secretary of Energy, Mr. Richardson, said we were caught napping. So after sending billions and billions of dollars year in and year out to this Department of Energy, there are people in Congress, including myself, who felt that perhaps this agency should be reformed. It is an institution that should be changed. It is an institution that is not meeting the demands. I think Secretary Richardson would probably agree today, since he admits that "we were caught napping" after all of this money we spent.”